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Brain and Change One Dec 2019 Forum
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Thank you Ivy for your post. I really appreciate how you have labelled the process of change Sheri was referring to. “Being touched by the idea of coaching through the years (contemplation) but taking your time at committing to a program (planning) and doing the program with the label “nature connected coach in training (action)”. I can relate to this as well, and for me the organic process started years ago, in the 1990s even.
In 2000 I applied for a coaching for executive position, they really wanted me, but my resume also landed on the desk of a software engineering firm who made a very appealing offer quicker, so there I went… and here I am, down that route for 20 years, navigating a world that was foreign to me and that I never fully understood.
The thoughts of becoming a coach stayed with me for years. I was never fulfilled at work but the situation was comfortable enough, I performed very well, I was enjoying myself, and being well paid. Then one day, late 2018, it became truly unbearable, and this was the breaking point for me. Another reorg parachuted me into a very frustrating position, and it became truly difficult. I had lost all no joie de vivre, patience, positivity… The doc wanted to put me on depression med and was ready to refer me to a shrink. There was no way!! And this is when I realized it was time for me to take back ownership of my Life.
That is when I decided to commit to EBI, and to move into action. When I enrolled into the program, I remember stating that I was committed to not making my situation better at work, because I was afraid that if it did, I would take the path of least resistance and stay. Since, things have gotten better at work and I am noticing that my mind does go “places”. To stay in the game, it takes revisiting, recreating, recommitting to my Vision. And the Vision has to have more weight, be more rewarding otherwise it will be natural to question it. And things have matured in my head. Pursuing my next chapter with coaching should not be about trying to fix and run away from something but rather come from a place of creating what I really Love and moving forward towards a compelling Vision and act like my Life depends on it. Despite the insights and the knowledge, it takes commitment, and intentionally recommitting almost daily. My experience does provide some insights as to working with clients, to better understanding the stages of change and realize that ambivalence will likely part of the process and to give it the space to transform back into the Vision the client is trying to create.
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SUMMARY POST
There is so much this module has taught me, and not only from a coaching perspective but about me, my brain, my mind, my thoughts, my patterns, what I do with them, my triggers, who I am when I get triggered, how all of that shapes my life, how they limit me. This new level of awareness is helpful and scary at the same time as it transfers the ownership back to me. And I am noticing I am not always willing to take it. These first hand experiences give me an appreciation that the work involved when one wants to change is really not easy. Even for those who have some awareness and knowledge of the brain, it takes commitment, dedication, care, and a great deal of patience and nurturing. That point needs to be fully recognized. As uncomfortable, humbling and painful as these last couple months have been for me in terms of coaching, it has led to great insights. It has informed me about who I am when I coach, and my current limitations. Moreover, these struggles are not specific to my own journey and it is safe to assume that the clients will go through similar processes. Going through it personally is helping me be a better coach, and better support them through their growth. -
INITIAL POST:
Way beyond due but here ya go….
There is a ton here that I learned with my client and how I worked with Brain and Trauma. I was lucky in that I had a client that had been through therapy for almost a decade but was now moving past her past trauma and wanting to really make an impact with her work in the community.
The coaching agreement ~ we had established that we were going to be working in long term coaching (8 sessions) due to the fact that she was wanting to integrate big plans for her business but also be more directed to her Soul-Purpose. The sessions ended up building on each other over a weekly basis.What I enjoyed and learned a ton from was how Partswork can be integrated in when your working deeply with Soulwork andhlep work towards long term change. It’s like from Roger Strachans writing in “Self, Soul Sprit”….Soul is the gestalt of our being and therefore greater than the sum of its parts. Soul is the essence of our totality, the essence of our being”. Knowing that the Soul is unique is just the first step and then we worked with her parts overtime to piece out exactly what her long term vision was and what state of being she wanted to hold while we worked together.
Partswork while working with understanding Brand & Change is not only profound for me but so exhilarating. I am excited because I still get to check in with this client and see her progress on a weekly basis and it’s really inspiring.
Another piece that I found interesting was trying to be more aware of the brain science going on while we were in our coaching sessions. I found myself trying to track where she was internally…most of the time getting lost..haha. But when I did make connections it was cool to find out that I could almost follow her growth in insight as well as emotions when her brain was working from the hippocampus. It was like it in perceptual memory, then moving into factual memory, and then had the ability to move into more of creating a story behind her work, then moving into integration. So RAD!
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Sheri I liked how honest you were in your post. And can totally relate to now feeling the client right away and then connecting overtime. Thanks for sharing!
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Wow Nadine. Love your post. Very detailed!
I like your mention of the intro and how you shared the Grand Canyon story to bring her into the moment at the beginning of the session. Then your phone exercise section 🙂 Very creative!What I was curious about was how you felt when that exercise felt as your said – “Dead.” By reading what you stated it must of felt pushed onto the client? Just was curious on how that lead to your deeper need.
Amazing job and sounds like a great session! -
Brain and change 1 Summary post
What I am taking away from this module is that the human brain is so very complex! And the more we understand it the better we can guide our clients.
“Neurons that fire together wire together” and with Nature Connected Coaching we are helping clients create new memories and new neural networks through threshold experiences, ceremony, rituals. One of the things I like so much about NCC is that each client, “issue”, session each has seemingly endless possibilities on how to help create a new experience with the client.
The stages of change portion is very helpful to see where a client is in there process and for myself as well!
Everything about the nervous system literally cuts right to the core and I look forward to becoming more aware of it on a personal level as practice to better guide my clients. -
Matt – When I initially read your reply (oh so long ago now), I really appreciated your take on my father’s myths. It put it in such a different perspective for me. Reading it again now, I appreciate it even more. As a daughter, I just want to roll my eyes and say ‘really, really you did that??!! I was there I know you didn’t…’ But looking at objectively, I see where for him this becomes more of a way to be in the story no matter how fantastical it has to be to make sense in his mind. So this ties back into the idea of euphoric expanded connection, even if it is short-lived. Since I think of myths as growing into something over time, this made me stop and think that doesn’t have to be the case. It can be a myth in as easily as 5 minutes as 5 years. Makes me want to explore this now even further as a coach. Thank you!
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Ben – So am curious when you could see the connections with your client and her changes, did this change anything in the way that you guide her? Where you said “I could almost follow her growth in insight as well as emotions when her brain was working from the hippocampus. It was like it in perceptual memory, then moving into factual memory, and then had the ability to move into more of creating a story behind her work, then moving into integration.” Because like you, I think it is rad to understand where the changes are going on but am still wrestling with how to apply this in a practical aspect.
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Nadine – Now that it has been a few months since you’ve posted your experience with Karen, have you had a chance to work with her again? Has she come to trust the decisions she is making and not judging herself? And, if not, have you had more time to reflect on how you helped her? It sounds like there is a real challenge with her to not get involved in the stories/myths that make up her life. I know this is something we have to always face with our clients but for some it will be more of a challenge. And she sounds like she has so many amazing accomplishments, that it would be potentially even more so.
I do really like the exercise you tried with her where you took her to her future self and asked her to look back to where she is now. It is a shame that didn’t work as well as hoped. For my yoga teacher training last month we had to write a letter to our future self and write a letter to our past self. There were no rules on how far in either direction. It was a cathartic exercise for me! It was also very interesting where each person put themselves in that situation. Maybe a modification/combo of what you did and that exercise could be worth exploring as a potential tool.
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SUMMARY POST: I admit, I didn’t relate as well to the brain learnings! I did have Mandy go back through with me and hit highlights, ask questions. That really helped bring more understanding to me but I’m not sure I will ever be the scientific one!
I do think understanding how our clients (and ourselves) go through the states of change is so important. And how we can be moving along fine, then suddenly we’re back into one of the states. As coaches, guiding through this with our clients can be both rewarding and challenging. And for what I want to take out of this, I see how important the states of change and working within them will be.
As I’ve been re-reading this section, story and myth are so relevant. More than I realized when we initially were learning this. Makes me want to learn more now on the whys, wheres and how we work with this.
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B&C initial post
I have a friend who is a DBSA (depression and bipolar support alliance) counselor who has referred several of his clients to me. I had some trepidation at first but as I have met with them and created coaching agreements I have recognized that a large part of establishing the coaching relationship is as simple as pointing out their strengths and letting them know I support them and believe it is possible for answers and solutions to emerge from their inner knowing and wisdom. One woman with whom I have recently done a phone intake, she herself is a psychotherapist, said what is personally most important to her in connecting with a coach or similar professional, is someone who genuinely cares. It was a succinct statement that reverberated for me in my relationship with the clients I am seeing who have seen numerous therapists for decades. It seems so simple, yet apparently, is not so common. So that is where I focus. Honest interaction where the positive acts as a scaffold of safety (and perspective) for looking at and feeling the pain that the client is working through to discover and live into next.
For one of my clients, the idea of neuroplasticity gave her hope. I find in general that explaining this concept to people offers them a path forward. It seems to provide a metaphor that moves the overwhelm into a manageable perspective. It seems people who enjoy being in nature easily relate to discovering and creating a new path, a trail, and understand that the old one may become overgrown and obsolete at some point as they walk the new one over and over! Upon hearing about neuroplasticity she got very excited realizing that she could change her patterns. Whenever she begins to feel overwhelmed she reminds herself of this concept and she calms down.
Grounding is really another metaphor, isn’t it? With this same client, on the first day we met (after a phone intake) I became acutely aware of her energy being all over the place. Almost every thought she spoke was followed by a subtext, a qualifier of possibility….story within story within story, making the solidification of a myth difficult. I pointed this out to her, introduced the concept of neuroplasticity discussed the concept of grounding, and offered some tools for achieving this. It hit home. And within a few months her myth-story which included new relationships and increased socialization became “I am now mentally healthy”. The people around her noticed the difference. The subtexts decreased dramatically. We are both aware that there is much more work to be done to create coherence of health in various realms. But after years of therapy I think these simple concepts gave her an anchor and a new ritual on which to solidify the therapy so that she was able to apply it in a new, useful and practical manner.
Of all the authors and researchers mentioned, Joe Dispenza is my go to. For me he embraces all the concepts discussed in Brain and Change and offers very cohesive and understandable and attainable application. What he includes, which I think is sadly lacking in our education in general, is the explanation and understanding of the unified (quantum) field. It is from this place that we can achieve heart and brain coherence and find a peace within ourselves that has the possibility of creating peace outside ourselves, and balance to the planet. I haven’t brought this into my coaching yet but as I better understand it, and can find the language, I intend to. I think it is extremely important .
Working with clients diagnosed as bipolar has given me insight into what Siegel discusses as a lack of integration of the various parts of the brain. It’s fascinating to see it manifest as the client jumps from one thought to the next without any connection, that I can figure out. According to Dispenza when you achieve brain coherence, or connection with the unified field the brain will automatically integrate. Siegel has various guidance/tools that he suggests for achieving integration that are more specific to where it is lacking. The Wheel of awareness should also help to create integration. I tried using this with the above client but she was not able to follow through with this…which may be because I am not comfortable with it?
Having relistened to Brain and Change, as I continue coaching I will focus more on creating a flow from severance to threshold, through story to myth, and then creating the ceremony and ritual. This is happening naturally where there is resonance with tools discovered or offered, depending on the need. It is not a sequence that I have been intentionally following but one I am beginning to better understand and feel more capable of implementing.
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Summary Brain and Change 1:
As I learn and understand more about the brain and neuroscience I am fascinated to relate my understanding to the various thinking and cognitive processes I observe in my clients. It also provides me insight into my own thinking patterns and the relationship between brain and body.
Joe Dispenza’s approach to integrating the various parts of the brain is very different and much simpler than Daniel Siegel’s. I should clarify, much simpler in its approach but not necessarily easier to achieve. Dr Joe Dispenza’s research indicates that connecting to the unified/quantum field through meditation automatically facilitates integration of the brain. I brought this up with a client whose immediate response was, ”I’ve been meditating since I was 16” as though she was an expert. I silently noted her defensiveness and continued our walk and conversation. We continued our discussion, recognizing how the milestones she has achieved since she began coaching. She pointed out changes she perceives in herself and how much more able she is able to manage her emotions under various circumstance, including trauma based triggers. I asked her to trust me as we gently moved back to the topic of meditation. Having recently listened to Richard Strozzi—Heckler on Somatic Coaching, I asked her how she felt when meditating. Without hesitation she described her thinking process of letting go of thoughts and anxiety. When I asked her how her body felt she said she just lets go of everything and is gone. She related it to Dispenza’s, Nobody, No thinking, No place and No one. I realized she has no conscious awareness when she goes into what she experiences as deep meditation. Gently I pursued the conversation and suggested to her that meditation is a process and practice in which the meditator can always go deeper. It’s an exploration of experience and can further the awareness of awareness skills that she strongly values. She thoughtfully took in this idea. We then had a brief conversation on brain wave states and how they relate to meditation. I suggested the gamma state is a creative space in which you can set intentions and create change. I asked her if she thought she could remain conscious while in a deep state of meditation. We walked as she thought. Looking around her she said, “Its similar to prayer.” She explained the why and how of her insight. This allowed her to be much more comfortable with the idea of conscious meditation. This concept also encouraged her optimism in regards to her path of personal healing. Throughout the walk we stopped several times to seek the metaphors of the forest. I did this to assist in empowerment by connecting the amygdala to the PFC. She wasn’t aware of why I did this but I could see the effect it had on her thinking as we were talking. I hope to bring this into future coaching sessions. She likes understanding the science that supports the changes she is making. I concur. A large part of the joy of learning and understanding the brain and neuroscience is that you can use it personally and professionally for developing insights, going deeper, and creating strategies for various goals. Seeing it in action is amazing.
