People and Patterns

Why do you do that? Or: Why does that happen?

In the last post, we talked about the fact that in any long-term relationship (from marriages to business partnerships), there’s a tendency for rigid communication patterns to form. All too often these patterns are unproductive; there are cycles of attacking and defending, complaining and proposing, yes-butting and counter-yes-butting, and so on. We know that this happens, but it may not be obvious why it tends to happen — so we want to take a moment here to look at that question.

Consider a specific example. Imagine that there’s a friend you’ve known for some time. Let’s call her Pat. You like Pat, but it’s often frustrating to spend time with her because inevitably, no matter how the conversation starts out, she winds up complaining. Say you ask her about her job; before long you’ll hear about how her colleagues aren’t pulling their weight, and she never gets the support she needs. Ask her about her husband, and she’ll complain about all the annoying things he’s done in the past two weeks. And the complaints never seem to end. As the conversation goes on, it feels like you’re getting pulled deeper and deeper into a bottomless pit of “alas” and “if only” and “woe is me.” You try to stay positive and give Pat useful advice on her situation, but nothing seems to help. When you finally say goodbye to her, you find yourself either feeling down or feeling exasperated, or a little of both.

Have you ever known someone like Pat? Many of you probably have. In fact, a lot of us, at some point in our lives, in one relationship or another, have been Pat.

Now, from a SAVI point of view, we can understand what’s happening here as a recurring complaint-proposal cycle. For instance:

“Everything always falls on me to do.” (complaint)
“Why don’t you talk to your boss and try to get some help?” (proposal)
“He never backs me up. I’m all on my own.” (complaint)
“How about just cutting back and doing less?” (proposal)
“Oh, then the job doesn’t get done adequately, and that’s even worse.” (complaint)
and so on, and on and on and on and on

Why does this keep happening? There are many possible answers. Part of the reason for this is that there are many possible questions — many different ways to look at the problem. To a large extent, the type of question we ask will determine the type of answer we come up with. Here we’ll look at just two sorts of questions: people questions and pattern questions.

1. People questions ask about what motivates a particular individual’s behavior. Why does Pat keep complaining? Why do you feel compelled to give proposals? Why doesn’t Pat take your suggestions?

In answering these sorts of questions, we can explain the pattern in terms of people’s personalities or emotional states: Pat complains because she is pessimistic or depressed, or tends to take the role of victim. You give proposals because you have a problem-solving mentality, or because you tend to take the role of helper. We could also refer to motivations or intentions, either conscious or unconscious: Pat craves attention or sympathy, or wants to prove to you how difficult her life is. In trying to solve her problems, maybe your real motivation is to make her stop complaining or make yourself feel better.

These are questions that you (or Pat) might examine in individual psychotherapy. You might find the answers helpful in understanding how you react in a variety of different situations in your lives. With regard to your rigid communication pattern with Pat, you can see this as a reflection of your consistent, unchanging psychological and emotional characteristics.


2. Pattern questions take a different approach, leaving individual differences and personality traits out of the equation. We might ask, Why is the complaint-proposal pattern so enduring? Why are all the complaints getting followed by proposals, and all the proposals getting followed by complaints?

In answering these questions, we don’t need to know anything about Pat, or about you. We can just look at the behaviors themselves. Complaints give two different type of information at the same time:
a) information about the situation, which the speaker wishes would change (e.g., Pat’s situation at work), and
b) information about the speaker’s emotional/psychological state, which is passive or helpless (e.g., Pat’s feeling helpless to change her situation)

Why do proposals tend to follow complaints? They’re a natural response to hearing that first type of information: a situation that somebody wants to change. Why do those proposals tend to invite more complaining? Because they don’t take into account the second, more emotional piece of information. In fact, by offering an outside solution to a person’s problem, proposals can reinforce that person’s sense of helplessness — which then fuels more complaints.

A proposal is a perfect answer to the question, “What do you think I can do to change this situation?” What we need to remember is that when a person is complaining, they’re not asking that question. There’s a world of difference between the complaint, “This situation is miserable” and the question, “What can I do to change it?” As an answer to a request for help, a proposal may often be effective. As a response to a complaint, the same proposal is likely to cause more problems than it solves.

These pattern-based answers can help you to understand any complaint-proposal cycle — whether you’re the one complaining, the one proposing, or just an observer. You can view the situation with Pat as just one instance of this all-too-common, self-perpetuating pattern of communication.

You may have guessed by now that SAVI tends to give explanations based on patterns, rather than people. This doesn’t mean that pattern-based explanations are necessarily better. They’re just different — serving a different purpose, answering different questions, and potentially offering different sorts of solutions.

You might ask yourself, in which situations do you find it useful to focus on the people? When might it be useful to focus on patterns instead?

(By the way: For those of you who would like to learn a better way of responding to complaints, instead of giving proposals, stay tuned!)