[Leslie Wier]

Summary Post

A major takeaway for me with the Trauma module is a clearer understanding of the coach’s role in relation to trauma. Because trauma is something that every person experiences, as the coach we need to be prepared if it does come up in a session. It’s not our job to help a client heal their trauma, only to help them get to a space of peace and connectedness that will allow them to continue moving forward in the coaching process. It’s the idea of coaching “with” trauma rather than healing or changing it. This means being able to identify when a client is having a trauma response, and then determine the most appropriate way to respond to that – through listening, support, understanding, and resourcing.

Another major takeaway is in regards to resourcing. The purpose of resourcing is to produce or access a positive or supportive state. Because there are many ways to resource, what method we might use with a client can really depend on the client and what is most supportive for them. I feel that pairing a method of resourcing with a client’s needs and strengths is important. The more someone can engage with their strengths, the better, and the more likely they are to want to continue engaging in that practice. In this way, resourcing is intentionally meant to shift towards attention and awareness. It’s not simply relaxing or calming down, it’s developing presence and bringing the ability to choose back into the equation.

[Leslie Wier]

Initial Post

Hi all! I apologize for being a bit late with my initial post here. I was waiting to start working with a few more practice clients and I finally had a chance to get going with them this past week, so I feel equipped to write about the experience.

So I actually want to talk about all three of my practice clients because I want to highlight some of the similarities and differences that have come up in the context of long term coaching. A very brief overview of each, Client #1 is a licensed therapist who is looking to make some changes regarding his health and specifically came to me due to my experience as a health coach. He struggles a lot with negative self-talk and has low self-belief. Client #2 is a freelancer working several part time jobs, and she came to me for help with her career and also sorting through all of the personal goals she has. She has a hard time letting the past go and finds it difficult to articulate who she is. This is a new realm of exploration for her. Client #3 also wants guidance in regards to her career, and in particular wants help with finding a job that she can feel confident in sticking with long term instead of jumping around from one place to another as she has been.

I sourced these three clients from an online community related to some previous coach training that I’ve done in the past, so we all have a common link. Each of them has some coaching education, but not extensively and most of it has been in the context of their own personal transformation. I scheduled a 30 minute Discovery call with each client to first determine that we are a good fit In the call I reviewed my background while also digging more into their reasons for coaching and how I might be able to help them. We also covered coaching would occur in the context of EBI and getting ICF certified, thus our sessions would be recorded. Finally near the end we discussed what the coaching logistics might look like moving forward.

It was at this point that I realized the value of asking the client questions like, “How will you know when you’ve achieved what you set out to achieve?” and “How long do you anticipate this will take for you?” Ultimately the process of determining the coaching agreement was collaborative with each of them.

I asked Client #1 how often he wanted to meet, and he said he’d like bi-weekly. Since that isn’t feasible for me, we settled on weekly for one month, at which point we would have a better idea through our work of how long term the relationship might be and how he might like things to change. Things went very similarly with Client #2 who preferred weekly, and we settled on the same plan. As for client #3, it was a bit different. She has a very concrete deadline for when she wants to have a decision made regarding her next career steps, June 9th. So, we settled on 8 bi-weekly sessions for four months, at which point we would evaluate next steps. An exciting thing about this client too is that it turns out she lives only an hour away from me in a city I often visit, so we may be able to do in person sessions out on the land, which she is keen to do.

When I put the question to the Client, “what feels right for you?” in terms of length and frequency of meeting I found that Client’s #1 and #2 where a bit unsure and looked to me for guidance in terms of the long term length. It was at that point that I recalled in class Michael mentioning that it can take several sessions to really discover the true deeper need and then determine how long it could take to meet that need. Thus we felt that one month of sessions would be a good amount of time to get a feeling for how much longer the journey could be.

After each discovery session I sent each Client the Disclosure form as well as payment information and a Client intake form. In one month once I’ve determined with Clients 1 and 2 how they’d like to move forward, I’ll send another Disclosure form with the updated time frame and sessions.

In terms of long term focuses on coaching, I’d really like to do some Strengths based work with Clients #2 and #3 in particular, one because they are familiar with and have already taken the VIA Strengths Assessment prior to our coaching, and two because I’ve found that Strengths work is very helpful in terms of guiding someone in their vocation. With Client #1, our coaching will be similar to the coaching I do for Noom as a health coach in which I use Motivational Interviewing and Appreciative Inquiry. I’d like to explore the Four Shields model with Client #3 because nature is something that’s very important to her and a big part of her life.

It was great to have Discovery sessions with all three clients in one week to see the similarities and differences and to build off of my learnings with each one. Having different clients too will give me the opportunity to try some new things that I’m not as familiar with like the Four Sheilds Model.

[Leslie Wier]

Initial Post

When I think of trauma these days, my thoughts immediately go to the pandemic and the collective trauma we are experiencing as a global society. Within this context, a few clients from work come to mind. They are medical professionals working on the front lines of the pandemic. One is a physician working 100 hours a week. The other is a student nurse who is just about to graduate. Both have very clear desires to make changes to support their health, however their work in healthcare during the pandemic has come up as a significant and lasting barrier this year. I want to take a look at both of these client’s in the context of trauma because there is a common theme between them.

Client #1, the student nurse, has also experienced some depression this year and other challenges in his personal life. All of that on top of the expectations of him at work became overwhelming for him, and for quite a while I didn’t hear from him. He reached out to me again recently and said that he was ‘ready’ to move forward. However after that initial conversation, I have not yet heard back from him. Even when we spoke that time shortly before the new year, I got the strong impression that he may have been pushing himself to be ‘ready’ when he may not be. Essentially his ‘shoulds’ are pushing him to be ready. With Client #2, the physician, I’ve only just started working with her so I’m not sure yet what her specific barriers might be. However, I’m her ‘shoulds’ are already coming up early on in the conversation.

One thing that really stuck out to me from the trauma intensive was the idea that when our body is in the process of resolving trauma, we can’t actually learn, grow, and integrate. The major theme I see between these two clients is the idea of ‘should’, and how it’s so common for people to tell themselves, I ‘should’ be doing something to change or be different (according to perceived cultural standards) when in actuality the biology of trauma dictates they should really be allowing themselves to manage and move through what they are currently experiencing before they move forward.

Since my coaching isn’t typically live, I can’t address trauma in the moment if it were to come up in a session with either of these clients. I think what could be helpful, is introducing resourcing within our conversation as a way to manage their current challenges, while also using some powerful questioning to bring awareness to where the client is now and how their work experiences could be impacting their ability to move forward with goals and change. With client #2 in particular we have started to explore this a little bit and she feels that work is something she doesn’t have control over to make changes with right now. So resourcing may be a good way to help her focus on what she does have control over.

What I like about resourcing is that it meets the client where they are in the present. It doesn’t impose any ‘shoulds’ on them about how they need to be, so I think in this sense it can be a beneficial practice for anyone who is faced with their ‘shoulds’, even if they aren’t experiencing trauma.

[Leslie Wier]

Summary Post

My biggest takeaway from this module was honestly in how often we take our brains for granted. We forget too easily that it’s our brain that controls literally everything we do. Taking a step back to remember that in any moment is what ultimately brings us out of the low road, and it’s this idea, ‘once you realize you’re in the low road you’re no longer there’ that has been monumental for me. Practicing this is just like exercising a muscle, and the more you work at it, the easier it gets.

I can see how practicing awareness in the present might feel uncomfortable at first because it necessitates that we stop planning and be OK with the unknowns of the future. The beautiful paradox here is that as soon as you’re focused on awareness of the moment and that who you are is simply the being observing everything going on within and without you, the anxieties of the future no longer matter anymore. If it’s something you’re not used to doing, it takes a leap of faith to start being more aware and present NOW. But there truly is no risk that I can see.

Ultimately, I feel practicing awareness in the moment is an important foundation to being able to consistently reroute and create new pathways over time.

[Leslie Wier]

Amber it takes a ton of courage to start teaching something you’ve just learned so quickly, and when you aren’t very familiar with it. Kudos to you for diving off the deep end with your workshop! Like you, I’m interested in working with people in coaching where I also explicitly do some teaching around the brain and neuroscience involved in the process. In my own personal growth, learning about the brain has been incredibly validating and empowering. I’d like to find a way to bring this into my coaching more, so I appreciate you sharing how you did that yourself. You’re 100% correct I think in that learning about the brain helps us to have self-compassion for our experiences. Kristen Neff’s work on the subject states that accepting the shared human experience is an important facet of self-compassion, and I think learning about the brain helps us to see our shared human experience in a new light.

To your point about listening to your gut with coaching – it’s a powerful guide. Time and again my intuition checks me (and often puts me in my place), and I appreciate how coaching has helped hone this skill over time!

[Leslie Wier]

Initial Post

I’m going to use the context of my current coaching with Noom to talk about the concepts in Brain & Change 1. It’s easiest to talk about patterns I see with my clients as a whole in this context. For some background, I coach clients through behavior change towards healthy weight loss. The coaching agreement is established in a bit of a different way than you might with a face to face session as the client purchases a monthly subscription and every person’s is different. In the beginning of the conversation, we typically do some visioning to establish why they’re here, and why making change towards supporting their health is important to them. The coaching occurs in tandem with education in a specified separate curriculum addressing the psychology of weight loss.

The stages of change is something I rely on heavily to help me determine how to guide a client. You would think that someone who signs up for an app for weight loss is at least in the contemplation stage, but that’s not always the case. Some people sign up due to pressures from family, or other external and non-autonomous motivators. These clients tend to show very low engagement with the coach, and we eventually end up losing contact as they drop off.

Many clients who sign up are very excited and energized in the beginning and as a result will jump straight to planning. They come in with all of the ideas about what they’re going to do and how they’re going to change. As we talked about a bit in the intensive, this jump to planning is natural because it makes the process of change easy for us to understand. Planning reduces our anxiety and helps us to see what’s possible. As humans we tend to feel uncomfortable with the unknown, and so I think that’s why so many people tend to jump to planning so early on in the process. The problem here is that planning and making many changes at once can quickly become overwhelming. And that’s when they drop back down into pre-contemplation. I’ve found that this is often because they’ve bitten off more than they can chew and as a result they come to believe they ‘can’t change’, or it’s ‘too difficult to change’. And this is why it’s so important to stay in the contemplation stage for a bit. That initial energy they come in with typically isn’t sustainable over time, so with coaching we build energy, motivation, AND efficacy in the contemplation stage. So when someone jumps to planning, I often have to bring them back to the present moment (where change happens). I ask questions like, Why are these changes important to you? What are the benefits of changing versus not changing? How might your life be different after this change? What is it you’re doing right now that’s not working for you? What has worked well in the past? I’ve found the sacred questions also work well here. There are so many appropriate, powerful questions to ask here depending on the client just to get things started.

As I engage with the client in contemplation, I look for language that indicates ambivalence. Where do they have mixed or contradictory feelings? I then guide towards awareness to that ambivalence and emphasize what is going to generate energy and momentum moving forward. You’ll often see talk that favors the status quo alongside talk that favors change, and I try to highlight the latter with my reflections and questions. In this way I guide clients through the stages of change in a way that sets them up for success and generates sustainable energy. This process helps to create a solid, actionable intention for the client, which we know primes the brain for change.

Another pattern I see is in relation to low road vs. high road responses. As guides we focus on bringing the unconscious into the conscious, and this often comes up with my clients in their food and eating habits. If someone says, “I really struggle with overeating late at night, I completely lose control,” that’s when I’ll start to guide towards bringing more awareness of what’s going on at those times, essentially distilling down what the actual issue is. It could be exhaustion and decision fatigue, it could be stress or emotional eating, it could be boredom, it could just be simple habit. We start with awareness, and the practice of mindfulness – noticing when the client is in the low road. Often a first progress goal might center simply around practicing that awareness and moving into the high road on their own. I realize now that this process is also a way of creating intention for the client to practice something new.

A final pattern that I tend to see with clients relates to neuroplasticity and the Grand Canyon metaphor that Michael shared. Many people tend to get frustrated when they don’t see change happen immediately, or when they fall back into older habits, not realizing that this is entirely normal. Even their idea or image of what change looks like is pre-programmed in their brain, and something they’re having to rewire. Just the process of learning ‘how’ to change habits is creating a new mythic image of the client in which that pre-programmed misconception of change becomes something entirely new. I typically have to do a little bit of education around this bit with the client, and I’m going to start using the Grand Canyon metaphor to do this because it’s so clear! Another way I address this without necessarily explicitly educating, is to bring awareness of it with the client and use the sacred questions to guide them through it.

[Leslie Wier]

Summary:

There are several major takeaways for me with this module. The first, is that the face of loss is so varied. There are many different kinds of loss, and ways to experience grief. Change in and of itself presents a loss. That thought that change (and death) is the only constant in life isn’t entirely accurate. Rather it’s change, loss (and thus grief) and death. Initially that can sound depressing, but the reality is that beauty and joy also follows each one of those processes. Culturally we have spent so much time trying to avoid our pain instead of embracing it as our ancestors knew to do, and it’s stunting our evolution and growth as humans.

I also made a connection between grief, trauma, and negative emotions in general – in how they appear and move through the body through sequencing. Grief or negative emotions improperly sequenced essentially become trauma, and I while learned that this past week, it just makes a whole lot more sense to me now when reading about everyone’s examples and experiences. So, I’ve been able to more fully integrate some of the information between these toolboxes.

[Leslie Wier]

Response:

David thank you so much for sharing such a personal story about your mother! It’s clear how much you care about her, and that you want to do whatever you can to support her during this time. How did your holding space for her and truly listening, impact her? What did you notice?

In response to your question, the need to fix it does come up in my coaching, but typically only when I’m on the “low road”. When I’m fully aware and present, it doesn’t tend to happen, but if I get caught up in something, or ‘hooked’ as I remember Pema Chodron phrasing the idea, then I tend to fall in that low road tendency to want to fix. I’m a problem solver and a planner, and these are things that are deeply embedded in my brain, so it’s a lifelong practice of moving through that tendency to fix and making my way back towards the high road. Deanna mentioned something insightful, that grief is always involved when we step into a new way of being, and that’s a good way for me to remember that the change process is one that I can’t force.

Deana, you mentioned the need to fix comes from a conditioned response to avoiding pain – and I think that’s why planning and problem solving are deeply embedded into my psyche – it likely stems from the pain of childhood trauma. This was super insightful for me, thank you for your comments! I also appreciate you sharing about your client in the context of the Brain & Change 1/Trauma modules – having just completed them this week, my understanding of what you’re describing is much clearer, and a great example for my learning! I didn’t think of needing to sequence grief as you would trauma, but it certainly makes sense.

Gina I so appreciate your share, and what you did for that man at the dog park. So many people could have responded defensively or with counter arguments, and I think a big part of the collective ‘problem’ is that culturally we are tending towards listening to respond rather than listening to understand. When we do that, someone who is trying to sequence their grief and trauma is abruptly stopped, and thus so is the healing. So we are all clogging each other up, leading to emotional reactions and more defensiveness. It’s a vicious cycle. Thank you for taking steps to break it!

[Leslie Wier]

Response:

David thank you so much for sharing such a personal story about your mother! It’s clear how much you care about her, and that you want to do whatever you can to support her during this time. How did your holding space for her and truly listening, impact her? What did you notice?

In response to your question, the need to fix it does come up in my coaching, but typically only when I’m on the “low road”. When I’m fully aware and present, it doesn’t tend to happen, but if I get caught up in something, or ‘hooked’ as I remember Pema Chodron phrasing the idea, then I tend to fall in that low road tendency to want to fix. I’m a problem solver and a planner, and these are things that are deeply embedded in my brain, so it’s a lifelong practice of moving through that tendency to fix and making my way back towards the high road. Deanna mentioned something insightful, that grief is always involved when we step into a new way of being, and that’s a good way for me to remember that the change process is one that I can’t force.

Deana, you mentioned the need to fix comes from a conditioned response to avoiding pain – and I think that’s why planning and problem solving are deeply embedded into my psyche – it likely stems from the pain of childhood trauma. This was super insightful for me, thank you for your comments! I also appreciate you sharing about your client in the context of the Brain & Change 1/Trauma modules – having just completed them this week, my understanding of what you’re describing is much clearer, and a great example for my learning! I didn’t think of needing to sequence grief as you would trauma, but it certainly makes sense.

Gina I so appreciate your share, and what you did for that man at the dog park. So many people could have responded defensively or with counter arguments, and I think a big part of the collective ‘problem’ is that culturally we are tending towards listening to respond rather than listening to understand. When we do that, someone who is trying to sequence their grief and trauma is abruptly stopped, and thus so is the healing. So we are all clogging each other up, leading to emotional reactions and more defensiveness. It’s a vicious cycle. Thank you for taking steps to break it!

[Leslie Wier]

Response:

David thank you so much for sharing such a personal story about your mother! It’s clear how much you care about her, and that you want to do whatever you can to support her during this time. How did your holding space for her and truly listening, impact her? What did you notice?

In response to your question, the need to fix it does come up in my coaching, but typically only when I’m on the “low road”. When I’m fully aware and present, it doesn’t tend to happen, but if I get caught up in something, or ‘hooked’ as I remember Pema Chodron phrasing the idea, then I tend to fall in that low road tendency to want to fix. I’m a problem solver and a planner, and these are things that are deeply embedded in my brain, so it’s a lifelong practice of moving through that tendency to fix and making my way back towards the high road. Deanna mentioned something insightful, that grief is always involved when we step into a new way of being, and that’s a good way for me to remember that the change process is one that I can’t force.

Deana, you mentioned the need to fix comes from a conditioned response to avoiding pain – and I think that’s why planning and problem solving are deeply embedded into my psyche – it likely stems from the pain of childhood trauma. This was super insightful for me, thank you for your comments! I also appreciate you sharing about your client in the context of the Brain & Change 1/Trauma modules – having just completed them this week, my understanding of what you’re describing is much clearer, and a great example for my learning! I didn’t think of needing to sequence grief as you would trauma, but it certainly makes sense.

Gina I so appreciate your share, and what you did for that man at the dog park. So many people could have responded defensively or with counter arguments, and I think a big part of the collective ‘problem’ is that culturally we are tending towards listening to respond rather than listening to understand. When we do that, someone who is trying to sequence their grief and trauma is abruptly stopped, and thus so is the healing. So we are all clogging each other up, leading to emotional reactions and more defensiveness. It’s a vicious cycle. Thank you for taking steps to break it!

[Leslie Wier]

That jump to planning is something I see A LOT with my health coaching clients. There is often this sense of urgency for change and a huge burst of motivation and excitement in the beginning. I really have to reign them in because if I let the planning happen too early on, more often than not there’s immediate failure because we didn’t spend enough time digging into why change is important for the client and what their deeper needs are. A lot of people expect themselves to be able to change immediately because they don’t understand how the brain works. They then get frustrated and give up when they don’t see immediate change. It’s the stuff that happens before planning, evoking around the deeper need and why that helps to prime the brain for change. The burst of energy and motivation they have in the beginning quickly fizzles when things don’t go according to plan. I think it’s also part of the coach’s role to help guide a client in a way that they get a realistic view of the change process. If you’ve been engaging in a particular habit for most of your life, it’s not going to change in a couple of weeks!

[Leslie Wier]

Amber it sounds like you’ve found a good flow in starting off your coaching relationships in a way that sets some important boundaries around your scope of practice. It’s an interesting contrast to how I might start a relationship with someone. Since I don’t explicitly work with people who are experiencing trauma as a niche, while it can certainly come up, it’s not always a factor. I may mention in a first session that anything outside of my scope will be referred out, but I don’t always necessarily need to set a boundary around therapy vs. coaching because there isn’t always a need to. So it’s really interesting to see how your coaching processes might be different depending on your niche too.

[Leslie Wier]

Gina I appreciate that during your conversation with your client, you revisited her successes over the past several months working together. I think that touching on someones successes and strengths is critical for supporting self-efficacy, especially when someone could be in that ‘snap-back’ process. Focusing on what is going well as opposed to what is not going well is a great way to help guide someone through the natural ebbs and flows of the stages of change.

You talk about transformational work needing a model or map, and it’s cool to see how that evolves with each person. I envision it like having a large blank sheet of paper as your map, and as your client moves in different directions, different areas of the map are revealed according to what they experience on their journey. The model or map has some basic key elements, which you tend to see across models, but is not set in stone and the path evolves over time. I think this requires a lot of flexibility and adaptability on the part of coach and client, and the process also naturally instills these positive psychological resources over time. Thanks for planting the seed of that visualization in my brain!

[Leslie Wier]

David it sounds like you used the Four Shields model as an assessment in some ways like you might use the Stages of Change – to dermine where a client currently is so you can then guide them appropriately moving forward. I hadn’t thought of this idea and I like it a lot! I feel like it fleshes out the Stages of Change in a way that is relatable and easy to understand, and it might be worth sharing that with a client too. I’ve found that educating clients on the Stages of Change to be helpful at times, and using the Four Shields feels like a perfect extension of that in the context of nature connected coaching.

I appreciate what you mentioned about how keeping the long term in mind, there’s no longer as much pressure to “accomplish” something in the short term. I had a first session with a new client recently and I found myself wondering, “am I doing this right?” because it feels like it is going to be a slow and steady build up. I have to remember that it’s always about meeting the client where the are right now.

[Leslie Wier]

Amber what you hit on with resourcing as a way of practicing self-compassion and self-care is really insightful. I’m realizing that resourcing is not just something to be used only with those who have or are experiencing trauma, but is a way of helping any client develop their own internal resources to support empowerment. I find this ties in directly with the conversation about change being ‘mandated’. When we are working with our clients, we want to come from a place in which the client has the utmost autonomy, and I think more internal resources can only help to empower that autonomy.

I was really keen to read your post because I know you’re interested in working explicitly with people who have experienced trauma. This is not a specialization I’m terribly interested in (I think because dealing with my own trauma feels like enough), but I know it’s something I need to be familiar with – so examples are really helpful for me!

It sounds like you started off the relationship with a very clear and frank conversation around expectations and your scope of practice. That you also stated from the beginning the idea of partnering with a therapist down the line if necessary really sets you up for being able to gently reinforce the necessary boundaries of scope throughout the coaching relationship. I’ve found that a lot of coaches tend to be a bit shy about having this conversation, because it’s a difficult and honest conversation, but the reality is it makes our jobs easier in the long run!

I appreciate what you note about the difference between resourcing and relaxing, and it’s not a connection I had made before. I agree that it can vary from person to person-what is avoidance versus what is establishing presence, just like the practice of mindfulness can look different for every person. At the heart of things, I see resourcing as a type of mindfulness, and I could even see encouraging some creativity on the part of the client with establishing this practice. What I love about resourcing is it relies on our own internal strengths, and that’s a difference I see too. Resourcing is an intentional engagement of our various strengths, whereas disassociation isn’t.