The woman in this coaching session describes the classic should loop: she feels guilty for not doing something, tries to stop feeling guilty, doesn’t do it, then feels bad about that. Joe names it immediately: “You’ve got a cage of shoulds.”
What makes this a cage rather than a motivational tool is the Golden Algorithm at work: you try to avoid aimlessness by telling yourself you should, but the shoulds reinforce the aimlessness. The avoidance strategy produces exactly what it’s trying to prevent. She even says: “I often wonder what I want to do, and I just come up with more things to should myself about.”
Joe identifies the layers beneath the should: guilt sits on top of aimlessness, aimlessness sits on top of panic, panic sits on top of existential purposelessness. The should is the most surface-level avoidance — the first distraction from feeling what’s actually there. The second distraction is spacing out. Neither one addresses the underlying emotional reality.
The cruelest irony: she turns every insight into another should. When Joe points out the solution is to stop emotionally locking herself down, she immediately makes that a new should. He catches it: “How’d you do that?” The cage-building is automatic and pervasive.
Related Concepts
- Should creates stress, not change
- Should is a mechanism of shame
- Procrastination requires self-abuse
- Anger turned inward becomes shame and shoulds
- Feeling your essential nature dissolves avoidance behaviors