David Raffelock
Forum Replies Created
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Summary Post
I love doing partwork. I find it to be one of the most effective ways to unveil internal dynamics and promote energetic movement within oneself. My biggest takeaways from the Partwork 2 intensive were how to track the energy and presence of parts and noting when other parts come up, and the importance of either matching the energy of a part of empowering the part by modelling the energy it wants to take on. I’m honestly really disappointed that I’m currently unable to do deep partswork and soul work. I recently hit the one-year mark at my job, and I can only think of, at best, a handful of clients that I’ve been able to do deep work with.
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Initial Post:
The parts work session that stands out to me was one I had at work. This is one of two times I’ve been able to do parts work with clients, mainly because I have only received permission once to use this technique with clients. The client I am writing on was not the one I was given permission to use this intervention with. Let’s call him John.
John came out to the field mid-week with another client. They had both traveled and gone through the intake process the previous day and made it out to the desert midafternoon. John presented as highly functional, quite different from his near peer who was delusional and presented symptoms of borderline personality disorder. The group of clients they were coming into was particularly challenging – a group put together for being more “failure to launch” than recovering addicts; their culture consisted of mostly racism, sexism, frat and hazing culture, and blatant toxic masculinity. The culture of the group was not an emotionally safe space for John and I could tell he was using caution.
The next day I made some time to get to know John and why he was in treatment. Depression, video game addiction and substance abuse, inability to hold a job. I used some of my own story to build rapport and offer some tools for self-reflection and insight, explaining to him how some of my own parts interact with one another and how they used to serve me but no longer do. He had a profound interest in parts work and used what little I told him to understand aspects of what was happening for him. The week went on and there was no time to work one-on-one.
Finally, during the last night of the week in the field, John declared he was going to leave the program and that nothing anyone said could change his mind. Given the circumstances, I was able to go off and do some work with him. We were able to name some of his parts that were coming up for him: the inner child, the escape artist, the connector, and the sage. As we moved from part to part, deeper and deeper into the internal dynamic that was at play, we began to uncover what was happening. His inner child was so deeply afraid of failure and abuse that it was hiring the escape artist to make John leave the program to protect him from harmful relationships and the feeling of failure. John’s sage and connector wanted to stay. The connector wanted to use the opportunity to strengthen John’s ability to connect with others, to himself, and to nature. The Sage knew that John had wound’s that could find some resolution and healing while in treatment. It felt like a debate, not dissimilar to the dichotomous disagreements of our duel-party system. There was no resolution in sight.
What was even more interesting was our work with the Soul. I’m convinced he wasn’t able to access the Soul, or that his parts were overrunning the Soul. Every time I guided him to Soul, using multiple techniques, he would jump into another part. Either the Connector or the Escape artist – mostly the escape artist, who had mastered the art of sounding like he was deeply contemplative and doing what was best while secretly sticking to an agenda. It became a game for a while to catch different parts trying to play the Soul.
The outcome of the session was remarkable to me. John had unearthed and gained insight into an internal dynamic that had run his life for years. He spoke from his deepest patterns and coping mechanisms and from his deepest wisdom and desires to change. And yet, despite this new insight and giving voice to his inner wisdom, he was unwilling to change anything. John named that he was actively choosing to go against his inner wisdom and choose escapism, fully acknowledging that he may not have another opportunity to be supported in this change the way he could in treatment.
I later found out that John’s father was emotional absent and abusive, creating a story John took on that he was unworthy of love and connection, was not acceptable the way he was, and anything he did was never enough. John therefore left places and people before he could fail or be abandoned first. His core wounds were so painful and he did everything in his power to avoid feeling them.
To be honest, this story is nothing outstanding or unique for the clients that I work with. The part that I had a hard time sitting with was his stern decision to continue his patterns. He knew the impact of his decision would inhibit change and go against his deeper insight, and for the first time ever he owned what he was doing and had done for years. What also intrigued me was John’s inability to either access Soul or how parts may have taken on the leader role and potentially impose their dominance on the Soul or try to impersonate it.
When an individual is so wounded and/or protective, their desire and ability to change, even when guided into the contemplative stage of change, may be defeated by the desire to protect their core wound. This story has me sitting with some deep questions. Does some level of healing our core wound need to happen before accessing Soul and living a soul directed life, or must we tap into and honor soul-directed actions in order to begin healing? How does one push past defenses and patterns that block them from alignment with Soul, and is it possible if the patterns are too strong or the client is unwilling?
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Summary Post
This model of long-term goals and milestones is such a vital anchor for the coaching. Two things stand out to me that would be different with my work with clients after this module. One is that I would likely have more consistency with client by selling packages, and that clients would ultimately find more benefit from my coaching because of it. The other is that having this long-term plan can serve as a valuable tool for staying on track in sessions and lead to more concise and potent sessions with clients.
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Initial Post
In reflecting on this module, I feel the completion of a circle or circuit. It makes sense to me why this was the last intensive of the program. With the foundations modules I was able to begin to show up as a coach and a guide. Through trainings on grief, trauma, brain/chance, gestalt/partswork, I was able to hone my skills as a competent guide. This training brought it back to coaching for me – how to seem and truly become a professional coach. This brought my mindset back fully to being client-driven and reminded me that even if I offer skills as a guide, that the work in coaching is always client-driven.
This differs drastically from my current job as a wilderness therapy field guide. Some clients aren’t driven enough to get out of bed or brush their teeth, let alone build relationships, look inward, and take control of their lives. So unfortunately, I haven’t had the opportunity to practice these skills as much as I’d like, so I’ll illustrate a scenario in which I could utilize these skills.
My scenario client is someone who fits into my ideal client criteria. He is a man in his mid-twenties, “successful” and functional to societies standards. He has noticed even though he completed college and found himself a stable career path, he lacks the feelings of meaning, purpose, and connection in his life, and he is drawn to coaching for those reasons.
Establishing the coaching agreement begins with the intake process, where I send incoming clients an intake questionnaire and a disclosure form to sign. Our first session begins with a brief review of the agreements/disclosures. Applying what I learned in the long-term coaching module, I would want to establish the issue and the want, inviting elaboration of what his life looks like to develop a substantial understanding of the big picture. This would include diving into his job, routines, relationships, passions and hobbies, times he has felt most alive and himself, and times when he retreats into unhealthy patterns. From there I would offer some guiding reflections, such as: I noticed you glossed over the questions about your relationships; or, I noticed you seemed disappointed when talking about your lack of time for self-care.
From there we would work toward deeper need, and then a goal for the session. Ideally the session includes a threshold experience building off of deeper need. Regardless, integration would include the construction of a plan. What is the destination? What are some milestones? How to we make the deeper need our foundation of the work to come? What is a mantra or ritual to empower the need/vision and the drive toward goals? What is a one-time action to take to signify a deep commitment to change? I would then follow up with an email outlining the session, what the destination and milestones are (adding some if necessary), offering ways in which my training/skills can help achieve those milestones, and offer a few long-term package options at different price point to choose from.
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Summary Post
Reflecting on the Grief module, I am struck by how simple the main teachings were, yet how profound they might seem to those experiencing grief. In nature, they follow the principle, “who you are and what you feel is okay.” Grief seems to be its own process of feeling, behaving, story-telling, and so on that we often halt because we’re not taught to feel or honor ourselves and who/where we are. Grief shows up in so many ways and I’m so glad to have the lens to identify it and the skills to honor it and hold space for it when and where there’s a need. In my work, just knowing how to identify grief and educate clients on what it is and how it shows up is a valuable skill. It seems like another dance move in my vocabulary. Knowing when to take steps out of the coaching “format” to dance with grief is a skill I’m grateful for and look forward to continuing to refine.
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Initial Post
My most recent shift was a 15-day shift with the women’s group. One of my clients – I’ll call her Jane so as to not disclose her real name – is one of the more intense clients I’ve worked with. For most of her childhood she was sexually, physically, and emotionally abused by her biological father. While there’s plenty of material to write about with this particular client, I’ll stick to a short bit. This is a client I have worked with now for 30 days total.
Jane had finally, in her twenties, begun to bring justice to her father. She was in our program for the final hearing of her father’s trial. She had been putting a lot of focus on letting go of her father. She even left the program for a few days to fly for the hearing. This symbolized her “funeral” for him. However, she was trying to rush the process of grief and box it up into simply grieving her father. A lot of her emotions that came up around him would be met by the mentality of “I need to move on,” “he doesn’t get anything else from me,” “if I feel this, I’m giving him more than he deserves.”
While there might have been some truth for her in those statements, I noticed how her language indicated a need to grieve more than her relationship with her father, and to feel all of the feelings of hurt, violation, betrayal, disbelief, rage, and so on, that needed to be felt and expressed.
Working with clients in this setting is incomparable to coaching clients at times. Most of them don’t want to be there; some of them know they have to while others don’t believe they do; and most of them are in pre-contemplation with most things. They are also there for severe trauma, substance abuse, or other mental health struggles. Furthermore, working with clients is mostly in a group setting. Needless to say, progress looks different than with coaching clients. After working an entire week with this client and building relationship/rapport, I began to chip away at the grief she had inside and didn’t know how to move through.
One night, after a group where she shared about her need to let go of him, I left her with an invitation: that not all grief is the loss of a loved one and can include a loss of who we once were, a loss of something we deserved to have, and loss of a past/future. I watched as strong feelings moved through her and something seemed to have clicked. She took space after the group.
We talked the next few days about what she was beginning to see: that there was grief there, beyond the loss of a parent being sentenced to prison; the grief was for a small child who lost her innocence, her feeling of safety in the world, a childhood filled with wonder and awe and wonder, a mind and life that wasn’t governed by trauma, and so on. While those are not easy things to process and feel, especially for someone who gets escalated and aggressive on a daily basis, she became open to some of the work ahead around her life story.
The other part I’d like to share about her is some work we did the last week I worked with her. Jane had a big week. She read aloud in front of the group letters from her mother and step-father about the impact she has had on their lives. In these stories, I noticed how her lability and explosive anger/aggression was minimal in the program compared to her primary attachment figures. Later that week the group had a rough day. We backpacked around a mountain and through a scree field. While this is fairly easy for some, Jane on the other hand, being obese and having broken both knees in the part, struggled. Finally, she has a minor fall and all those stories of her aggression and verbal abuse towards others I experienced toward me. She wouldn’t even allow me to clean her scrapes.
Two days later, once the group dynamics had settled and she was open to feedback, I offered an invitation to look at her anger. In a very direct way, since this was one of my last days working with her, I reflected how all of her anger is taken out on people in her life that are safe. When really, all that anger is meant for someone else who was never safe enough to express it towards. This served as a reminder for her and myself that anger is a part of grief, and that anger is also a secondary emotion. The primary one’s beneath the anger are what need to be felt, expressed, and processed in a safe way in order to move through grief.
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Summary Post
This module has been helpful for me to develop a lens of how to work with different clients. I’ve become a pretty huge nerd on all the neuroscience we covered in this module, and I’ve become known by clients and coworkers for tying in the science behind mindfulness and change. Teaching how change works in the brain to clients has also helped to empower progress. When I point out, “you just carved a new neuropathway in your brain, now it’s time to strengthen it,” there’s a drive to change that wasn’t there before. I’m grateful to be empowering my guiding with a backbone of brain science.
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Initial Post
Michael said in the beginning of the intensive, “In order to change your mind, you need to change your brain. In order to change your brain, you need to focus your mind.” This statement incapsulates what I took from this F2F. Everyone’s mind is unique, and so is how they navigate the world. If there’s one thing that stands out from this intensive, it is the perspective of everyone operating in the world through a lens of unique connections, filters, and stories.
One client comes to mind when reflecting on the brain and change. She is in her late thirties, has children in elementary and middle school, suffers from severe depression, lost her marriage, her home, and her nursing license. She spent her entire life trying to build a life based on external sources of validation: career, husband, kids, house, etc. She sinks into such a deep depression that in her first few weeks she didn’t get out of bed most days and wouldn’t respond to anyone.
By the time I worked with her, she was about 4 weeks into the programs. Some days she would take hours to get out of bed, and spent those hours stewing in shame for “ruining” her life and convincing herself that her life will never recover. In her eyes, her marriage with her husband ended because of her. According to her therapist, her husband was as emotionally unavailable as a robot and she was only acting out of desperation for emotional contact and having her emotional needs met. But in her eyes, her husband is the epidemy of perfection and she’s the worst person in the world.
I worked with her for two weeks. The first week my approach was too aggressive for her. Her self-critical narrative was too engrained to budge, and my questioning was too deep and triggered strong dissociative responses. Even when I taught Daniel Siegel’s model of integration, rigidity, and chaos, she fit it into her story of her husband being perfect and her being hopeless and spiraled into critical self-talk leading to dissociation. Everything about her was in precontemplation, and her willingness to change was minimal. After backing off a bit and adapting my style, the next week I just focused on building a relationship with her and seeking to understand/validate what she was feeling.
One of the biggest shifts in her I noticed – the beginning of contemplation and a new story – was after an attempt I made to show up and model healthy relationships. The group that week was operating inefficiently and not getting enough of their therapeutic goals done. We had planned to have a big, epic day hiking to a canyon, rappelling in, hiking and rappelling through, then hiking back to camp. Everyone was excited for the big day. I decided to make a tough decision to call off the canyon because it would leave no time for the clients to do the goals they needed to and had avoided all week.
The whole group was upset, and all handled it in different ways. I felt confident in my decision but something didn’t feel right on my part. I figured out I wasn’t happy with how long it took me to make the call and break the news. Once the group was back together for lunch, I made amends to the group, shared where I was coming from, what I felt bad about, how I wanted to show up better in the future, and offered space for suggestions for how I could show up better in the future.
Watching me show up in relationship to the group like that with humility, admitting where I felt I was wrong, and seeking repair, she made a connection she had never made: that her husband had never done that. The belief that her husband was finally flawless was shattered, and the story that everything was all her fault began to shift. She made a new connection in her brain, and stepped into the stage of contemplation. I haven’t worked with her since then, about 4 weeks ago, but I hear that she’s doing much better and finally believes her life can look different after treatment.
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Summary Post
The brain is so cool! I’ve really enjoyed exploring Daniel Siegel’s work and incorporate my knowledge of interpersonal neurobiology at work a lot. I guide clients through his Wheel of Awareness practice fairly often, and usually explain a bit about integration, differentiation, linkage, chaos, and rigidity. Clients can always resonate with the experience of a dysintegrated mind.
The stages of change is vocabulary that a lot of my co-workers use. It’s a lens I can certainly continue to develop and integrate. I’m amazed by how many stages people can be in at any given moment in regards to different issues, and how one big issue can have multiple subsets of contributing factors, each requiring their own process through the stages of change. An example is the clients I work with – addicts. Most of them have come out of pre-contemplation with their addiction as a whole, hence being in treatment. However, there are so many factors that play into their addiction: certain behaviors, relational styles, habit patters, etc. While they move through planning and action in their recovery process, there are still many aspects of their recovery that remain in the pre-contemplative or contemplative stages.
I have to remember that just because someone is in treatment, doesn’t mean that they’re out of pre-contemplation with everything that they do. My job has been described to me as moving energy. Certainly, I’m learning how to move energy from pre-contemplation into further stages. I think this will be helpful in my coaching so I’m more confident working with clients who need help moving energy towards contemplation and later stages.
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I remember that session being very powerful for me, and how I knew on a visceral level that those parts needed to be seen and heard. This is a good reminder for me to let go of attachment to outcome and trust the process. I sometimes have expectations for myself as a guide that are reliant on the outcome of a clients process. Sometimes energy just needs to move and parts just need to be empowered to come out, whether it’s to voice needs and requests from other parts or simple to be allowed to be themselves. That session is a good reminder of the power of letting parts out and giving them permission to simply be themselves.
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Lauren,
I appreciate how well-rounded the work you two did together sounds – looking at all aspects of life through the lens of soul-directed living. I think that’s really important for clients in order to begin to see just how remarkable their life can be when they’re committed to themselves. I also appreciate your notes on the session Wendy had with Michael. The things you pointed out were some of the most transformational and informative examples of powerful partwork that he offered us.
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Kaity,
What a powerful story. This makes me think of something we learned in the trauma module: how important it it to meet the client where they’re at, maintain emotional contact, and not try to “fix” them or rush past their current experience. Even though this is more grief than trauma, the principle remains, and you followed it. This is a good reminder that having a desired outcome for a session could lead to missing the process that needs to happen, and that allowing space for grief, such as you did, can be exactly what needs to happen. Perhaps it was even the deeper need and threshold that the client needed all along.
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Rachel,
What a beautiful post. I’m blown away by your connection to spirit, your intuition, and your use of metaphor in daily life. How your intuition informs your coaching is inspiring. You’ve illustrated, with your client, how important it is to “take the time” with grief. He needed to process and feel some of the grief in order to fully understand and move forward in his current situation. What a great reminder to honor the process and that grief “takes the time is takes if you take the time.”
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Kaity,
You brought up a lot of good points! It’s amazing how much people’s world is shaped by what they can and cannot see. This experience you shared speaks volumes to that. The victim roles, from my experience, seems to be the hardest one to move out of and move into a place of empowered choice.
I also resonate with the trap of thinking what’s best for a client. It can be so difficult sometimes to not try to guide them in a direction based on your own agenda.
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Rachel,
Your coaching is so thorough and adaptive! I’m amazed by your natural ability to do this work. I love how in this experience with this client, you were savvy in doing emotional work despite her initial distaste of it. I think you had a great point about therapy. I think therapy is amazing, and I think you nailed it: that, while helping clients to illuminate patterns and come out of pre-contemplation is helpful, forward movement needs to happen and needs a clear view of deeper need to be sustainable.