Last Updated on August 12, 2024
How to get out of a double bind
In the 1950s in Palo Alto, California, a polymath genius was working with a team to figure out the origins of schizophrenia and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
This man’s name was Gregory Bateson.
Bateson was an anthropologist but also studied “cybernetics,” an early name for what we now call systems theory.
His visionary thinking can help us get unstuck from our “impossible” problems today.
Circular thinking
Most people do not think in terms of systems, but in terms of linear causation.
A causes B.
But Bateson and his colleagues thought in circles.
A influences B which influences C which influences A.
In the heart of what eventually would become Silicon Valley, this team did what Apple would say on their commercials many decades later.
They thought differently.
Because they thought differently, they came up with unique solutions to intractable problems.
No win situations
While everyone in the psychiatry world at the time was beginning to explain things in biomedical terms, Bateson et. al. were thinking in terms of family systems.
They observed that in many psychiatric patients with schizophrenia and PTSD, the family dynamics were pretty funky.
Typically there were impossible demands that were not made explicit.
In other words, a “have to” and a “can’t.”
A family might have the hidden demand, “You must always do as you’re told.”
But then simultaneously give contradictory instructions that make it impossible to do both.
And furthermore, they might also have an expectation, “You must never question authority.”
Bateson’s team called this phenomenon a “double bind.”
A double bind is essentially a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation.
No matter what you do, you lose, and are punished for it.
A single bind is a lot easier to solve.
But a double bind doesn’t give you any room to move.
And often double binds come with a triple bind: you are not allowed to talk about the double bind.
That’s like the demand to never question authority, even when the authority figure is telling you to do two contradictory things.
From crazy-making to sane-making
Bateson called this “schizophrenogenic,” which means “that which generates schizophrenia.”
A better translation would be “crazy-making.”
These double binds literally make us nuts!
Bateson’s team thought double bind theory at least partially explained schizophrenia and PTSD.
I’m a coach, not a therapist, so I don’t diagnose and treat mental illness.
But interestingly, my wife Jess and I have been discovering that this “have to” and “can’t” structure is found nearly everywhere that we are stuck in life.
After all, if we could do something, we’d be doing it.
And if we didn’t have to, we’d at least be calm about it.
It’s this combination of “have to” and “can’t” that makes us stuck and stressed.
Luckily, there are ways to get out of this trap.
We don’t do it by…
- Attacking our belief system with arguments
- Presenting evidence against our beliefs
- Giving advice to just do something else
None of this seems to work very well!
If anything, it just reinforces the beliefs, making the bind tighter.
Getting outside the bind
Instead, we can do various things to interrupt the pattern, so we can get outside of it.
This can help us step into “Observer Position” as we say in Neuro-Linguistic Programming.
Pattern interrupts also help us to “think different.”
Or we can ask gentle questions about the belief from the outside, like…
- How much do you believe this is true, 0-100%?
- What benefits are there to believing this? And what drawbacks?
- Do you want to explore loosening up this belief, even if you don’t know what belief would be better yet?
- Do you have to believe this forever?
- Can you not believe something else?
- Does everyone have to believe this?
- …and so on.
We can also travel to imagined worlds or futures where it’s just no longer a problem, using hypnosis or Shamanic Journeying.
Or we can even use “sacred medicines” to assist us in really thinking outside the box.
Change can be enjoyable
Most surprisingly, we’ve discovered that this approach is often easy and fun.
It works quickly, without having to challenge every fear, reframe every thought, or transform every memory.
Jess and I have been coaching each other in this approach, and the results have been remarkable.
It’s allowing us to get at things which have been totally stuck despite 20+ years of dedicated inner work with the best tools we could find.
If you want to experience this new “Paradigm-Shifting Coaching” method for yourself, you can book a free 30-minute consultation with me (Duff).
Or you can even book a consultation with my wife Jess, who does an intuitive mix of shamanic healing, paradigm-shifting coaching, and sacred medicine facilitation.
An earlier version of this process is also included in Session 2 of my Transforming Money Fears Masterclass, available for just $77.
I’d like to think that Gregory Bateson would appreciate the developments that have taken place since his Palo Alto team discovered double binds.
Now we actually have powerful tools to get out of them.
Take care,
~Duff
(they/them)
