Coaching Highlight: Reorganizing a Learning Disorder

The Map is Not the Territory

Thinking is the way we make an internal representation to ourselves of the world we live in. We take our experiences and our sensory input and with it we create a map of the world in which we live. This map comes equipped with a navigational system whose primary function is to sort our experiences into two categories: the kind we’d like to have or the kind we’d like to avoid.

We use this navigational system like a compass, in conjunction with the map to get where we want to go. Some areas of the map are new territory for us…others have been lived in for so long that we are no longer consciously aware of them…like a hardwired program running in the background of our lives.

This way of internally representing our world is a big piece of how we learn to survive. Developing hardwired programs is an efficient method of providing ourselves with a source of nourishment and sustenance. These survival strategies help us hold and maintain a place in our families, our communities and beyond.

Most of us experience this system unconsciously, in the form of behavior patterns (knee-jerk reactions to certain stimulus or situations we encounter in life). Sometimes we become aware of ourselves executing a behavior that is less than flattering and we beat up on ourselves over it. Thinking about it like this is not helpful to our overall goal of change. We need to know why the behavior is in place and what purpose it serves in order for us to be able to make a different choice. Trying to accomplish this level of change without understanding how the behavior is of service to us…is very difficult.

So what happens when we can consciously observe our patterns, understand how they benefit us and choose a new more life complimentary behavior to meet our needs? What happens when we decide to change the map?

Discovering the Positive Intent

Whenever we are experiencing something like a disorder, disease, anxiety or other physical symptom that arises within our world, it is helpful to take the point of view of wondering how this symptom is actually of benefit to us.

The on the surface, mind generated response is always that it doesn’t serve us at all…but we wouldn’t have it in our lives if it was absolutely of no use to us…so when we are completely honest and dig deep into our unconscious minds we will often discover something entirely different.

That is why whenever we are sick or experiencing some other signal from our bodies, we can get to the bottom of things much more quickly if we look upon the experience like a kind of message from another part of us.

Unlocking and decoding those messages can change the course of our experience. When we understand how something that is not our ideal circumstance serves us…we can find another way to fill that need and let go of the less healthy behavior.

Coaching a Reading Disorder

Not too long ago I coached a woman who had developed a reading disorder in the second grade. She did not feel it was possible for her to read and came to me to try to understand why this disorder appeared in her life at the time that it did.

A child born into abuse will create what they need in order to survive their family situation. When we explored her reading disorder we discovered that it was helpful to her in many ways…

It discounted her ability to be fully responsible for all of what she did as a child. Coming from a family of seven kids who had to endure evening watches all alone with their alcoholic father, this became more than a coping strategy…it was survival. If she wasn’t as noticeable, if she was discountable and not easily seen, then she might avoid being yelled at, beat or some other form of punishment…providing her with a chance to experience some form of happiness at home.

On another level, it garnered her a great deal of consideration from her mother, who spent a lot of time trying to teach her to read well enough to pass her classes. In a family system this large, there is stiff competition for a working mother’s love and attention. The reading disorder ensured that she received more of this attention than she would have otherwise. It also provided her with the opportunity to bond with her mother and please her by reading the words she was taught correctly.

In the end, my client realized that the disorder had been extremely useful to her during her childhood, and that it had, in actuality, been the avenue that she used to acquire what little happiness was available to her within her family.

Now, 47 years later, the disorder had long outlived it’s purpose and she realized she had many other paths to happiness and fulfillment. She was able to honor the needs of the child and of the grown woman by choosing a new way to nurture herself.

The Dream

A few days after our coaching session she called me with an absolute beam in her voice to say that she had experienced a significant dream. She saw herself in an office setting, where people were coming to her with memos and documents. For the first time in her life, she had the experience of looking over papers and reading them with ease before handing them back to her dream employees with written instructions attached.

As we talked she said, “I don’t see myself as someone who can’t read anymore…I see myself as someone who is learning how.”

At 55 years of age she has entered a new place in life… she has reinvented her identity as a woman who can read, and life looks quite a bit different from the vantage point of this new, previously unexplored and inaccessible territory of her map

Comments

By Tina Su on November 6th, 2007 at 1:33 am

Great Post! Keep up the excellent word.

Love & Gratitude,
Tina
Think Simple. Be Decisive.
~ Productivity, Motivation & Happiness

By Paula Kawal on November 6th, 2007 at 4:53 pm

Hi Tina!

Thanks so much for stopping by the site. It’s always a pleasure to meet some local bloggers

Much love,

PK