Internal states vs. Intentional states: how to “go deep” in coaching

Good coaching is often described as “going deep” or resulting in a “deep transformation”. Conversations that are labelled “deep” often revolve around the client’s emotions, feelings or other psychological “conditions”. These are thought of as “internal”, happening “within” the person. Examples could be “feeling anxious or sad, having low self esteem or an impostor syndrome or being depressed”. The idea is that the problems or obstacles a client is experiencing originate inside them and that in order for the person to get better or change, the “root cause”, the internal state, needs to shift.

This concept has significant implications for coaching practice. In the following, I would like to delineate the drawbacks and then describe a possible alternative framing of “deep coaching” as dealing with a client’s “intentional states” rather than “internal states”. As always, I am not saying that holding a concept like “internal states” is wrong or useless. However, I do think that, as coaches, we are responsible for reflecting on how the philosophies we hold impact our practice and therefore our clients. (I know, not a popular position, but here I stand…)

Internal states imply that the client is the source of the problem

When I was a teenager, I did not have a really great time at school. I was a year younger than my classmates and it was hard for me to make friends. Obviously, I wasn’t very happy at school. When I talked to a social worker at my school about it, I was diagnosed with “an inferiority complex” and told that I need to get rid of that and “tada” I was going to be happy. This added insult to injury and I never returned to talk to this social worker ever again. Looking for “what inside of the client causes the problem” implies that they are the source of it. In the worst case, this can lead to victim blaming and hopelessness.

Searching for internal states requires problem description and analysis

In my work as an assessor for the International Coaching Federation I listen to many coaching recordings from various coaching approaches. When the coach holds the view that it is important to identify the internal state that is causing the trouble or blocking the progress, they inevitably have to invite the client to describe the problem and then speculate on the internal cause. Let’s take my unhappy teenager self as an example. If I had gone back to the social worker (I still congratulate myself for not doing so), I could have been invited to reflect on my “low self-esteem” resulting from my “inferiority complex”.  I would talk about what it looks like, potentially where it comes from, how it manifests itself in the world. Now that conversation would not leave me hopeful that I can change something. If you describe the problem in great detail, you are making it more real and therefore less solvable.

A label for an internal state creates a fixed reality and “mindset”

Now, the sentence: “You have an inferiority complex” describes a world where there are entities called “inferiority complex” which are “inside” human beings and cause them to behave in ways that make them unhappy. Of course, this is not the truth – it is a construct, a story and serious psychologists know this. However, the consequence of this construct is that the situation seems more fixed and unchangeable than necessary. Compare this with: “You haven’t found supportive friends, yet” which is literally a description of the same reality. Which is more changeable? Of course, the later.

Internal states promote individualism

The client is responsible for their internal states. Nobody else can change them. While this thought does promote agency, it positions people as independent units, each responsible for their own “pursuit of happiness”. We know how bad this philosophy can be for a society when everyone is only looking out for themselves. These days I see a lot of “internal states” in my social media feeds: people describe themselves as “empaths” who need to distance themselves or even fight against “narcissists”. These descriptions define groups of people and pit them against each other. Us good empaths against the bad narcissists. Competition and conflict replace co-operation. I believe that if there is one thing that can save the world, it is co-operation and I want to chose a philosophy that supports it.

Internal states can cut clients off from resources

If my construct is that clients are individually responsible for their own internal states, I will invite descriptions of individual emotions, feelings or psychological conditions. I will ask “how do you feel about this” rather than “and when you feel better, who will notice?”. By making growth dependent on the identification of an internal state, I am cutting the client off from their external resources. No man is an island.  

Internal states talk is often past and present oriented

Discussions about internal states often are about how a person feels now and how they felt in the past. Sometimes they are about how they would like to feel in the future – however, the idea here is that a shift inside needs to take place before any new feeling can emerge. In my experience this is not true. If I start describing what my life (not my internal feeling) will be like if I have what I want, I become more hopeful, and the world offers me more possibilities. When I act on these possibilities, my world and my feeling changes. Suppose the social worker had stated: “Ah, you haven’t found friends, yet”. I could have picked up on the “yet”. We could have worked on what I would value in friends, how I could find them, when I found friends before and I could have started experiencing the world as full of potential friends that I have just not met, yet – very much the way I am experiencing the world now.

Identifying internal states as causes or obstacles cement a single story

I believe that our lives are multi-storied. Ben Furman and Tapani Ahola’s book title: “It is never too late to have a happy childhood” comes to mind here. I can tell the story of “my inferiority complex” and how I was victimized by it or I can tell the story of “how I decided to found a girl-scout troupe in my hometown and found friends”. Both are “true” but one positions me as someone who was able to do something about her misery, the other as a victim of a complex. We all can tell our stories in various ways, I think as coaches we should encourage our clients to tell their stories in ways that makes them stronger.

Internal states stories can block clients from noticing progress

If you only have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. If you are inviting your client to a quest to “overcome their inferiority complex”, you direct their attention to the complex and its ramifications in the client’s life. If you invite your client to go on a quest to friends, ask your client to tell you all about what makes the client confident that they can find friends, you are inviting the client to direct their attention to all the signs and signals that it is possible to do so. I think that our stories can direct or attention and thereby our perception of our world and the opportunities it offers. As coaches, we should be mindful of what we are inviting our clients to pay attention to.

If you have read up to now, I am grateful – a long text, I know. But bear with me – I would like to present you with the alternative: “intentional states”. Inviting clients to speak about “intentional states” is another possibility to “go deep” in coaching. The concept of “intentional states” rests on a different philosophy, social constructionism, which positions people’s identity, feelings, emotions etc. as “in between” rather than “inside” people. It assumes that people feel, act, think in context, together with other people and are influenced and shaped by them. “We are who we are through others”, as the principle of Ubuntu states. Identity is conceptualized as fluid and dependent on the environment. As the meme states: “Before you self-diagnose with depression, look around you and see if you are not, actually, surrounded by assholes.” When we invite clients to talk about intentional states, we ask them to talk about what they value, what they are committed to and who they prefer to be, and we ask them for rich descriptions of interactions that demonstrate these preferred ways.

Intentional states separate the person from the problem

Instead of inviting an insight into my “inferiority complex”, the social worker might have asked me what I call my “problem”. I might have responded “loneliness”. They might then have “externalized” loneliness and asked me for my intentions about my relationship with loneliness. It would have become “a thing out there”. So rather than inviting language about the problem inside of a client, the problem is described as outside and the client can determine what they would like to feel, do or think about it.

Intentional states do not require long descriptions and analysis of the problem

Compare “what do you feel about your problem” to “what are your intentions for your life”? One invites descriptions of the problem, the other is future focused. When I am inviting clients to think about what is really valuable to them, I am inviting them to think “deeply” about who they are and about their preferred identity. My teenage self might have answered: “I really value connection and friendship” and the social worker might have continued to ask about “who realizes that you value connection and friendships and what do they know about you that tells them?”

Intentional states are fluid and changeable

What we value, intend and believe can change. We also can continuously grow to embody something that we value. If a client values mindfulness, for example, it is not a characteristic that they once acquire, but it is a continuous learning path that never ends. The learning path is iterative, sequential, made up of steps, set-backs, and learning and re-learning – much like good any coaching process. This has the advantage that set-backs, glitches are “normal” and not a catastrophic event or a “relapse”. This view of the world lends itself much more easily to a “growth” mindset then a concept of “internal states”.

Intentional states promote community and collaboration

Intentional states are more changeable and growth oriented. When we are speaking with clients about intentional states, we are not assuming that these states are “inside” the clients. We observe intentional states in interactions with others. That I value connection can be seen in how I treat other people. People’s intentions for their lives can be seen in how they act. When a social constructionist coach, who does not hold a concept of internal states, asks what someone values, they will follow this question up with “who knows that you value this, what do they know about you that tells them, how do they notice that you are valuing this”, thereby connecting the client with their environment.

Observable descriptions of intentional states connect the client with their environment

Assuming that people’s feelings, emotions and other psychological conditions are influenced heavily by their interactions with other people opens the doors to inviting clients to connect with resources in their environment. If the social worker had asked: “Suppose you are following through with your intentions of making friends, how will your classmates notice?”, I would have imagined their responses and connected with them – at least in my imagination, which would have opened possibilities that cannot open if the topic of the conversation is the “inferiority complex”.

Intentional states are future oriented

The name says it already. When I intend something, I want to bring something into being. I am oriented towards the future. I wish to change something rather than discussing why what is came into being. My focus is on describing the change that I would like which in turn helps me to notice the changes that are already happening in this direction.

Intentional states keep the possibilities open for multiple stories

When I invite clients to “tell their stories in ways that make them stronger”, I am already assuming that the past is malleable, or at least, that there are many different, equally true, stories that can be told about any given event. I am not stuck with one single, “true” explanation but I can set an intention or a purpose and can search in my past for what is already aligning with this purpose. The conversations around the different areas in the past, where what a client wants to bring into the world already happened are very generative. If “my inferiority complex” becomes “my desire to connect”, I can start understanding my identity (fluidly, of course) as someone who values connection, someone who has experienced this before, someone who is capable of connection: these conversations are no less “deep” than the conversations on the “internal states”

Intentional states further the noticing and amplification of progress

As clients start speaking about what they are valuing, the purposes they hold and the connections in their lives that support these purposes, they also focus the clients’ attention on the signs of progress. If in coaching the client also speaks about how their environment might notice, they will also notice what other people are doing to support their purpose. They might even speak about it to their environment who could, in turn, support them by noticing the small signs of improvement.

This was a long blog and I congratulate you for making it this far. As you can see, I feel passionately about reflecting on what follows from our assumptions and constructs in coaching theory. We can make change easier or harder depending on our philosophy and theory of change: while the thinking may be hard, the practice can get a lot easier if you do not have to manipulate internal states and theories about clients.

Maybe I have seduced you into reflection, at least a bit – if you want to reflect some more, why don’t you come and join us for one of our free meetups and exchanges.

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