[Heber Howard]

Initial post

I came into this module without any idea what it was really going to be about. Quickly, I found this module very helpful. I appreciated this module so much more than I expected. It felt like this was the heart and soul of true coaching. The ceremony we learned at the beginning always felt rushed and like there was way too much to process to dive into in one session. Learning a little bit about more about how to spread the ceremony process out over many sessions felt like what coaching was meant to be. It was especially useful to learn the ins and outs of change and what to expect about working with a client on one issue for many months. For this reason learning about the stages of change and learning to expect there will be a relapse and being able to describe and normalize this process for client is extremely helpful. This helps the client know that they are still on track instead of beating up on themselves for getting off track and gets them back on track quicker.

It was also really interesting to learn about four directions. It seems really useful to understand where a person is in their process and normalize the desire to be in a different part of the process. For example understanding that person is in the place of having ideas just getting inspiration for change that person often wants something that is very important to them to have an certain identity and had no idea to get there because they haven’t figured out the first step yet. I find it interesting that often people moving from one of the direction into the next in the cycle struggle to get to the next stage and instead often regress to a previous stage that was more familiar. For example the East is all about creativity, birthing ideas, and deciding what your future holds. The next step is to the South which is characterized by practice and play. However, in order to practice and play with something one has to really pick something and start putting the work to learn the skill they have set out to learn.

I also really appreciated learning about the diagnostic test for immunity to change. This is the set of questions designed to bring about more understanding about the change a person is trying to make. It asks questions like: what are you committed to, what are you doing or not doing that is keeping you from realizing your commitment, what are you competing commitments, and where those big assumptions that are getting in the way. This is a great set of questions to bring about some deeper understanding and help a person make some realizations and possibly some changes.

I thought it was really interesting learning about setting up a treatment plan for a client and setting out milestones so you end the client have an understanding of where they are in their journey. Recently, a therapist friend of mine came to me seeking some advice about a client. The client is seeing him for help finding a girlfriend. He feels frustrated because he has been seeing my friend for over a year and doesn’t feel like he is making any progress. My friend is very good working with things coming up in the present moment by getting people to be present with their emotions. The client is described as a very intelligent person that has made a career in the sciences but basically lives and his head. Due to struggling with connecting to his feelings and getting caught up and his desires and anxieties he is very depressed has trouble making friends and finding a romantic relationship. It also sounds like he is dealing with some developmental trauma. My friend realizes that the way for his client to get through this is to connect with his emotions and begin to heal some of his trauma. He says he sees progress in his client but unfortunately his client doesn’t feel like he is making progress and says that he needs to start seeing progress if he is going to continue therapy. My friend feels like he is at a loss about how to help his client feel like progress is being made. I instantly thought of long-term coaching. I told my friend to write out more of a treatment plan and to put in mile markers for his client to be up to track his progress. To me this seems like a kind of client that long-term coaching is most useful for. Some people find great benefit in going to a coaching or therapy session every week but for others, specifically those that require concrete evidence, they need to know they are making progress in some way. My friend thought this was a great idea and seemed very eager to take this to his client.

[Heber Howard]

Initial Post
I really appreciated the emphasis Katie put on resourcing. Starting a session from a resourced place seems like a way to dive deep quicker by feeling a place to come back to. Yes, growth comes from chaos and challenge but growth cannot come from those challenges without having a sense of safety and trust. This is the way that I want to strive to work with my clients. My goal with sessions will mainly be helping my clients to feel a sense of trust in themselves and a feeling of support in the area’s they are stuck in. If feeling stuck is always a form trauma then it seems to me that feeling a sense of support and having a belief that it will be okay is the way through feeling stuck.
Something that struck me in this module was how often places with a scenic view of nature were used for people as a resource. It seemed to make intuitive sense to me but I didn’t understand why that was biologically. It’s not like a loved one that reminds you of support, it’s just a place. After talking more about it I learned that it is resourcing and calming at least in part because it encourages a wide angle view. This makes sense because our nervous system associates wide angle view with relaxation and associates a focused view with arousal. This struck me as very interesting and seems to be a huge part of what we are here doing at EBI. Often city life is very geared toward focused attention such as driving, working a job, being around screens, and being bombarded with advertisements that are trying to get your attention. One of the reasons nature is often so healing is because there are more chances for your brain to relax because there are less things requiring your focused attention.
This reminds me of our conversation about anxiety attacks and a friend that has suffered from anxiety attacks. This friend is very intelligent person who is very adept at living with stress and almost all of his enjoyment is based off of some kind of stimulating activity. He tends to feel nervous around a lot of new people and generally turn towards his phone or alcohol. He plays a lot of video games, “in order to relax” but that seems to add to his stress. One day I happened to be with him during one of his anxiety attacks. I let him through some grounding exercises which seem to be very helpful. I imagine the culture he lives in, the environment he lives in, and the mindset he was brought up with are huge factors in the cause of his anxiety attacks. Maybe he could benefit from more scenic views and wide angle vision.
Lastly, have a question that I don’t have the answer to yet. I have a close friend that gets triggered into a trauma response occasionally and I don’t know how to work with it. In the state she seems very distressed and sometimes I try to help by offering resourcing and some of the ways that I have been taught to work with trauma but she never goes for it. She says she doesn’t want fixed and doesn’t want to feel like she has to change her feelings. I want to help but because of how tender and fragile she seems at the time I feel scared of being directive, so I ask her if she wants to try something, which she never does. This often leads me silently sitting beside her trying to be supportive. I have also tried using the technique of getting hurt describe something in a more conversational manner. This seemed to work the best so far wasn’t as helpful as I would like to be.

[Heber Howard]

Kairon, I appreciate you calling attention to the gravity of the clients process. Approaching a clients guardians is definitely careful work and I appreciate the reminder of how important sequencing is to that process. Later in your post you said, “the greatest healing is to sequence the unassimilated experiences” which I very much agree with, I believe this is the root of healing. Since often these frozen emotions benefit from using body movements in order to sequence through the trauma it seems like with your background as a dancer you could be very good at this. As you say, staying connected to your body and not getting to stuck in your head is one of the most important skills to have as a coach. As a dancer, you have a lot of practice connecting to your body. I know it can still be easy to get stuck in your head and staying connected to your body in the session can be easier said than done but imagine this practice is a large part of what makes you so effective as a coach. This is the only way to stay connected to a client’s process, take an intuitive leap, and get close to gaining a better understanding about a clients issue. It is still amazing to me sometimes how important being connected to yourself is in the coaching process. Coaching can seem like a very mental exercise at first glance.

I appreciate the reminder that the coach is not in charge of the change process and is not the healer but a part of a process of conscious experimentation seeking change. In this way it can be easy to get sucked into the same seductive dilemma of getting to caught up in your own thoughts. The coach may have and idea of what progress looks like but that isn’t necessarily what the client is looking for and sometimes those important internal shifts are invisible to everyone else and are very important steps on their journey.

I am curious to hear more about what you were saying about trauma stopping soul from evolution and maturity. I’m not sure I entirely agree with this. Trauma keeps you stuck in certain ways but that doesn’t mean it stops the soul from evolving and maturing. Maybe it inhibits growth in certain ways, is that what you meant? There are many functional adults that are very mature but have some major trauma that has not been dealt with.