Why we do the things we do.
Why do I keep… ?
Generally speaking, that is essentially what brings everyone in for therapy. That question, or some variation of it, is one that inevitably comes up with every client I work with. You can fill in the blank with just about anything, but the general theme is something that you don’t want to do but find yourself doing anyway. It can be frustrating (to say the least) to engage in the same behavior over and over, getting the same results, and not really know “why”. An extremely valid question, but also a difficult one to answer.
We are fundamentally wired to try to make sense of things. That’s part of the reason it can be so vexing when our behavior doesn’t seem to add up, like staying up too late watching Netflix when you know you’ll regret it tomorrow. Often the behaviors that bring folks into therapy are ones that cause distress or pain in some way. Having the same old fight with a partner, giving in to distraction instead of finishing important (sometimes boring) tasks, engaging in that bad habit, the list can go on. The higher the stakes get, the higher the urgency can be to figure out “why” so we can just stop doing it. Reasonable enough since, technically speaking, we are in total control of our behavior (even if it doesn’t always feel that way).
In some ways it is pretty easy
What makes any “why” question difficult to answer is how paradoxical human behavior can be. It is simultaneously incredibly simple and infinitely complex. On the “simple” side of the coin it can really be summed up as ABC. Antecedent, Behavior, Consequence (consequence can have a negative connotation, but it is used here it it’s most objective sense). Put a little differently: something happens (the antecedent), we do something in response (our behavior), that yields a result (the consequence). Often the ABC model of behavior is associated with treating autistic children (where it can be highly effective), but it really is a core of all human behavior. You can play with it, literally, anywhere you go throughout the day and find that everything we do has something that precedes it and something that results from it. I’m drinking a cup of coffee as I write this. When I hit a pause I want to take a sip of it (antecedent), I reach my hand over and take a sip (behavior), I get a little moment of pleasure from enjoying said coffee (consequence).
Let’s look at something a little larger and extremely common. Driving a car. It’s a fairly complex task that requires coordination between multiple muscle groups and cognitive processes to safely and successfully navigate a three to four thousand pound object wherever we are going. Yet many of us do it every day with relatively little thought, especially when driving to a familiar destination. This complex task breaks down into many smaller behaviors. I see a red light (antecedent), I push the brake pedal (behavior), I’m stopped at an intersection waiting for a light to turn (consequence). After you learn to drive all of these behaviors become routine fairly quickly and then occur effortlessly when we are back in a familiar situation. Essentially anything that can bring you into therapy fits into the same mold. The behavior you want to change or stop has an antecedent and a consequence, and like driving a car they have probably been around long enough to occur fairly effortlessly.
Simple, right? Well, kind of…
Looking at the other side of the coin, nothing occurs in a vacuum. Everything has a context. We are never driving in a car without a purpose. Even if we don’t have a specific destination in mind and are driving aimlessly there is certainly a story that lead up to that. Back to my coffee example, the consequence of me enjoying a sip of coffee is because that action exists in a larger context where I enjoy coffee. Any client that sees me in the morning will attest as much. If I hated coffee the context shifts and the ABCs look different. Maybe I stayed up too late last night and the only reason I am drinking coffee is because I feel like I need a stimulant to have the energy to do the things that need doing. Instead of enjoying a sip from one of my favorite beverages, maybe the consequence is some stew of mild self-loathing, questioning why I did this to myself and criticizing that I “should know better”.
Revisiting the idea of driving in a car, the various contexts and variations of the ABCs are virtually endless. On a routine commute to work you may not remember much of the drive, essentially being on autopilot while performing this fairly complex task. Things change if you missed your alarm. Now you are late for work; there is a sense of urgency, maybe panic, to the morning as you rush through your routine and out of the door. The whole context of that drive shifts. The yellow light has a different function now. No longer is it the usual warning to slow down and stop at the intersection. That sense of urgency makes it an untimely obstacle threatening to make you even later for work. Instead of shifting towards the brake you floor the accelerator. Instead of rolling to a stop at the light turn red you are instead speeding through the intersection.
It would be easy here to get into the weeds of behaviorism. To get into classical and operant conditioning, punishment and reinforcement, even incredibly jargon-y concepts like “arbitrarily applicable derived relational responding”, but it would be much easier to bluntly say that consequences shape behavior. I grew up on the east coast. Everyone seems to drive a bit faster there than they do in Colorado. Maintaining the flow of traffic takes precedence over speed limit. Learning to drive where a certain degree of speeding was socially acceptable (and rarely turned the heads of police officers) meant that this was incorporated into my regular diving repertoire. Then I moved to Colorado. Several speeding tickets later and my driving behavior has been revised. Actions that were of little consequence in the North East instead brought fines and bumps to the cost of my insurance premiums. My clear preference would be to maintain my license and spend my money elsewhere, so my behavior needs to be updated to better suit my current context. A quick aside here on how behavioral change falls squarely into the “easier said than done” category: took me three speeding tickets for the message to sink in.
These are pretty easy ones so far. Driving is a behavior that is easily defined, and things like speeding tickets are clear consequences. Start trying to define clear cut ABCs in our day to day interactions with ourselves and other people and things get real messy real fast. This gets back to why “why” can feel like such an important question to answer. Why do I keep doing this to myself, why do I keep having the same fight with my partner, why don’t I just…? There aren’t clear traffic lights and turn signals in navigating the day to day minutiae and communication with your partner. The ABCs aren’t always clear when you look at the clock after the third consecutive episode of Stranger Things and realize it is way past your bedtime. It would quite literally be impossible to track all of this in real time. If you have a fight with your partner is isn’t enough to look at the ABCs of that one fight. It doesn’t tell the whole story. It’s more than just the thing that started that specific fight, it’s even more than the events of the day that lead up to it. Really, and I’m not being dramatic here, it is the culmination of every interaction you have had with your partner going back to the literal moment you met. Actually, and this isn’t hyperbole either, it really goes back to every interaction you have had with every human being in your entire life. Prominent researchers like John Bowlby, Mary Ainsworth, and Mary Main made breakthroughs in the field of human development and attachment showing that interactions in the six months of life can set patterns of behavior in motion that can endure for a lifetime.
Now what?
So, that’s it, it’s hopeless? We’ll never know why? Not at all. I wouldn’t have wasted your time with all of this just to tell you to give up (though there is a lot of value to going beyond the “why” questions, but that is an explanation for another post). While Bowlby, Ainsworth, Main, and those that have followed have repeatedly found that early experiences can put us on a certain trajectory that doesn’t mean it is set in stone. Human behavior is much richer, more complex, more dynamic than that. Our behaviors are shaped in ways where they become reflexive and automatic whether we like it or not. Therapy is about giving you the skills and tools so you know just enough to be dangerous, just enough to take those behaviors off of autopilot. Sure it’s impossible to trace the origin of every behavior and consequence, but is also wholly unnecessary. Back to the car analogy, for as complex of a machine as it is we don’t need to know all that much about those complexities to drive it. There’s the steering wheel, this lever shifts between park, reverse, and drive, gas is on the right brake is on the left, and you are on your way. You need to know how to navigate to where you are going, enough about maintaining it to keep it on the road, and enough to address the inevitable problems that come up. You can certainly take a deep dive and learn how to maintain and fix it yourself, but those aren’t prerequisites for owning and using an automobile. No knowledge of the inner complexities of engines, transmissions, differentials, or where the blinker fluid goes are required to take the wheel and drive. You just need to know enough.
Likewise, you don’t need to know the exact origin and trajectory of every behavior to stop that bad habit, resolve that recurrent fight with your partner for good, or finally get into that healthy routine that has been elusive for years. You just need to know enough. You just need to know enough about that old hurt that creeps up when that argument starts (that may not even have to do with your partner). You just need to know enough about that critic in your head that tears you down with the first slip from that healthy lifestyle. You just need to know enough about that feeling you are trying to get away from, or move toward, when you indulge that bad habit. In therapy we work on improving awareness of what antecedents pop up and building more flexibility to control our behaviors to move towards more desired consequences. If we learn to be a little more aware of what happens as that same old argument creeps up we suddenly have much more flexibility in how we respond. Things are off autopilot and our odds of moving forward instead of repeating the cycle are better than ever. It is less about knowing a thorough and cohesive explanation for exactly how we got to where we are, more about knowing more of what is going on in this moment and the highlights (or maybe low-lights) that may have gotten us here. The why can be illuminating and offer valuable information, but the real key is knowing how and what to do differently.
The how and what of what to do differently is tricky. Science shows that shaping our behaviors to move towards what is important and valuable improves life satisfaction. It can never tell us what should be important and how to get there in your unique life situation. That is up to you to decide, and where therapy helps. The work of therapy is understanding what we need to about your pattern of depression, anxiety, conflict, or whatever else you might want to change, and then getting to the work of finding and doing the things to move life in a different direction. We interrupt patterns and build new ones.
Those pesky, unresolved, “why” questions are tricky for a reason. Chances are will never be able to decipher the exact reason(s) why we do a certain thing we do. But we absolutely can figure out enough to start doing something different, something that makes life better. If you’re ready to give it a shot reach out and let’s get started.