Lisa Dahlgren
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Summary Post: Throughout the grief learning module, I found myself amazed at how much we grieve throughout our lives. It struck me as an almost constant process in a way that I had been aware of before, but somehow had forgotten. One aspect that I feel we did not cover much is how grief opens us to be in the world in a way that can be actually helpful. I remember when we lost our daughter and just how much that left a hole inside of me. At the same time, because of that loss, I experienced the world in such a different way. I was in many ways much more open and so more connected to the sensitive parts of the world. For me, although I was totally out of my mind with grief, it felt like I was also so much in a heart-space with the world and other, living, things. I wrote a poem at that time which I got out and reread because it talked about those sensations of connection in the midst of hard loss. At the end of it, it reads: “I fold into the existence of others, even as they seem unaware we are the same. They talk of groceries, and gas, and the price of fruit. While the vapor of their breath speaks of their own, eternal, sorrow.”
Being struck by the many, many, losses we each have had as we shared in our toolbox meeting together, I am imagining that we each have had the heart-space opening I tried to convey with my poem. And so as I am hearing in a new way, again, the grief that my clients are experiencing, I am holding that aspect, perhaps even promise, of what living through grief can be; A deeper presence within ourselves, a more complete heart-opening to life, a greater appreciation for being connected, a wider acceptance of suffering. -
Summary post. It has been great to read about so many different kinds of transformations. I am heartened to feel that I have such a wonderful variety of techniques and ways of being with/working with people that are shown to be effective. I remain very interested in understanding more about how we can directly access the RAS. Sometimes I wish I had been able to do more research with topics such as these. I think my 600 questions would come in handy in a research setting! But, since I work directly with people now, it is just great to feel validated in utilizing skills and techniques that have research backing.
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I already gave an example of working with a client in the more intense time of her grieving, but by mistake posted it in the brain-change section. I want to discuss the same client who I saw for a second session this week, and where we continued working with grief. Then I want to discuss another client that I have seen for a couple of sessions in which the grief work was different.
The first client brought up her losses just at the end of our first session together and so we did not do anything other than just sit together and give permission for grief. During our second session we spent about half of the time on the topic of her loss and it’s meaning to her. I asked a lot of questions because she seemed unable to really know how to express her loss. So the questions I asked were around what her sensations were as she learned about the fire, then saw the extent of it and realizing that all was lost, and the ramifications of her home burning down. We spent sometime exploring what she wanted to take from this event in her life, and how that fit with what she wanted from our sessions, and so it began to dovetail with her other stated goal of changing the nature of her relationship with personal intimacy. I introduced the time-line of loss, and how loss is both vertical and horizontal, and she felt that tracing her losses would be a helpful launching point for her to help her understand where she was standing on the issues of loss and intimacy. She is not a client who wants to use nature, but she was open to taking her time-line of loss into a nature setting to help her feel grounded as she created it.
The second client I want to mention is also a fairly new client. We have met three times. She came in to see me because she is very unmotivated and angry, and because her husband insisted she “see someone” because she seems angry at him a lot. As she reviewed a list of ways she feels stuck, I was very aware that she was outlining great losses in her life: she had moved away from her friends and family, she had adopted a child that had a personality that challenged her, she was feeling estranged from her husband due to their differing political views, and had stopped working. Unlike the first client I mentioned, however, with this client I did not feel inclined to go toward the grief. As I questioned myself about this I realized that I was sensing that her grief was seeming to have a function in her being stuck, in the sense that it was almost a rationalization for remaining stuck. As we would move toward expressions of personal change, she would lapse back into conversation regarding the losses through reflection on some aspect of what her husband or son or neighbor had done which was making it difficult and painful for her. And so in some ways it seemed her grief was like a deflection or distraction. And so I began to use statements that would include both aspects together, such as, wondering how we could honor her losses as she made changes, and, how we might re-make aspects of her life rather than jump to changes. This led us to explore just how difficult and scary changes are, her felt sense that she has always avoided change and just how limiting that type of avoidance can be. Which of course helped crystalize aspects of a deeper need she was trying to articulate. She, also, is someone who does not want to take things outside, but she was willing to start a 5 minute morning meditation after dropping her son at school, by parking in the neighborhood park and meditating in her car. (Maybe at our next session she will feel comfortable enough rolling the window of her car down during her meditation time.)
I was struck by the contrast between these two clients, both of whom have aspects of grief in the session but which called up much different reactions inside of me.
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For the brain change module, I want to talk about a client that I have actually seen for years. Until about 12 months ago, she and I were working steadily on her emotional regulation and ability to have typical relationships-where she was able to engage in a relatively steady guarded openness with a few individuals, and have fewer and fewer episodes of deep and difficult depression. We worked a lot on just communication between the two of us to establish a working level of trust. Then at about that time she began to take leaps in her emotional capacities. It actually seemed to me that during that time she was changing from a “therapy” client, to a “coaching” client in that she could start to look at a broader view of goals and states of her being, as she had mastered a level of emotional regulation. Anyway, after the first brain change module she and I began to really concentrate on brain states, and for the first time she came on board with daily meditation, and the idea that her body informed her mental state. Then she broke up with her boyfriend and had a lot of feeling states telling her she needed to be back with him. We talked about how her body was “detoxing” from the relationship and as it did that it was similar to a diet detox in which we can have unreasonable cravings. She appreciated having a different viewpoint than just, “I must really want to be with him because I am crazy” viewpoint, and that helped her withstand the desire to contact him and start the cycle of difficulties in their relationship again. When I was at this past toolbox I had an urgent call from her as she had snapped back, contacted him and then deeply regretted their interchange, and felt hopeless and out of control. Through phone contact I led her back into a meditative state in which she again connected to the self she had been associating into through her daily meditations. At the end of the call she stated she felt fragile and vulnerable, but better connected to the self she was moving toward. At our meeting this week she reflected that she had quickly moved away from the intense feelings of snapping back, and had the sensations that her cravings had “dissolved” and were such that she did not even think about them since our phone call. I am aware that some aspects of therapeutic theory (not all) would suggest that she decided to contact him while I was gone due to the fact that there was greater physical distance between she and I and that I had left during a time she ordinarily would have scheduled an appointment with me. And that therefore, part of the work of therapy would entail psychological interpretations regarding that issue, then “worked through”. The use of brain change theory, and coaching principles however, appeared to have a more client-based approach, concentrating on her ability to move to her desired state of being and making progress that she both utilized immediately and was proud of, strengthening the relationship she has with her self and providing for more opportunities for her to make independent decisions.
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opps. That was supposed to go in the grief module discussion post.
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I want to discuss a new client. At our first session she presented with a very passionate desire to overcome her phobia regarding commitments, especially those to other people-as in intimate relationships. We spent the majority of our first session with me trying to really understand her and articulate the deeper need, screen for safety, etc. As I was preparing to close the session she said she wanted to mention something-and that was, that she is a clinical psychologist. Now, I don’t know about you guys, but psychologists scare the bee-geezes out of me. So right away I knew I needed to pay attention to my level of affective arousal as she said that. I realized then she had really dodged around my typical questions in which what a person does for their living usually gets answered, and so I was also surprised at myself for having “missed” something. And then she said she needed to tell me one more thing. And I am looking at the clock, because I had heard the little jingle of our doorbell telling me someone else was waiting to see me, and I know how it is when people tell you 5 minutes before saying goodbye they want to tell you something. That given human nature, those 5 minutes are going to be filled with the real reason they wanted to come to see you. So she let me know that her home had burned down a few months ago. Everyone was safe, but everything was gone. And she quickly let me know that everyone she had turned to to help her process the loss had disappointed her (my words, not her). O.K. 2 minutes to my need to walk out my office door and greet someone else. Thank goodness for EBI. I put aside my fear of psychologists, modulated my breathing to be slower than hers (hers was quite fast at that time), silently called to my vision council and imagined her vision council sitting with her (and in my imagination they were all sobbing and grieving), and I let myself sink into what experience I may be having if I had just lost everything I was used to and many of the things I loved and then felt betrayed by my family and friends, and said, “It sounds to me that you haven’t really had permission to fully grieve.” Who knows if that was helpful but I know it came from a place of just being human. She began to sob and we sat there for a full five minutes before she started to calm. I let her know I needed a minute to let my other client know I knew they were there. And when I returned she was ready to say goodbye, and let me know she appreciated our session.
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Hello again, everyone. This is my summary post. Something that I remembered that I did with the client I talked about before in this post, was that when he was first beginning to meet with me, he so often felt he just needed to give up on his vision for being a calm, strong, confident, father. He had a very active inner critic that once he started saying outloud what the critic was saying to him, was pretty brutal. So I asked him if he would go to his children’s rooms when they were asleep, and be with them for awhile, noticing their breathing and then in a way syncing his breathing with theirs. Then, if he would put one hand on their backs to really feel their heart beat along with their breathing, and one hand on his heart, while he spent time envisioning the kind of dad he is becoming. That is, really feeling into his own body the qualities that he was moving toward. He told me that this was a very emotional experiment for him. He ended up doing what I felt was maybe a lot of grieving, while he also reaffirmed his deeper need and willingness to not give up what he wanted to accomplish. It also seemed to help remind him that he could move toward his objectives out of love, not out of fear, which tended to quiet the inner critic. We were able to use the breath and heart-beat thing later, when one of his kids would get upset, and he could see that child’s base line was way off of what he experienced being with when that child was asleep. So he didn’t have to interpret what his kid was doing as a direct assault on his parenting self-worth, and take it for what it was-his kid was getting dysregulated. It also helped him be aware of his own baseline and doing things to keep his own breathing and heart rate steady and as slow as possible when his kid was dysregulated. So many things we have done are neurologically based, and fortunately, just learned by many of us automatically as we are growing up. But for one reason or another, he didn’t get a chance to experience that first hand, so we did these and other experiments, and they seemed to help.
In summary, though, I am kind of glad that I don’t really need to remember which part of the brain is doing what when I am working with clients. Or at least, I don’t really keep that in mind, and hope that is ok. Because I always forget anyway, and I think if I was thinking about that I would not even be able to keep up with the conversation in the room. I take a lot of reassurance from knowing that cultures that are more earth-based, use things like ritual and ceremony, which seem like they are based on neurology and even are a lot like experiments, and saw that they worked to help with real change in people-even before there were MRIs and CTs to see what was happening in the brain. Let’s me off the hook for remembering that stuff.
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Hey Sandy, what a great post! How great to change up what you were used to doing with her and let her experience herself in a different way. I had to grin when I read about handing her a note. How cool. And what a friendly note it was, no aspect of shaming or blaming or any of the things that could have happened inadvertently if you had directly said, ‘you know, you might find different things for yourself if you are silent’. What a neat technique.
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Hi Ben, as usual, I can hardly keep up with all that you are doing and creating. I am glad to hear about how others are slowly and gently taking their clients outside. I feel particularly challenged in that department because only two clients of mine during this entire year have actually approached me to do the nature-connected coaching, and the other clients in which I use coaching practices are either clients that want coaching to stay inside or therapy clients with whom coaching principles seem to be helpful. So I am always looking for ways to get that nature connection and, hopefully, help that grow.
I am glad, too, to hear our success in meeting your clients as a coach and how helpful it is to have that role when there are multiple people involved with the same client. You seem to convey such a deep sense of knowing the boundaries and how you keep yourself in the boundaries in a way that is helpful for your client. -
Hi Adrianna, I am so glad for you that you are going backpacking soon. I looooooved all of your ideas of ritual and ceremony being woven into your trip. And how open you are with your friend and with the experience, and all of the learning that is/will be happening. I hope you have a really good time. I am eager to hear how it all works and what you end up doing and how that is for you.
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Hi Cory, I am in agreement with you about how change can feel like magic. I have a quote I wrote in my daily planner that I am not sure about. It says, “Transformation is not something you do but something that happens when the conditions are right”. I am conflicted by the quote because transformation is certainly something that you do but maybe the things we do is to created the right conditions. So when you are talking with your client about his conflicts and past hurts regarding the person he wants to see with “no past”, and he is watching and reading about brain change, and seeing and hearing about your own transformation, it is all toward creating the right conditions so transformation will occur. And then when it does it is magic.
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Hi Ben! This sounds like it could have been very complicated. Family dynamics being what they are. And yet, it seems like you tied things together so well in just asking her what would be most beneficial for her at this point. And she got down to it. How wonderful. I loved hearing about it.
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Hey Cory, Good to see your post! I thought you were out of the country now. Anyway, I get the feeling from what you write about with this client that she was feeling she got just the right amount of space for herself when she was with you. I think it can be a hard judge of coaching presence to feel where the line is for each client of just where they feel the best place for the coach is. She seemed to really resonate with your presence and make some awesome leaps of faith and trust to let old stuff die and really grieve it. Cool.
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Taylor! Hi, hi! It is so good to read your post. I doubly appreciated the client you brought forward with the issue of overwhelm. I feel like some days that is the issue de jour in my office. Your explaination of education and support grounded me, too! I appreciate reading the steps you take and how it feels you give them to your clients in just the right size at just the right time. I am reminding myself how I want to sit with my vision council even more when I am with clients, so I, too, can be calm enough and grounded enough to give the right-sized bites to me clients. Miss you already. I hope we can stay connected on our various paths through EBI.
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-Hey, Sandy, so good to read your post! I hear you really hanging in there with this client and putting it in the perspective of a broader sense of toggling between two feeling states seems to make so much sense to me. I had to smile when you said that your client seemed to talk a lot during the sessions. I think I know that sensation. For me it can feel a little difficult if that occurs a lot because I wonder if my client is just spinning with the same information and feeling states and deflecting aspects of possible change. Plus, sometimes I start to wonder if I am just a warm body and start to question how far that goes in being of assistance to someone! Where to put the boundary on those things is something I still play around with and question when I review my day. Especially now, as I have the personal goal of “nudging” people a bit more than I maybe have in the past.