Tools - Adaptive or Maladaptive?
I talk a lot about tools. So, what are tools? They can be anything that helps us meet our needs in any given moment. They can help us cope with intense emotions, they can help us navigate confusing situations, they can help us connect to our inner world to better understand our needs, they can be narratives that help explain the world. We use tools all the time and many of the tools we use become habituated and operate outside of our conscious awareness.
When I am talking to clients about their tools, I am really talking about coping mechanisms, I use the terms interchangeably: I'll refer to an adaptive or maladaptive coping mechanism as a tool. So whatever tools we are using, they can be adaptive and helpful or they can be used in a way that is maladaptive and unhelpful. Part of the work I do with clients is helping them recognize what tools they are using and whether the tool is helpful or not.
When tools are helpful, things in life are easier. The tools are our helpers.
When tools are not working, and I refer to these types of tools as maladaptive coping mechanisms, they can range from unhelpful, to harmful, to life threatening.
Let's talk about what a maladaptive coping mechanism is in more practical terms.
A maladaptive coping mechanism is a tool that no longer functions in a helpful, healthy manner. It is a tool that is not meeting the need that it is being utilised for, that is an important distinction. It’s possible that using the tool has gotten to the point where it is causing its own set of problems and obscuring the needs that it is being used to meet.
Let me clarify that anything can be a maladaptive tool. And anything can be an adaptive tool. The same tool in one situation may be adaptive and helpful and in another situation maladaptive and unhelpful. A couple of important questions that can help us assess the effectiveness of a tool are: Is the tool meeting the underlying need? Is the tool flexible and adaptable? These questions can help us maintain our awareness of what needs we are addressing and help us avoid habituating a tool by being aware of if we are using it in a flexible, adaptable manner.
Let's look at the idea of the maladaptive tool. Let’s say we have a client, who we will call Bob. Bob has lost his job due to corporate budget cuts. The layoff was completely unexpected and was shocking to Bob who was unprepared and confused that management chose to cut him. He was flooded with intense emotions; fear, self-doubt, anger, resentment and grief. He was overwhelmed and after a couple of days navigating the intensity of his emotions he thought he needed to a break.
Bob decided to have a glass of wine; to relax, to take the edge off. The glass of wine worked and Bob experienced a shift in his mood. Everything felt less intense and he was able to fall asleep more easily after drinking the wine. In this instance, the wine has provided Bob with some relief from the intensity of his emotions. The tool Bob chose to meet the need of diminishing the intensity of his emotions was helpful, in that moment.
The next day, Bob’s back in the emotional turmoil, trying to figure out how this happened to him and how to move forward. The intensity of all the feelings was impacting his ability to think clearly, to formulate a plan. He continued to think about why this happened to him and second guessed his work product and value. Again, as the end of the day approaches, Bob decides to have a glass of wine, or two, to help him relax. Bob continues to use the wine as the days turn into weeks and then into months.
What began as a glass of wine to reduce the intensity of his emotions had become a few drinks or a bottle of wine. Bob stopped assessing if he was experiencing a high degree of emotional intensity and needed to take a pause from the emotions and come back to processing them the next day. He wasn’t asking himself if the tool was working to help him continue to move forward in his emotional processing.
Bob also didn’t ask himself if drinking every evening was causing any harm to him. He didn’t notice that as the amount of alcohol he drank increased, that his sleep was being interrupted. He didn’t notice that he was becoming short tempered as time went on. He didn’t realise there was a cumulative effect from not getting proper sleep. Bob didn’t see that his tool, which helped him the first couple of times he used it, was now unhelpful and causing its own harms.
Bob blamed getting laid off for his temper outbursts, for his inability to sleep and for needing to have a drink to take the edge off. From an outside perspective we can see that Bob’s tool had become harmful. Bob got stuck in blaming being laid off as the cause of his problems. The people around Bob became focused on the problems caused by his drinking. The problems caused by Bob’s drinking, coupled with Bob blaming the lay off, were masking the underlying needs that had gone unmet.
We might ask at what point did Bob’s tool become maladaptive, which is basically trying to pinpoint when the tool became habituated. However, that question may not be the most helpful. Tools that help us cope are tools that help us meet our needs. Being aware of the need we are meeting with a particular tool is key, as is the ability to maintain curiosity about the effectiveness of the tool. I have seen in myself and with clients that when a tool becomes habituated, it is not helpful, it is frequently harmful and becomes difficult to set aside.
Developing awareness of our needs and the tools we use to meet them allows us to start unwinding our maladaptive coping mechanisms and start building adaptive tools. Creating and using adaptive tools requires identifying a need and experimenting with how to meet it. In this process curiosity is a valuable; brainstorming ideas and being willing to try different things. One important idea that my experience has demonstrated is that I must continue to change a tool to avoid habituating it.
Let’s go back to Bob for a minute and explore adaptive tools. Bob had chosen to have a glass of wine after he had been navigating intense emotions for a few days following his lay off. Bob expressed he felt he needed a break from the emotions and the glass of wine took the edge off. In the big picture Bob had a number of competing needs regarding employment and financial security, however, his immediate need was to get a break from his intense emotions, from his intense thinking.
Bob was caught up in over-thinking and in shock. The over-thinking was driving the intensity of his emotions higher. He needed a break from it. We all need a break sometimes. The wine relaxed him and gave him the break and so his brain told him “good job Bob”. In order for a tool to remain helpful, we want it to be flexible and adaptive. The underlying need was for Bob to slow or stop his over-thinking and reduce the intensity of his emotions, or as Bob articulated, “to take the edge off.”
If we approach this need with some curiosity, we can ask Bob if there are any things he currently does (existing tools) that help him out of over thinking. Bob expressed having a glass of wine at the end of the day. We can brainstorm with Bob some ideas that he can practice to stop over-thinking. If Bob’s tools are maladaptive, we can explore unwinding the maladaptive and developing the adaptive tools. We can come up with a number of tools that Bob can experiment with to stop over-thinking. As Bob experiments, he can use curiosity to determine if a tool is helpful or not.
Let’s say we come up with a list of six tools for Bob experiment with: 1) Recite sensory inputs out loud 2) Walk barefoot on different surfaces 3) Diaphragmatic breathing for 2 mins 4) Run cold water over hands and describe the sensation out loud 5) Visualize standing in a calming, safe place 6) Hum for 3 minutes.
Bob is tasked with practicing each of these tools at least once each day. Since Bob was getting to the end of the day feeling overwhelmed, he is encouraged to practice the tools consistently through the day, not all at once at the end of the day. He can choose the order and the timing of each tool and is encouraged to switch the order and times each day, relying on the concept that change is a constant. Bob is also responsible for checking with himself to see if the tool has interrupted his over-thinking and provided any relief to the intensity of his emotions.
If Bob gets to the end of the day and wants a glass of wine, he is asked to treat the glass of wine as a tool. He will smell the wine and describe what he smells out loud before each sip and he will describe the flavors and textures of each sip out loud as well. (Please note this is not suggested for anyone with a history of alcohol or drug abuse). Bob is also asked to be as curious as to the effectiveness of the wine tool as he is to the other six tools he is practicing.
In this situation, the goal is to stop the over-thinking that is driving the intense emotions so that Bob gets to the end of each day and is not feeling overwhelmed. Each of the tools that Bob is practicing have the ability to interrupt his thinking and return him to a sensory connection to himself, to essentially ground him. Bob has choices in when and how often to employ the tools, which contributes to the flexibility and adaptability of the tools. Asking Bob to be curious about how each tool affects him is also asking him to remain present and aware during the practice of each tool so that he can assess it. Bob is being asked to check in regarding his need to stop over-thinking and reduce the intensity of his emotions at least six times a day.
How the experiment unfolds and what Bob learns from each use of each tool will help Bob better understand how his over-thinking impacts him and what he can do to stop it. It is ultimately Bob’s experience that will then inform his use of the tools, changes to the tools or development of new tools. The keys are in understanding and meeting Bob’s needs with flexible and adaptable tools.
