Mandy Bishop
Forum Replies Created
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Wow, incredible posts so far! I’m hearing several themes as I read through these. One of that realization of just how wise and powerful nature really is in providing the exact medicine the client needs in that moment in their lives – so long as there is an openness and a willingness to see it. Which leads to the other theme I’m hearing; just how critical it is to establish a foundation of trust and intimacy with your client. It can be extremely vulnerable to be in threshold as it is an exploration from the heart/soul – something we very rarely do in this culture at all, let alone in the presence of another. When we help our clients to go into their resource and increase safety, their systems will naturally move through the sequence that is most needed. I remember Michael saying something along the lines of ‘Threshold is going to happen. It is a natural process. Your job as coach is to be there when it does and support your client through it.’ Or something to that effect.
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Hi everyone,
Oh man, I am sure excited to see and meet all of you in person!! For any of you that I haven’t met yet, I’m Mandy. I’m one of the student mentors for EBI and I can’t wait to dive in with you.
I know that the energy and momentum is picking up speed, and we are in the final stretch before the trip and intensive. Please know we are all sending warm and well wishes for smooth travels, ease in all your connections, and easy packing as you make some of your final preparations. Our time together will be exactly what it needs to be for each one of us, I’m sure!
I wanted to let you all know, if you didn’t already, that I am arriving to the intensive a day late. I should arrive Saturday evening to camp. I will be coming directly from my Vision Quest so will be offline from 6/17-6/22. If you need anything in the next few days, please feel free to reach out to me.
Safe travels and warm wishes!
Mandy -
Summary Post:
It has been a little challenging for me to really identify specifically what I learned in partswork 2 (above and beyond partswork 1). Though I clearly see my ability to guide a client through partswork expanding, it has been a challenge for me to identify specifics of what this module taught me. But actually reflecting on the posts here, and on the sessions I’ve had since the module, I am realizing how much each part is truly a unique individual in and of themselves — with their own circuitry, their own rhythms, their own love language, their own way of communicating and their own deeper needs. It has really been remarkable to hold a space for my client of truly and totally honoring with tremendous curiosity the individual that is the part displaying at any given moment. I think holding this kind of space, in and of itself, is an incredibly healing experience. Something all of our parts want and need is so often just to be seen and heard. I am really seeing how much partswork and long term coaching interface and compliment each other, and I am so excited to continue this work!
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Summary Post:
It strikes me reading through the posts on here again that through long term coaching we are engaging in a large scale process of increasing one’s window of tolerance, titrating not only within each session, but on a larger scale titrating through phases, and even seasons, through periods of intense discomfort into periods of empowered growth. And that those seasons of relapse are really just a part of the larger process of titration, expanding our window of tolerance and our understanding even more within the larger process. Being able to hold a client’s growth within a long term process is like moving outwards in the fractal, looking down from an eagle eye view, holding an entire process (6 months or a year) through the same lens as one solitary session, mapping through severance, threshold, incorporation, grounding, resourcing, titration, expanding window of tolerance, and coming back through again. It is all a wheel, always a circle or a spiral, never a straight line with a final destination.
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Initial Post:
I’ve been working with this client weekly for about 5 months with one little break. She is an art therapist with a high level of awareness and clearly some understanding of the parts of her that are at play. She has many different parts that seem to have developed in response to life events, like a 4yo little girl, a 5yo lost child, 6yo depressed child, an angry teen, an overthinking mom, a mama bear, a researcher, a therapist, an adventurer, a logic monger. We have not done a formal mandala making together, though I think I may encourage that a little more since we seem to be working with parts a lot in our work together.
Just to give some context, my client had made some strides towards her goals of being grounded in herself, trusting her intuition, nature and source more. Until about 3 weeks ago, she had taken an opportunity to house-sit at a beautiful retreat like home and study with a monk up on an island in WA. This was a huge step for her to take, as it was her following her soul guidance and intuition towards a direction that felt edgy (she has historically put others first and lived in a scarcity schema). In my reflection, she was in the action phase of the stages of change, after having spent a few months in contemplation when we first began seeing eachother. However, some interference arose in her life in the past several weeks (divorce finalization, relationship challenges, weather interference) and she seems to have relapsed back into contemplation, and maybe even pre-contemplation at times. Some of her parts are now highly activated in the fight/flight response and it seems like we are back around the spiral working with resourcing and increasing window of tolerance.
The session I will focus on for this post is the most recent one we had, where the wounded child (not sure if it was 5 or 6yo) was highly activated, feeling slightly depressed and feeling shame. For the first part of the session, this part was talking and crying, expressing overwhelm and hopelessness at the feeling of abandonment from current relationship and at not knowing where her place is in the world (not knowing her intrinsic value or worth). Because of some of the partswork we’ve done previously, my client is aware of this part and resources by saying “I love you” to the part.
As my client went into the story of her latest relationship issue, I heard a shift in tone and energy as she said, “But, I am not going to say that I am not lovable. This is my life.” I paused my client and asked who it was that just said that. She was quiet for some time thinking about the question, and then realized it was her therapist part. This is a part we had not really explored previously. I reflected to her the difference in tone and energy I noticed and asked her how it felt to be the therapist, encouraging her to really become that part.
As she got into it, I had her talk about how she got into the right mind space to be able to see clients. She told me about 3 things she does to prepare herself to get into the part. By doing this she was getting more and more into the part herself. From here, I asked her to describe to me how she felt in her body. She said, powerful/empowered, clear, light, she can breathe, she feels at home in her body. At this point, I could feel the energy settling into a more grounded and resourced place.
Being that my client seems to have relapsed back into pre/contemplation and is experiencing highly activated states, it feels really important to me to focus for now on resourcing and safety. We talked explicitly about how the therapist is a great resource to tap into when she is feeling stressed and ungrounded, especially focusing on going through the 3 steps she takes to get into that part when seeing a client. We also reviewed other ways she can resource herself throughout the week, and then did a closing grounding at the end of the session.
One of the challenges I am facing here is having suggested several times that we might work together to develop a mandala and clearly map out all the parts, since this seems to be a helpful modality for my client. However, in most sessions we seem to be in a place of putting out fires or going into story a lot. Over the past 5 months, I have worked with the parts as they arise and have gotten to know a handful of them through interviewing and on the spot partswork. However, I know from my own experience how powerful it can be to see them laid out and work them on a mandala. For me, this has given me more of a felt sense of soul leadership. If we are to keep working with parts, this feels imperative to me to do with her. I think my challenge is in how to step into guiding that, rather than addressing what seems to be up most critically in the moment. I might be not tough enough on supporting my client to work with this intentionally. Not sure where the line is there.
I am eager to see how our next session is and how the therapist part may have a really helpful part to play within the system right now.
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Initial Post:
I had an initial intake with a new client about a week before we had our Long Term Coaching module. During the initial intake, which is 2 hours long, after my client gave me a brief overview of the issues she was seeking coaching for, I had my client take about 30 minutes to tell me her life story. She actually began pre-birth and went all the way up to present, moving through family dynamics, relationships, jobs, school, etc. We had a brief period of reflections on the story and the woman who told the story, and then went into any patterns or beliefs that became illuminated from telling the story now, especially in the context of embarking on a personal growth journey through coaching. I give all this context because having this in-depth initial intake session gave me something to anchor into when I began to look at this relationship through a long term lens.
After our intensive, I set out to do a Medicine Walk as/for my new client. It was crazy! I made an offering to the land and asked for guidance and to be shown what I need to know for my client’s health, healing and growth. I quickly started feeling my heart pounding and like I just wanted to crawl out of my skin. I was in the middle of a thick forest and couldn’t see and felt even a little dizzy. It was the anxiety my client had spoken to. My walk took me past a tree with some markings (like from a spirit or power animal) and into a big circular opening surrounded by trees. I rested there for quite a while, catching my breath and just resourcing. Once I was grounded and rested, I felt the pull towards a tree that had two main limbs growing out of one trunk. Both equal in size and completely unique and holding their own space (not enmeshing or losing themselves). I knew this related to my client’s desire for healthy relationship in which she is more able to listen to, acknowledge, and honor herself even within relationship with another.
After this, I drew out a map (literally a medicine wheel map) for my client and marked out the place where I saw us beginning (in the West), and moved through the directions going through different passages and thresholds until stepping into the South, which is where I saw her named goals for coaching being. I wrote out some possible ways we could work with each other and the land in order to move through the wheel.
For our next session, I let her know I walked with the land and created a potential map, emphasizing this was a general guideline but that I really prioritize working with whatever is arising in the moment. We looked at the map together and discussed where she felt she was on the map, and any areas that were right on or not really hitting the mark. It was surprising that she felt the map was very accurate. She did, however, inform me she felt she was farther along, more towards the North than the West. This was awesome because we had something to reference in order to talk about the changes that have occurred even in the prior 2 weeks. I had this sense too that the time I took to walk with the land considering my client, and communicate to her a rough plan, gave my client something to hold on to and a sense of trust in me and in the process.
I have now seen my client every 2 weeks since then and it has been totally phenomenal how she really is changing and growing along the wheel. It has helped me so much to have something to refer to when I am reflecting on what’s happening for her and where we are headed. I can refer to the map and see how this is all coming together. And she told me that she has the map hung up in her room to help remind her of what she’s doing, where she wants to focus. For me, it’s as if I am able to surrender into the moment of the sessions that much more because I know we are being held by a larger process. And after our session ends, when I am in reflection, I can refer to the wheel or the stages of change and see where we are and what my client is working with in a larger context.
I feel like I will be trying to use this process with most, if not all, of my clients moving forward. I just did a Medicine Walk today for/as another client I am starting to see and it revealed to me a lot (I think — I will see her tomorrow to get her feedback on the map). I really am interested in working with people long term to support and encourage real change, so I am trying to target my business towards that. Starting out the coaching relationship like this, with the follow-up session that covers a map of a process, gives us the opportunity to talk about the natural process of change, how change works in the brain, and how change is so possible but will take a commitment and regular practice. I think these kind of educational conversations are so impactful for my clients. It takes the brain, their behavior and their way of being from something intangible and out of their control, to something they can understand and work with, taking back control over how they are in their lives.
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Nadine,
This is such a good question and one I am constantly playing with in my own practice. I think this is one area where the practice of Gestalt and Coaching meet in a paradoxical manner. You are correct in that Gestalt is about the “here and now”, acknowledging that whatever is arising in the moment is the actual work that is most relevant for the client at that time. This approach gets a bit tricky within the coaching framework specifically when we start tracking the past (how the client did with the action items from last week). In my experience, beginning the session with a check in on how the past week or two went with the action items invites the client into the past and into their brain, quite the opposite direction of Gestalt.
I think this is something you get to play with and discover your way with in your interactions with practice clients. My invitation would be to try a session where your intention going in is to just stay with the here and now, intentionally not checking in on action items from last week, and see how that goes. Additionally, try doing a check in and then bring the client into the here and now. You might also try starting with the here and now and then checking in later in the session on how whatever was arising is connected to the plan/action items from last session, helping to form connections.
I would love to hear how this goes for you and hear any insights you find with your explorations.
Let that fire ROAR!!
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Nadine,
Yes! What you said here resonated with me, “being confident, and trusting the process will be critical as we are entering into the unknown.” And this is an important element in creating trust with your client. When we as coaches are able to fully 100% trust in the work we are doing, and in the innate wisdom of our clients, and when we are able to get out of the way and trust in the client’s process, we infuse the field with this confidence and trust. Our clients can feel that and it helps to create a field of safety. It is so important as coach to be practicing this and having your own experiences to draw from (either as client or practicing your own wanders and explorations in nature) so that you absolutely CAN trust the process. This statement of you doing just that is so wonderful: “when I get overwhelmed and do not know what steps to take, I refer back to them, because I truly know they are the doors to my answers.”
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Sheri,
I really appreciate your truth and honesty with these readings. What you said here especially stood out to me, “While I enjoyed the concepts and took away what I believe to be very supportive information for this path I am on, connecting others back to nature. I am realizing I am much simpler, it is much simpler. I think we, humans, get this idea that we need to understand, so therefore we label and organize and study and we separate to better understand and we head down these “thought trails” that lead us further away from the knowing, from the connection.”
What it brings up for me is the meaning of the word EXPLAIN — from the Latin word explanare which literally means to make flat or flatten. The idea that when we need to explain away with such precise detail, what we are actually doing on some level is flattening the life or spirit right out of the experience (or at least that is my take).
That being said, I have found a real appreciation for Ecopsychology as I have found that it does help us to be able to explain some of the concepts of why what we do is so powerful and important to those in our communities who really need that level of explanation and scientific backing.
All that to say, yes and yes to all that you write about in your posts.
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What a beautiful post, Kim. I so appreciate the other sources you included in your post. I really appreciate Plotkin’s quote about the healing nature of connection for BOTH humans and the land.
And OMG, I am tearing up with total joy that some of you had an experience of reciprocity and the kind of healing that deep connection can bring both to us humans and to the land herself with the spruce tree tea. What amazing work we get to be doing, bridging that connection between people and the land in an effort to stoke the embers of our own remembrance!
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Yesssss! Well put!
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After thinking about this module as a whole for my summary post, and re-reading your post, it is just striking to me just how freaking beautiful this is. You wrote about how you asked your client “what becomes possible as she holds these both at the same time” (two seemingly opposing parts). And I’m thinking about that within the greater context of this work in general, that this is really so much of what long term transformational coaching is about. What becomes possible when you don’t have to get rid of some part of yourself, when you can accept yourself for who and how you are, when you can hold both at the same time? It reminds me of this quote by Carl Rogers, “The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.”
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Yes, I love that. I think this is where long term coaching and partswork can really interface — when a pattern becomes so clear that I can then kindly name what I am seeing and give the client choice to continue as we have been, working with the part, or to try something different. So empowering! Thanks <3
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Wow, Rachel, thank you so much for being willing to share your personal experience of being coached/guided. I do feel like this was helpful for me and that I learned from reading your post. The part about bringing in a resource and calling in the soul especially stood out to me. You said, “We can invoke “parts” from our clients simply through intention and description, without having to have built a full mandala or without them needing to know the name or resonate with the term “soul” or anything.” I love the image of GUIDING clients more, directing them to tap into the soul (without needing to use the word which can trip people up), and then working with the parts from there. I feel like I’ve mostly been working with parts the other way around, working with whatever part is coming forth (usually the most activated-least resourced) and then moving around to try to drop into more resource. This is such an exciting idea to me!
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Rachel, so cool!! Your own reflections on this seem so right on. To answer the question, “what do I want?” seems simple but is so dang complex. We would all be answering it if we could. It makes so much sense to me that it has taken this much time for her system to become more integrated. That is something that is standing out to me with this module–that even though we may have had a transformational experience through coaching, sometimes it just takes time and maintenance and ritual to allow the body/mind/psyche to catch up to itself and soften into a new possibility. Cool to read about that happening, especially with the slinky imagery!