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2.1: The Echo in our Head: Why Pure Talk Makes Clients Go in Circles

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2.1: The Echo in our Head: Why Pure Talk Makes Clients Go in Circles

Every coach, therapist, or bodyworker knows this frustrating phenomenon: a client has analyzed their problem countless times, can describe it precisely, and understands various solution approaches—and yet nothing changes. You talk and talk, try new strategies, but life keeps going in circles. What if the issue isn’t the client’s lack of will, but the method itself? What if pure talking and analyzing are part of the trap?

To understand this, we need to look at how the left hemisphere functions. It often dominates the way we try to solve problems—and its nature inevitably leads us into a dead end.

The First Trap: Narrowed Attention

The left hemisphere is a master of focus. It directs its spotlight onto a detail to analyze it and figure out what can be done with it. But this ability carries an inherent danger: the left hemisphere tends to believe that whatever it focuses on is the only thing that matters. Everything else in the periphery fades from view.

So when we guide a client to concentrate intensely on “the problem,” we’re reinforcing exactly this tunnel vision. The bigger picture—the context, hidden resources, nonverbal signals—recedes into the background.

The Second Trap: The Positive Feedback Loop

The left hemisphere also tends toward a positive feedback loop. That means when something happens, it ensures that more of it happens. It’s programmed to see in the world what it already knows how to deal with. The saying “If your only tool is a hammer, you see nails everywhere” describes precisely how the left hemisphere operates.

In coaching, this is fatal. When a client comes in with the conviction “I’m not good enough,” the left hemisphere will find new evidence for this belief in every situation. Every analysis of the problem only confirms the problem. You go in circles because the system is designed to constantly confirm its own familiar map instead of discovering a new one.

The True Goal of the Left Hemisphere: Control, Not Understanding

An extreme example that illustrates this tendency is hemineglect, which can occur after a stroke in the right hemisphere. Patients who are now reliant on their left hemisphere simply no longer perceive the left half of their world—it doesn’t exist for them. They eat only from the right side of their plate and are surprised when you turn it and “new food” appears.

Even more astonishing is that they often vehemently deny this limitation. A patient who cannot move his left arm will insist that he has moved it, or invent excuses for why he doesn’t want to do it right now. His brain cannot integrate the new reality into its existing map of the world.

This reveals something essential: the job of the left hemisphere is not primarily to understand reality but to control it based on what it already knows.

For us as coaches, this means many clients are stuck because they’re trying to solve a problem using the part of the brain that is naturally programmed to cling to old patterns. More of the same—more talking, more analyzing—cannot be the solution. It’s like trying to screw in a screw with a hammer. We need a different tool.

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Glossary