Michelle Pruden
Forum Replies Created
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Summary Post-
Something that I am most excited for is to watch clients, and people I work with with or even friends and family go through times of change and growth. I feel now that I have learned not to have my own agenda for clients (which took me a while to to truly feel) which has allowed me to feel like I can meet a person where they are. I know from expierence that it may take years to change, years to come to a final ah ha moment! But when it happens we get to be there to guide them through it.
A map that was given to us during this class is also very helpful in helping someone create a map of change. 1- what are you committing to?? 2- What are you doing or not doing that is helping you get to this goal?? 3-Competing commitments 4-Big asssumptions. Being aware of what your client is up against is important to only us as coached but more importantly for the client.
After our clients become aware of what needs to change it is a long process. It is important to make sure the deeper need really hits home for them. After we set an intention we are able to paint a picture, have them really feel/see/embody this new reality. Than we are able to set milestones for the next 1-6 months even 12 months, whatever the agreement is. The coaching plan is what is important to make an agreement with one another to commit to the future.
Long term coaching in my eye now is guiding people back to their soul. Through partswork I learned how long this might take. After having a coach and going through this program my wish to always have someone around to help guide or coach me. If only!
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Initial Post-
Why is long term coaching important? I feel like after understanding how our brain works during the process of change and how snap-back occurs with out ritual it is obvious the importance of of long term coaching. I feel like during most my sessions it takes awhile to get to the deeper need. You really have to build up to get down to someones deeper need and this alone can take a few sessions. Something that I keep in mind to is walking side by side with your client and going at their pace. We have to remember that change will not happen over night, and that there is no agenda on our end for our clients. Something that I keep in mind is things I have worked on and I am still working on, how many times I experience snap back, or times I have a good coaching session that right after ignore it till it gets brought back up… this is where the importance of having a coaching agreement with a person is very important.
We all understand that long term rituals creates change. They really need to be clear on what this looks like. Find out what they’re up against, what the story is that they have written for themselves. Where do their doubts and negative thoughts come from? What does their support from the outside world look like? We’re mapping out a change process for them. A change process that doesnt happen as fast as anyone likes….
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Summary Post-
I think it is important while working with clients to use parts work. I feel it helps connect the pieces together. I feel it helped me understand myself as a whole and why I do the things I do. After doing parts work I always am asking myself which part of me needs this? or wants this? Or what of me isn’t serving me a purpose anymore?
I have used partswork with my co-workers. This has been very valuable. At first guiding my clients or coworkers and encouraging them to talk to their parts didn’t seem natural but the more I have done it the more I realized it’s the level of comfort in myself, not my clients. If I am able to naturally guide my clients through this process it is always valuable for them. We all talk to ourselves anyways, right? haha
Moving forward while working in the wilderness therapy field I am excited to use this skill with my co-workers and clients. I hope to use it in experiment and to each person understand themselves more.
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Initial Post-
I feel that parts-work comes up and is helpful in almost any situation. When i reflect back on partswork and what I took away from the course was what it means and feels like to return to soul. Our parts are in service to our soul. What it meant to me to return back soul (and it felt like it took forever to understand this) was it felt like my soul was being controlled by my parts. When parts us are damaged or hurt it is hard for us to listen to our soul…it is hard to understand and feel what it is like to live that soul directed life. It is like peeling back the layer of that onion…
The expierence I had during this week of partswork 2 was incredible. During a session where I was a client was so interesting. I also want to say it helped to understand that clients might be resistant. This brings up the question of when to know to push their limits or not. I think this is where long term coaching is important. I was working with ryan during my session and he was someone who had been working with me for quite sometime. This is where knowing your clients limits and what parts of them are resistant and what parts shut down at certain times. Track your client and their gaining their trust and learning their boundaries is important. I also learned in this session that there is so many different ways to work with your client and all ways are 100 percent or right. This is where taking a risk and dancing in the moment is important.
I am looking forward to learning more about how to work with clients and play around with partswork. I feel this is a strong skill in my personal and professional life.
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Summary Post-
I don’t want repeat anything I just said in my initial post so I want to talk about a few things I really found important. Again this section on the brain really hits home and helped me understand how change works in our brain and how important it is to understand how our brain works to be able to track our clients and see what is happening for them.
I feel as coaches we will see a lot of snap-back and a lot of frustration from clients who don’t understand how long of a process change might take. I take it on as a personal challenge to try to be patient and be a guide for people going through change and not get frustrated myself when it is a longer process than I would like to see. Again we should not have our own agendas as coaches for our clients. It reminds me to be patient on myself and realize how important ritual is.
The power of our mind is crazy.. I recently was talking to a friend who quit smoking be being “hypnotized” at first I laughed than I became very interested in what had happened for them. I don’t know if I believe in such a thing. But I thought to myself what if the power of believing it was enough? An addiction that was physically and mentally hard to kick was done by putting a person into a state of mind and telling them they aren’t a smoker anymore. Is that all it took? Just an interesting thought I wanted to share. What happens to our brain when we slow down?
What I really took to heart form our few days leaning about the brain was the power of intention. I always said I was really good at manifesting things in my life. I now look at it different. We are attracting things into our life that we see, feel and believe with all of our being is what we want and need. I came home after this class and really tested it to the extreme. I dove in head first. I applied for a job that with all of my being new was the next step. I saw it and fully believed I had already gotten it. I than quit my job before even being offered a position at this new company… There was a three week period I thought man I really took this to the extreme and had a bit of a panic about it! I than was talking out loud to my mom and said I don’t want to pay rent….I want a new living situation where I don’t have to worry about money…my mom laughed…within tho weeks I was moving into a space where money wasn’t in the picture. Don’t worry after this I slowed down…Ok, I GET IT. My point is the power of change comes from within. Like that exercise with the snowball and the tree or going out and finding the animal tracks. It really does blow my mind!
So moving forward when I work with clients I will have this belief of guiding them to truly feeling and believing whatever it may be that they need. I will exercise this skill with them and really emphasize the power or believing and surrendering.
Again, this is the only way I can explain how I understand this lesson about how our brain works! haha also again, sorry for the delay! Jumping back into all of our lessons and finishing our online works is inspiring all over again.
Cheers friends!
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Initial Post-
What I took away from this lesson the most was the stages and process of “overriding existing programming.” Learning about how most of our actions and decisions are made out of being in auto pilot is kind of alarming. I guess I use the words auto pilot but in this course I will describe it as our non-conscious brain is what most of our actions and decisions come from. Our non-conscious brain remembers everything forever. This is kind of hard to explain in words how I understand the concept of how our brain works during change.
You know, I hear people talking about people becoming more “conscious” and at first I didn’t understand. In other words people are becoming “aware.” To me becoming aware is the first stage of change. I know for myself as soon as I am aware that there is something about myself or something about my life that needs to change than it becomes something that I can’t no longer ignore.
The metaphor I return to is, “Think of the programmer as the conscious brain.”
Braking old cycles and patterns is harder than ever. This is something that I have a challenge with. If it is me or someone around me. I wish so badly that once we become aware of something that needs to be changed than POOF there be it…. As a coach this is where I remember how important integration and long term coaching is. Old patterns never truly go away we just learn to override them with new patterns.
What comes to mind is how hard it is for people who go through addiction must be. Their unconscious mind tell them to pick up the drug or that drink.. that pain, sorrow, anger, even happiness results as an excuse to use. The habit than becomes physically addicting and their mind than tells them their body NEEDS it. How hard this must be to brake the cycle.
Something I have learned about myself and my patterns is when I need a change in my life or to completely change up my life I move, I start fresh. I don’t know if this is a bad habit or not but I know it brakes up homeostasis completely for me and it allows me to recreate new patterns. This is the only way I am able to really do so tho. So I understand how important it is to slowly go through these stages of change and not rush through them in order to not experience snap-back.
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Summary Post-
This course about grief has been one of the most helpful courses with EBI. Learning about how we process grief and the different stage are a huge help while working with clients. To be able to be present with ourselves and our clients as they working through whichever stage they are in and for us to be able to be a “guest house” for our clients is helpful in every way.
I see grief in a whole different way as a I did before. I see the process of change and closure differently as well and I HONOR incorporation more than ever now. Our goal is to help guide our client to figure out what to do NOW what do they need and how will they move forward with or without their grief. Honor where your client is in the stages of grief. Mirror them, empathize with them.
I know in all of my grief all I really ever needed was someone to listen and normalize what I was feeling. Through my transition now for example, I am about to move away from my community, my family, my comfort zone and I know it’s going to feel a lot like grief. I have had people in my life recently listen to what I am deciding to do and not empathize, they have negative comments for selfish reasons which I do understand but it creates doubt and fear of doing something that I feel is beneficial in my life. Than I have people who say that they will miss me and cherish these last few months and that they are so excited for me. How you show up for people makes a world of a difference. We are looking for someone to normalize how we feel and tell us it is ok to feel what we are feeling but that it will be OK. The difference is huge. So, the answer- show up for our clients with a safe place for them to talk and be accepted. Guide them through their process don’t push.
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Initial Post-
Learning about grief spoke loud and clear to me. What caught my interest was learning that we can grieve in more ways than the death of a loved one. Grief may come in many different circumstances. What I do know is when it arises in myself or in a client it is going to be heavy, it is a huge weight to carry around if not processed and or released.
Something I wanted to share and I am sure you all can relate with. I felt a lot of grief with graduating EBI. Something that was taught to us was the grief that comes from a decision you make, even if it does come from a decision you/they make you are STILL allowed to grief. I came home after graduating and also started a new job. I left a job that had supported me in many ways for over a decade. But a lot had shifted, mostly a lot had shifted in myself. I made the decision that it was time to move on/forward. I felt a lost of community from both EBI and the community this job had provided for me. It took me a few months, really till now to go through the motion of grieving…. I felt like I had lost two huge communities but what I learned going through this was it really does take TIME to heal or to get used to the new changes. It could be a transformation in positive ways for some but allow them to go through the process.
While working with clients I have learned that you can’t push them forward or though their process of grief. A huge tool is mirroring your client, meet them where they are, and walk side by side. I think it is important during their process of grief to not talk about what’s supposed to be or what could have been….talk about what is, talk about what is happening for them now.
Something that I wrote down that I circled a bunch of times is…”We are not taught to sit with the in-between, or the GREY area.” Why is this? Why aren’t we allowed to process things? We are told to be strong and to move on. Grief has always been weird for me. I always related it to the death of someone in my life. I never really felt like I had emotions towards it. I look at the people around me and how the grieve, and it explains everything for me. How are our clients are taught to process (grieve) is a great to have awareness around? Make sure you can sit with others, be aware of what grief looks like, and call it out when you see it…talk about it, If we can be ok with talking about it than it makes our clients feel safe.
SO, moving forward I believe when grief arises I want to create a safe place for them to talk about it,and process it. Be there to listen and reassure them they are where they are and that there is no timeline for grieving and moving forward/on. Be patient. Be kind.
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Kairon- I can relate and totally agree with what you say about getting caught up in the planning and visioning phase and that get stuck at the action stage. We can get so inspired and excited about change and the future but than action take a little more pushing and courage. And if you fail once or more you get stuck in the action phase thinking you will fail… This is very important as a reminder while moving forward to know your clients patterns and what they are up against so you can create a plan that is right for them..
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Nick I agree with having a bunch of questions to help lay down the foundation like you said. Really help create an idea of what does it look like? what do we/you want it to look like? What does the process look like? what can we foresee getting in the way? What is the timeline?
I feel really discussing and getting into the details and what they’re up against really makes it reality for someone.
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Nick this post just hit home for me.
I was talking about wishing the awareness to change was enough. You talking about the stage of change just reminded me why our jobs as coaches is so important. “while there can be awareness about making a change, if there is no NEED driving it than change won’t occur. There it is- the important of hitting a need for our clients.
I also wanted to comment on what you say about “we can program our awarness to alert us on whatever we desire.” this give me a feeling of power and reminds me that we are the programmers programming our brains and our lives. We can be in charge of what we are attracting into our lives.
Thank you Nick!
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Kairon0 I love this. I agree with you about being in a city. When I return to LA (I grew up there) I feel like people are walking around in this shell that doesn’t belong to them… That they are almost robot like haha…. I dont know… I read recently this new study about the connection between addiction and disconnection and this made more sense than anything else. I feel most issues arise out of disconnection. It feels so lonely. What if we all lived a soul directed life? Just imagine….
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Elizabeth- I would agree that I questio if bringing in partswork and diving into the soul to early is the best idea or not? It took me intill the end of EBI (our last week) to understand what it felt like to know and feel that I had could speak from my soul. and yes all of our parts are in service to the soul. But, than I question maybe getting to know our parts by doing parts work early on starts the healing process early and this may help them return to soul eventually.I know for myself I was able to return to soul when I felt stripped all of my parts and was able to than dive in? I dont know. I wonder what Michael and Ryan would say about when is the best time to bring in parts work.
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Nick- Initial Post Response. (Not sure if I am clicking the right button when responding) again sorry it has taken me so long to jump into conversation on here.
I wanted to say THANK YOU for this post. As I re-read all of our post it help me re-learn all these lesson over again. Your way of describing the process really help me learned the process of grieving all over again.
I also appreciate the reminder that closure is a myth and that incorporation is the actual process they need to go through. You say, “You are not shutting the door on the past and opening a new one for the future, you are keeping that door open and simultaneously opening a new one.” I feel this is HUGE. We are taught to “move on” or “get over it” but the truth is moving through it and process it and than, “Open a new door.” So thank you for your words 🙂
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Megan- I love what you said about grief being a medicine. I agree that being able to go through the motions and feel is what makes us feel all that life throws our way! If things never changed, if we never grieved a day in our lives would we appreciate what we have? It makes me feel greatful for every day and hopefully help accept when things change with the knowing that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
I also wanted to comment on what you said about feeling better about putting up boundaries while working with clients. Good for you! I feel this is something that I am looking forward to working on…. Having boundaries and self care while working with others is key. Self care and boundaries aren’t just for you its for our clients as well.
Something that I have written down is…
“I want to be present with their pain, but not take it on as my own.”
