The 4R - The Heart of Alethic Coaching

8/14/2019 The 4R - The Heart of Alethic Coaching

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The 4RThe Heart of Alethic Coaching.

Critical Realism is a project of emancipation, as Bhaskar has stated, a total project to

demolish the ideologies standing in the way of human freedom. If this is the project

of Critical Realism, then it is also a search for truth or a search for the Alethic truth,

again Bhasker, This is the level of truth in which when we talk about truth ofsomething we are talking about the reality which grounds, explains or causes it.

Alethic Coaching takes many of the structural frameworks of Critical Realism and

applies them in a systemic way to the demolishing of ideologies, and the search for

Alethic truth which becomes the prime directive; to empower the Alethic Coaching

client to experience, embody, encounter, and enact their own freedom.

At the heart of Alethic Coaching lies the Four Rs Framework, which derives it

structure from the RRRE inquiry of Critical Realism (1) ; in this essay, it is my aim to

show how the structures of 4R come together to form the foundation of Alethic

Coaching.

A client comes to Alethic Coaching because they have found themselves in a TINA

Formation; it appears to the client that There Is No or few Alternatives to how they

deal with a personal, relational, or work related dissonance they are encountering.

However they try to explain the dissonance they find themselves right back at the

centre of the dissonance and the TINA Formation. A TINA Formation forms when

something we believe to be true is built on a false premise or theory. No matter how

much we try to change the belief, we will not feel truly free until we recognise that

our evidence for the belief being in place is false.

To break the TINA Formation, Alethic Coaching uses a process known as

Explanatory Critique, which when applied though a Mutual Supportive Alliance

(MSA), becomes an empowering tool to help the client recognise the false evidence

claim they are making which keeps the TINA Formation in place, and to create the

framework for the Explanatory Critique the 4R structure is used.


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As much as this statement might sound overly spiritual to some, the MSA does not

work effectively unless there is recognition of the importance placed on moving

beyond the ego awareness of both the coach and client.

Working towards any freedom means to let go of the demi-reality created by the ego,

recognising the actual reality of how things are, and creating a meaningful recognitionof a wider sense of an ego free reality or metaReality.

The Spiritual traditions call this recognition non-duality, where we awaken to the

awareness that our freedom comes from releasing the block or occlusion that we are

separate from the rest of reality. The awakening that we are not separate from reality

but that we are reality is the Alethic truth that sustains Alethic Coaching.

Alethic Coaching places emphasis on the coach maintaining non-dual awareness, and

working to support the client in awakening to the experience of the authentic change,

and growth that can come about when the non-duality under-labours for the clients

freedom.

Re-Solution and Re-Description

The first stage of Alethic Coaching is called Re-Solution this is the process by which

the dissonance is broken into it component parts, with the aim of creating some clarity

around the dissonance.

The task is to locate how the dissonance is experiences, how it shows up when the

client encounters other people, how they enact the dissonance, and in what embodied

form the dissonance takes.

Recalling also that the dissonance is stratified, that is the casual effect of the

dissonance may come from an earlier stage of the clients development.

During this stage, it is important to support the client to avoid 3rd Personal

descriptions, such as It feels like I am sinking, this explains little about the feeling,

and more about the experience. To avoid the epistemic fallacy or explanation by

experience it is important to explore any 3rd Person response so as to support a

growing awareness of how the client is encountering their dissonance.

So we have:

Itfeels like I am sinking.

Iwonder if you could say a little more about the itfeeling, what might the feeling

be, and how might it be that this feeling is creating the experience of sinking.

Ifeel abandoned, and lost, as if I have lost the ability to survive

Ifsinking is linked to survival, what might you be trying to survive

Thecriticism of my mother telling me I am not good enough


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Andwhen you feel not good enough you feel like you are sinking. What might you

be sinking into

This process also helps the client to bring awareness to what the ontological signifier

might be in the metaphors used.

Although, I have used an example from a personal dissonance the process is

applicable to a dissonance that arises within work or relationships

The important point here is helping the client with the Re-Description stage, in which

through the mutual alliance, the coach and client bring a greater degree of 1st Person

awareness to the dissonance, leading to a shared understanding of the dissonance that

is being experienced.

Once the dissonance has been Re-Describe, though the developed 1st Personal

awareness as to how the dissonance might have come into being, the MSA can move

to Re-Introduction.

Re-Introduction

Re-Introduction is the Alethic Coaching stage process where the newly discovered

awareness of the dissonance is check to see if all the data generated so far supports a

new understanding. In this case, the feeling of dissonance is Re-Introduced as the

experience of sinking into.

Andwhen you feel not good enough you feel like you are sinking. What might you

be sinking into

I now see that I am sinking into myself, the feeling of not being good enough

becomes overwhelming, and the only way in which I can deal with the feeling is to goinside myself

Andyou go inside yourself for what reason.

Toprotect myself

Whoor what are you protecting yourself from.

Fromthe voice of my mother

Andyet is it possible to say that the voice of your mother is insideyou.

Yes.

Therefore using Re-Introduction we are beginning to move towards a much clearer

view of the dissonance, and how it came into existence.

Re-Integration


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We are now able to move to the final Alethic Coaching stage, Re-Integration. At this

stage, the MSA moves to freeing up the contraction to the dissonance and looks at

creating practical ways that the client can integrate the dissonant feeling, whilst

finding release from the block or occlusion that pre-supposed the dissonance.

Soyou have a past voice telling you how to act in the present, I wonder if in someway you hold on to the past voice because it protects you from stepping out, or

moving on. In some way the voice gives you permission to not enact your potential

Yes,thatsright, itsa risk to step out.

Yes, I agree it is a risk to step out, and this is what the voice is telling you, it is

doing its job, keeping you safe, but it is doing its job too well.

YesI can see that now, I let the voice take over, I see that the feeling of sinking is

there.

Yesand it might always be there.

Yes thats right, but I am the one who has the power to not sink, not to feel

overwhelmed

And I think you need to hold onto the feeling of sinking because it tells you to be

careful, there is possible danger that needs to be navigated.Whatis important now

is to recognise that, the voice of mother is there to protect you and keep you safe, but

you now need to tell the voice of mother that you are all grown up now, and thank her

for looking out for you, and ask that she will always look out for you, not hold you

back.

I see what I need to do now I need to step out into the world knowing that I am

looked after.

At this point, we have moved through the Alethic Coaching stages of 4R, in which it

is possible to see that what is developing is a dialectic in which is held the constructed

reality of the client as a true but a demi-reality. Whilst through the MSA an actual

possible reality is explored by freeing the client from their demi-real explanation,

leading to the synthesis of a new reality in which the client is empowered to move

forward free from the dissonant block, without losing the connection to the originalstructure that became associated with the dissonance.

As the client works through the 4R process dialectic, more and more freedom is

encountered, and a deeper loosening of blocks takes place, and this in turn enables the

client to enact within the world with a greater sense of personal freedom.

Of course, the use of the above dialogue is a composite of the sort of work that has

been successfully carried out in over 500 hours of Alethic Coaching.

I have also used the composite to demonstrate in a linear way how the 4R structure

works.


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In an actual session, it has been my experience that the 4R can be both the macro

framework of the session and the micro framework of a moment of the session.

Along with being the macro framework of the entire journey the mutual alliance takes

in supporting the client to find an expression of freedom.

The client comes to Alethic Coaching because they have created an ontology that

supported the TINA formation, but this ontology although holding some truth, is

partial and restricts how the client makes sense of their world.

Through the MSA, and taking the Explanatory Critique methodology of 4R, the coach

and client create a new ontology, which leads to the client creating new beliefs, which

moves the client to a more integral view of themselves, and empowers them to see

that there are alternatives.

Footnote

(1) One of the aims of Critical Naturalism, seen as one part of basic critical realism, is

to create a robust system of inquiry for the social sciences. However, a social science

investigation into causal structures and mechanisms is challenged by not being able to

work within the closed system of the laboratory.

All social science takes place within open systems, how then can a social science hold

an investigation, when there may be multiplicity of causes and tendencies.

The more I investigated critical realism and its application to personal change, the

more I began to see how the human condition is an open system with multiple stream

of casual structures and mechanisms.

How then can alethic coaching support a client in developing a greater understanding

of their own ontology realism, creating more awareness of their epistemological

relativism and making better informed choices about their judgmental rationality.

One way, and I am simplifying and stripping down the approach, is to use RRREI(C).

In the article, I refer to the model as RRRE, which is true, but only in the light of

basic critical realism. As the model stands it was found to be lacking two further

elements that complete the model, (I)dentification and (C)orection.

Therefore, identification of the true or alethic causal structure or mechanisms leads to

a correction of data, through the absenting of bad data. This makes the model much

more robust, and rounds out the full dialectal process.

It is worth noting that the change of E to R in RRRR came about because I did not

feel that the model held an adequate conclusion to the investigation. It seemed to me

that during the retrodiction stage (the third R in RRRE), there was a process of re-

introduction in which the client could check the efficacy of their narrative in light of

new understanding.

This would then lead to Re-Integration, through the process of recognition of absenceand the absenting of demi-real narrative, which forms the main purpose of the MELD


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scheme of critical realism, but this is another story. (You can find a little more on

MELD athttp://www.alethic-coaching.org/metareality/)

During the process of Re-Integration, identification and correction take place. In this

way, I am able to maintain legitimacy in line with RRREI(C) and keep the model

authentic to the alethic coaching approach I am growing.

Gary Hawke

www.alethic-coaching.org
http://www.alethic-coaching.org/metareality/http://www.alethic-coaching.org/metareality/http://www.alethic-coaching.org/metareality/http://www.alethic-coaching.org/metareality/

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The 4R - The Heart of Alethic Coaching