[David Fontaine]

@mariarosagalter

Maria thank you for your feedback on my post and for your thoughtful question! In regards to your question of how I relate the pendulation process to integration, I think pendulation between the positive aspects of “what was” and sitting with “what is” helps to widen the window of tolerance in this case. By focusing on the positive through story-telling, a client comes back to the present moment in a less distressed state, making the reality of “what is” more tolerable. This can help to change (in a favorable way) the associations that were firing in the neural network that were causing the distress.

Great awareness with your client and knowing what his tendencies are or can be. Your sensitivity around the co-dependence as well as helping him to keep it in check is so valuable!

David

[David Fontaine]

@lesliewier

I think this point is so important for all of us to remember, “I would also focus on how the grieving process is healing for her, without trying to fix her.” It reminds me of the importance of trust that our client has everything they need within them. The grieving process is not some prescribed method to heal that was invented. It’s a natural pathway to healing that came about through observing healthy human behavior. As guides, we’re just there to help them remember the way. I think you and I have spoken before about that tendency to go into fix it mode. That is something that is still very present with me in my personal life at times. It’s funny that it doesn’t happen in my coaching though! Maybe that’s because I don’t have deep emotional involvement or investment in clients that could pull me down that path. It sounds like you’re figuring out how to manage that well in your personal life. Do you find it coming up in coaching?

[David Fontaine]

@mariarosagalter

Wow, what a powerful interaction with the deadfall in the forest and symbolism in that. Deadfall in the forest takes years to decay and return to the earth just a grieving can not only be a long process but it also needs to happen on its own time. I really felt how you both supported where your client was in their process but also invited him to explore his edges by asking him if he would approach and step over the deadfall that he identified with as being a reflection of losses he’d skirted around in his life. There’s no doubt that that experience will be present for him when encountering loss in the future. Such a powerful insight and a new neural pathway being forged! I’m interested to know how you sensed his initial reluctance to the threshold experience. What did you notice that told you that?

[David Fontaine]

Initial Post: For the purposes of this post I want to use the story my Mom currently shared with me about her current life situation. While I wouldn’t formally coach my Mom, I will approach this as though it was a future client’s situation. My Mom used to run her own house cleaning business and has since retired. Her clients were mostly the elderly and they often lived alone. She became close with many of them and cared for them way beyond taking care of their homes. After retirement, she fell into becoming a primary caretaker for a past client who lives alone and has alzheimer’s. For the past 2 years, right up until recently, she had spent 6 days a week with her. She poured her life into caring for her….cooking meals, cleaning her house, bathing her and being a friend and source of social interaction. Each day she would show up at the house and the lady wouldn’t remember what they did or talked about the day before. Often my Mom would have to remind her who she was. Because her former client’s condition is continuing to deteriorate, my Mom has had to step back from her role as caretaker. It is beyond what she can take on personally. As she was telling me this story of the hard reality of having to discontinue this role, I heard feelings of guilt. She felt like she was abandoning her friend. She was very tearful. She’s feeling a loss of control because she knew what her friend needed and what it took to care for her properly. She has a hard time trusting that the next person will care for her properly. She spoke of recent difficulties with sleeping with the weight of this on her mind. All of these are dimensions of grief. But I also heard relief, another dimension of grief. She’d spent 90% of her time fulfilling this role selflessly for 2 years, sacrificing time at home with my Dad, sacrificing her own self care. I listened to her like I’ve never listened before. She needed to be heard and held. A significant part of her existence was now gone and she’s left in the void of “what now?” She even made the comment “I guess I need to figure out what I want to do with my life now”. This is loss at the very core. Not only a loss of the connection and depth of relationship with her friend but a loss of her own identity.

If this were a client, I would have asked permission to guide her in this very sensitive and emotionally charged topic. I would also ideally try to come to an agreement on 3 sessions with this client, minimally. There is so much opportunity in this kind of life transition for someone but at the forefront is the mourning of the old way of being, an acknowledgement and letting go of what was. This client is already contemplating what life will be for them now and that is a hearty topic for other sessions but, we can’t create a new way of being during times of distress. There is pain to be processed. The good news in this scenario is that the client still has friendly contact with her former client and so there is a way to still have an enduring connection with her (one of the tasks of mourning) even though the dynamic between them will look different.

The first session would be focused on checking in on the grief to see if anything has shifted, become more/less intense, etc. I’d be curious how free time is being spent to get a pulse on how grounded the client is or isn’t. Are they engaging in a lot of mindless activity to avoid dealing with reality? Are they taking time for self care, reflection, emotional processing? I’d also be interested in incorporating nature into our time together to see what connections the client would make or what glimpses toward the future may occur. Time would be dedicated to story-telling to allow her to share some of her favorite memories from the old personality. I’d encourage some type of ceremony to honor the service and unconditional love she provided to her friend. It would also be important to acknowledge the current reality of what is and finding ways to be hopeful for the future without feeling any pressure to move on. Revisiting memories can be very healing but awareness of present moment and the reality of what currently is can keep the mourning process moving forward. This session would be about support, coaching presence, active listening and allowing emotions to move at their own pace.

[David Fontaine]

Summary Post: A big take-away from Brain and Change 2 is the deeper understanding that a majority of human behavior is automatic; a product of programs being run based on past experiences and memories. Lack of purpose or intention leave us subject to unconscious, automatic behavior. When we’ve placed no importance on anything new in our reticular activating system, the brain assumes that the default programs are meeting our needs. In coaching, the process of unwinding this auto-pilot tendency in our clients begins with powerful questioning. Questions designed to make them pause and think activate the PFC and gets them out of story and into the present moment. It is from this place that we can identify and create the new ways of being we desire. We have something new to focus attention on and create intention around and this causes internal resonance.

Being intentional as much as possible in our lives reduces the tendency to be on auto pilot. Having rituals that merge behaviors and ideas make this possible. In coaching, we need to help our clients create their ritual(s). Something they’re going to habitually do that reflects their intended way of being. Without this, success of change is very low.

[David Fontaine]

@mariarosagalter

Thanks for sharing your session with us. When I read this I clearly see that so much work has been done to identify the deeper need with her. We all know that ridding herself of the stuff is not the core of the problem. It’s very apparent in the list of beliefs that have shifted that you’ve gone deeper and asked “how do you need to be while creating space in your home and in your heart?” This list is so powerful!
–moving past shame and fear of judgment either from self or others
–asking for help in vulnerability without hiding– “this is who I am, take it or leave it”
–releasing the burden of having to do things “perfectly”
–finding in herself a part that keeps her accountable to the task at hand–“the teacher”
–moving into the action of sorting and donating
–beginning to visualize the space/home you want for herself

The visualization of the home/space she wants adds another dynamic to the new behaviors. I know you’ve been working with her on this for some time now and I’m curious if you’ve been able to track her in the stages of change through this process. This session feels like she’s in the action stage. How will you continue to help her strengthen this way as she moves into maintenance stage? What growth edges can be stretched for her to continue building confidence?

David

[David Fontaine]

@mariarosagalter
Hello Maria! Wow what an interesting topic to ponder! I have not experienced this in my sessions or discussions with others about the work we do but I would love to add my 2 cents to this. By adding Nature to the equation in our coaching or guiding, we are allowing the mystery (the spirit who moves through all things) in to interact with the client. If you’re someone who calls this God, then this is where that takes place. While we are guiding with a goal of initiating all kinds of “sciency” stuff to start taking place in our clients’ brains, we’re also using Nature as a co-guide. In my opinion, Nature is a manifestation of God and, thus, has a very large role in this experience. Take these spiritual directors on a wander or guide them through a threshold and they will quickly understand that the mystery of those experiences is very much at play 🙂 I’m sure you’ve experienced first-hand the wonderful and often unexplainable mysteries during those experiences, both for yourself and your clients. Science isn’t creating those experiences and neither are we as the coach. This is spiritual….taking place in a spiritual realm.

David

[David Fontaine]

@lesliewier

Really nice job with staying flexible and creative here! Your decision to have your client identify in nature the different perspectives at play was a very valuable insight for her in finding that needed middle ground. It was also a great way to get these two beliefs into visual form. Nature showed her the stark contrast between her and her husband’s points of view but she had the realization that these weren’t the only options. There was a statement she made in severance that I think had the potential to get to deeper need. It’s a similar one that came up in my last fishbowl session with my client. Your client stated “I want to have it all figured out by the time I”m done.” From the feedback in my session, I learned that that’s a great opportunity to ask “what would it feel like to have it all figured out?” The “want” can come from that question and then we can dig further to deeper need. Curious what your thoughts are on this and how that might have played out in this session.

[David Fontaine]

@lesliewier

Thank you for the great question! This shift, to me, felt really natural because I have a lot of historical knowledge of this client relating to this specific issue. Knowing that she’s had many highs and lows in this journey,it felt necessary to bring the change process to light for her for a couple of reasons, 1) I felt that normalizing the cyclical process of change was important for her to not feel alone in her times of disconnection from the desired way of being. Many people cycle through this process many times before getting to a sustainable place in the Maintenance Stage. 2) The energy of the session felt a little “heavy” and I could sense a lot of internal dialog going on that wasn’t necessarily being spoken. The segue to a little bit of education got her pre-frontal cortex engaged and dis-engaged any low road patterns that may have been going on. I’m finding that this seems to take a little pressure off a client. They are kind of in the hot seat to share and share and share. Shifting gears and offering a little bit of information to them can really give the sense that this is a mutual process we’re engaged in. The energy shifted completely after this and it was really just a gut call that I thought would help create some confidence, some energy and an understanding of how we make change happen in our lives.

[David Fontaine]

Initial Post: This session came about completely unintentionally and stemmed from a phone call my client made to me regarding a completely separate topic (what to do about replacing her tires, because I was a tire expert in one of my past versions of me). At some point, the conversation completely shifted and I paused once I realized it and asked if this is something she wanted to explore. She said yes and gave me permission to guide her. This client is a highly influential fitness and health coach who leads and inspires many people in her community. Throughout her career in this role she’s experienced very high energy states of connection to her vision and purpose and also very low states of complete disconnection, lack of drive and unhealthy habits. In this call she was expressing the latter, and the disconnection was coming through very clearly in her energy and words. In a lot of senses it felt like grief and it felt necessary for me to allow her to vent her current feelings. Then there was a lot of story around blaming her partner and the quality of their relationship as a source of the disconnect from her coaching role and vision. I brought awareness to the fact that we couldn’t work on her partner in this session and tried to focus the session by asking “what role does your partner play in your vision of being an inspirational coach?” There was a long pause and I felt it sinking in, almost like she didn’t want to admit what realization she was coming to. She finally said “yeah, he really has no part in this. This is mine to own.” Through story of how her relationship and partner are to blame for her current state, she had integrated the conflict in a way that took responsibility off of herself.
Since she had experienced many ups and downs with her vision, I wanted to bring awareness to the stages of change. I shared the stages with her and she quickly identified that she was in contemplation, but also noticed that she’d been in Maintenance stage with this issue. I explained that when she’s at her highs, she’s in Maintenance and not necessarily Termination. I explained that it’s easy to think that when we’ve hit the peak our efforts can dwindle. When we do this, we risk spiraling back to contemplation because we can snap back to the old states of being. She understood and felt pretty okay with it as it was now normalized for her. She said “I think at times I just lose sight of why I’m doing this”. I told her that without clear intention and purpose, we’re giving our brains free reign to choose whatever program it wants. She knew where she wanted to be and was going right into the planning stage saying “I need to get out for a hike this weekend and get past this”. Her energy shifted from low and lethargic to eager and hopeful.
We were getting short on time, and were still in severance, so I wanted to harness this re-awakened energy and put it to good use on her hike (which I was going to use as a Threshold). I asked her to create an intention for this hike she was going to go on. I asked questions like how do you want to spend this time? What do you want to take away from this experience that will help you get re-aligned? How do you need to be on this hike to feel aligned? Where will you focus your attention? We scheduled the hike in detail and fine tuned her intention to a point that it carried palpable energy and strength. We ended the session due to time but connected again after her hike. The energy was through the roof! She used her hike as a wander and nature had reflected so many beautiful things to her. Upon her return she had an incredible experience with a blue jay and she felt inclined to look up the symbolic meaning which further strengthened her experience. We created a ritual around the blue jay that incorporates movement, that she can use to keep herself connected to vision. Having a ritual is so important because it turns ideas into felt experiences and these felt experiences become memories which become neural pathways. Why God Won’t go away says “Ritual has the ability to provide believers with experiential evidence that seems to prove that the guarantees made in the myth are true”.

[David Fontaine]

Summary Post:

There were two really big take-aways for me in the Partswork section that I have been pondering pretty deeply since the intensive. The first was the exercise we did to create a mandala of the expressions of the child. Having dabbled in Partswork with EBI before and practiced some of it on my own over the past year or so, I had definitely identified a child part. I struggled a little bit to understand that part of me. How old is this child? What memories is The Child bringing forth that are separate from the other parts? Why does it seem like The Child is so dynamic and hard to identify? This exercise brought a lot of clarity to me around that. Knowing that our child part is commonly an age range, not necessarily a specific age and, that our child part has many different expressions within itself, has created many “aha” moments for me in reflecting back over my practices thus far. I was always getting this feeling that there were other parts I was missing or not naming. So now if we look at all of our parts, what are the different expressions of each of those?!

The second big take away was the concept of The Addict being a part. I had never considered this and had always seen addiction as a response to the external, or a coping mechanism rather than dealing with what needs dealing with. I never really thought that I was an addict until this intensive. My family has a history of alcoholism and, while I don’t battle that same addiction, my addictive personality manifests in different ways. I can immediately see when and how this part of me takes over. As I write this even I am having this “life flashing before my eyes” experience where I can see how this has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. This explains why addiction recovery is a lifelong process. It’s a part of us that cannot be deleted from the system. We can only learn how to function healthily with it. It has me thinking about whether we actually ever do recover or if the addiction just shifts to some other vice. We can “beat” alcohol addiction for example but, do we just pick up another addiction? Does it just find a new way to manifest?

Partswork kind of naturally takes us to this place of being kind and gentle with ourselves and approaching undesired ways of being in a whole new way. Instead of judging things as bad, we’re given an opportunity to see the inner workings of why we are behaving the way we are. We can gain valuable information from these parts by fully understanding their roles and how they came to be. Looking forward to Partswork 2!

[David Fontaine]

@deanna.falge

Deanna this is such a thoughtful and thought inspiring question! My take on this is that parts, which as you said are neuro circuits, are in essence, memories. They were created by memories and are manifestations of those memories. They are remembered or programmed states of being. And just as we can never delete a memory from our subconscious, we cannot delete or have parts “die off”. I agree with what you’re saying about them changing and shifting over time. It makes me think about the little I know about EMDR therapy where it takes a traumatic memory and alters the memory to have a healthier resolution. This memory now fires differently, without the intense trauma response but the memory itself still exists. For a part, the part changes in the way it is expressing itself over time, but is still the same part.

I love the depth of your questions and your hunger to always understand things clearly! Curious to hear everyone’s input on this question.

David

[David Fontaine]

@gmlobito1

Gina! So much coming up for me here! I love your curiosity, as you type your post, about the significance of the stage in your session location. I know you get really excited about and thrive in the threshold with a client. My mind is playing out a million ideas of how your client could have used that stage to go beyond thinking about to acting out the things she wants to be doing! I’m also curious about the rock wall that defined the space you were describing and how the client would interpret that as it relates to their current topic. Like with Maria’s share, I believe we all have this ability to pick meeting points that have what the clients need. It goes beyond “oh, we’re going to go here because it’s cool or it’s convenient”. Subconciously, our brains know where to lead us. I get really excited about this stuff too, can you tell?? 🙂

You mentioned that you were still in the severence phase and I’m unsure if you were saying that because you see partswork being done another time in the session, but I think severence time is a one of the great times for this work. With some time spent working with the parts (even better if their mandala is present) it can really get us to that point of saying “now that you can see this more clearly, what do you want?” And then “how do you need to be to embody that?”. I totally get that this may be a client that doesn’t even know what parts are how to access them but I do think we can dabble in it by asking that question “what part of you wants to be more of a doer?”. Maybe she can’t name it yet, but somewhere in there she can describe what drives that want and can probably describe what parts of her get in the way of that. She started to identify some past experiences that led her to be very focused on household tasks in her life now. What part drives that? I’m learning that I want to try to explore this with clients even if we haven’t established or named all the parts yet.

Great insights into what you could have done in this session!

David

[David Fontaine]

Initial post:
I haven’t used partswork in a session at this point so I’m going to use my experience guiding partswork during the online intensive as the basis of my post. I’m going to add in some of my own thoughts or ideas about where the session could have gone as well, just to build off it a little more. I will not share her name or name any parts of hers that I feel were unique to her in order to keep her experience confidential. My client brought some very open feelings into our time together about feeling overwhelmed and exhausted by the amount of information and experiential practicing we were doing throughout the week. It was the first time I had worked with her that week and so I felt like I just wanted to ask how she was doing. She made the comment the being in the client seat in the experiential practice at this time was making her want to “retreat and go hide somewhere”. I could sense her inner state by her body language. It was closed off and she didn’t seem engaged. This immediately presented itself as an opportunity to explore her parts. I don’t know if she brought a topic for this time, but we were now going to dive into what was most present for her. Since I knew we had all just gone through our part identification in interviewing process in other activities, I asked her if she could identify the part within her that felt that way and she quickly replied “The Hermit”. A couple of things were coming up for me here: 1) I was finding myself really relating to her feelings of overwhelm, particularly from the experiential practicing and, 2) my hermit part was now identifying with her hermit part. This was distracting for me so I paused for a moment. I asked her to share her mandala and move the parts around to show me what her current state looked like. I was interested in what other parts are present when “The Hermit” is in the driver’s seat as well as what parts of her took off to keep her from engaging in the work. She had another part that was close by and I asked some questions about that part’s role. She said “this part shuts it all down, I can’t do anything when it is present”. She started crying. We paused here for quite a while before I asked “what are you feeling right now?”. She stated that fear was present, like a hunkering down while a monster was present, kind of feeling. I asked her if she’d be willing to go into this part that shut down the show. She did and we started exploring the function of this part together. It was becoming apparent to me that this part was at some point a safety mechanism for her, maybe during childhood, to protect her from something external that was overwhelming or too much to process.The role of this part didn’t ring as something to fear but something to honor for it’s service. It’s presence didn’t have ill intent. So I asked the part what it needed my client to know. The part spoke “I need her to know that I’m the alarm when it’s time for self care. I don’t intend to shut down the whole system. I just want to create awareness when edges are being pushed a little too far. I asked this part who its greatest ally is and it said “The Hermit”. Hermit roles are often very intrical in a person’s ability to step back and take care of their needs so this was no surprise at all to me. It was shown right there on the mandala…..this part and “The Hermit” were side by side. I brought the client back to her body and reviewed the conversation with her, pointing out the placement of this part and “The Hermit” on her mandala. Hearing the real intent of this part felt so important in order for these 2 parts to function healthily together. I saw her body language relax. The “monster” had left the room. She smiled and said “All I had to do was ask you for a few minutes at the beginning of this to exercise to regroup and instead I shut down like YOU were the ‘monster’!” There is so much more here that could have been explored but I felt like she had integrated a very important piece, a true understanding of her part’s function and intent.

[David Fontaine]

@mariarosagalter

Maria, I really liked how you followed your intuition to go the place on the land you felt called to. I have found this to be very prevalent for me as well as I work with a lot of clients who have little or no experience in nature and they don’t have a preference on where to meet. When it’s left open like this, I am always getting a sense of where to go and I can often see a visual of that space. I have no idea how that space will interact with what they are bringing to the session but I always trust that it will. It sounds like that was certainly the case for you here as the spot on the land created a threshold experience that led to some deeper insight and got things moving for your client. I think this session is a great example of how the work can still be done even without the formal identification of all the parts and understanding the roles. He was able to identify the part in some way that made sense to him and it was effective for the in-the-moment interaction with it!

This client sounds ideal for deeper dives into partswork. Do you have any intention to go through the part identification and interviewing process with him?

David