CUE Action Video Analysis

I’m going to take you through how I use CUE Action techniques in my Life Coaching practice by analyzing a video posted by @riana.nicole1 on Instagram.

Video Link: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C-jiwMSOhKR/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

This person is not my client and this is meant as an academic exercise and demonstration for educational purposes and does not count as therapy or advice.

Communication

I start by listing out what I heard the person say and asking them if what I heard was accurate or to help me hear them better by asking for clarification until they agree I hear them correctly. I will often use a combination of direct quotes from the person and my paraphrased ideas of things they said. I will also label Fundamental Beliefs.

If they don’t say any Fundamental Beliefs outright, then I will write down what I think to be the beliefs driving their statements and then discuss with the client if those beliefs resonate with them until we agree.

Sadly, since this is a one-way analysis, I can’t get clarification on what I hear, but I’ll at least go through the list to show you what it can look like.

What I hear you saying

You hate that you’re autistic.

You are trying to stop hating that you’re autistic.

Being autistic has directly caused you to struggle in life.

You’re different and being told that “different doesn’t mean bad”, but you’re struggling to understand what that means.

You’re ashamed you need help because you’re autistic.

“I’m 21 years old, I should be able to do more.”

“I always think of all these shoulds and I know I shouldn’t, but it’s so hard.”

You’re bothered that people preach accepting your autism without addressing how difficult that can be.

“I can’t help it, I hate it.”

“I’m trying to learn that being different doesn’t mean bad, but it’s such a hard thing to learn”

“I’m ashamed of the fact that I’m autistic”

You are feeling a lot of mixed emotions and handling them is difficult.

Fundamental Beliefs

As a quick overview, Fundamental Beliefs are the often subconscious and implicit ideas we hold about the world and ourselves. We filter our perception of reality through these Fundamental Beliefs and it is through changing these beliefs that we can create substantial and long-lasting positive changes in our lives.

From this person, I hear the following Fundamental Beliefs:

• I’m the source of problems in my life

• I need help because there’s something wrong with me

Understanding

I don’t hear anything incorrect in what this person said. They did an excellent job of expressing how and what they feel. They made very clear statements that addressed missing needs in their life and the emotions surrounding those missing needs. A person with such a clear ability to express what’s happening inside of them is likely a person who has a perfectly functioning processing center in their brain to create appropriate behaviors and decisions. What is likely the cause of their distress is inaccurate or faulty information they’re receiving and using to inform their beliefs and decisions.

If I can help them gain more accurate information, they will adjust their behavior appropriately.

Empathy

It makes sense that this person hates being autistic. By their own account, being autistic has been the direct cause of struggle in their life. While challenges are a valuable part of life that enables us to grow, they are things that we eventually remove from our life. When challenges become immovable obstacles that we have to deal with for long periods of time, they become a struggle. I don’t know of any rational person, such as the person in the video, who wants to struggle throughout life. Therefore, it makes sense to hate the thing causing the struggle.

However, I think their hatred could be aimed at a more accurate target. For some reason (that I could only learn by talking with the person directly), they see their autism as the cause of problems (look back at their Fundamental Beliefs) when their environment is really the cause.

Their environment did not provide them with the tools they needed to succeed.

Exploring a new environment could be of great benefit for this person to gain new information they can use to address their missing needs. In the video, they mention attending a group for autistic adults which seems like a step in a good direction. However, if I am correct in my assessment of their Fundamental Beliefs, they will likely struggle even when placed in a better environment because they haven’t addressed their Fundamental Belief that *they* are the source of problems.

I get this from the lines discussed in the Communication section:

“Being autistic has directly caused you to struggle in life.”

“I can’t help it, I hate it.”

“I always think of all these shoulds and I know I shouldn’t, but it’s so hard.”

The underlying idea behind these statements is that there is some inherent quality of the person that creates external issues. Their thoughts are bad thoughts they try to stop having. Their desires are bad desires they want to get rid of. Their existence as a person is what makes their life difficult.

As long as them being the source of their problems is their Fundamental Belief, the person will filter their perception of reality through that belief to make it true even when the objective evidence suggests otherwise.

Sadly, few professionals help people state and understand their own Fundamental Beliefs. Changing behavior without addressing the ideas that drive the person often results in frustration and sadness for everyone involved.

Action

Action only comes after I have successfully completed the CUE part of CUE Action. As stated before, trying to change behavior without communicating, understanding, and empathizing with the full context of a person and their situation tends to create more frustration because we haven’t looked at the real issues. Since I haven’t received feedback from the person in the video, I can’t say that I’ve successfully communicated, understood, or empathized with them.

For this section, I will instead provide some general information about some of the questions and concerns raised in the video.

“Different doesn’t mean bad”

We all know that the definition of different isn’t the same as the definition of bad. So, what the heck does this phrase mean?

Being different doesn’t mean that you’re inherently wrong or bad. However, being out of sync with your environment is often a bad thing. If the way you are is not the way your environment wants or requires you to be, you will struggle to exist there.

For example, if I take a penguin and place it in a desert, it will be different from the other birds there. We understand that while the penguin is different by being in the desert, the penguin itself isn’t bad. Being in the desert is bad for the penguin.

Moving the penguin to an environment that better suits its nature results in a balanced ecosystem and a fulfilled penguin. Because there was never anything inherently wrong with the penguin; it was simply out of sync with its environment.

You vs. Your Environment

Your environment can include a host of different things. It can be your parents, roommates, siblings, friends, social groups, peers, mentors, house, neighborhood, or even your entire country.

I felt like a complete outsider until I went to college and met a bunch of people who matched my wavelength. I realized that out of all the places in the world I could be born, the idea I would be born and sent to a school that had people who understood and accepted me was highly improbable. It sure would be nice if things could be that easy, but the statistics just don’t add up. There are almost 8 billion humans on the planet and I went to a school with 300 students. Of course I didn’t fit in!

I chose my college because their culture matched the things I wanted to spend my time doing. Lo and behold, a few dozen other people from around the world thought the same thing and we all gathered at the same place. Putting myself in an environment that suited me increased the odds that I would find people that were in sync with who I was.

It's unfortunate, but our world is not structured to place us in an environment that suits us best; we have to find that place.

Should Statements

One of my therapists told me, “Should is strong word.” She was right. Should statements often carry a load of expectations, shame, and guilt unconsciously attached to them. This makes those statements very powerful especially when we repeat them in our heads continually.

However, should statements are fundamentally the same as any other thought in our head. Thoughts are not actions. No matter how frequent or intense a given thought is, we get to decide if we act on it or not.

Our brains are a powerful organ in our body that takes care of a hosts of tasks. One of its most vital tasks is generating thoughts for us to evaluate. One way I like to think of it is like this:

Our hearts pump blood. Our brains pump thoughts.

You wouldn’t try to stop your heart from beating, but you recognize you get to decide what to do with the blood it pumps through your veins. Likewise, it is a futile effort to try and stop the thoughts your brain pumps through your nervous system. You get to decide what to do with them.

The Timeline of Life Events

Fun fact: There isn’t a timeline for life events.

Developmental scientists have created guides for when certain milestones should be observed, but it’s a guideline based on averages and not a strict rulebook to follow. Plus, those guides typically focus on childhood development milestones like walking, babbling, potty-training, and verbal language.

What we think of as the timeline for life events is really a collection of ideas we unconsciously collected from listening to and observing the people around us. Statements as simple as:

- “Tommy graduated high school early at age 15!”

- “A real measure of man is having a wife and kids.”

- “I had my first job at 13. It taught me how to be mature.”

- “You graduate high school at 18, go to college for 4 years, and then you get a job and your own place.”

We collect these statements and build a timeline for ourselves without putting much thought into where we get the information from or what context we could be missing.

Now, I don’t want you to hear me saying something as corny as, “It’s never too late to get started!”

There are definitely more optimal times to accomplish certain milestones in life. However, you don’t need to live optimally. If you think about it, you’re essentially playing a game only a handful of people across human history have ever won, you didn’t get any rules for the game, and nobody has even told you what the goal of the game is. The fact that you’re still playing at all is a big achievement.

In my experience, people are exactly where they should be in life when you consider the resources, information, and abilities available to them in their specific situation. Their place in life only changes when those aspects change. They gain new information, they acquire new resources, they learn new abilities, and their life changes. Maybe it doesn’t change in the exact way they were hoping, but it does change.