Wendy Barnett
Forum Replies Created
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Hi everyone
This was my most favorite part of the NCC certification so I am very excited to be able to learn more about it, not just for myself but for my clients. Thank you Michael!
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Initial Post:
I guess my first (post) realization that there is such a thing as secondary trauma is related to the events of 9/11. I wasn’t there but loved ones were (and are safe) and my ex husband was stranded in FL with me in MA. I was definitely traumatized but not at Ground Zero. Sadly, since that historically defining moment in our lives, there have been so many others, generally involving mass shootings or bombings. I’ve often been curious and, if I’m being really honest, somewhat intolerant of people who have seemed to jump on the bandwagon of the directly-impacted peoples’ grief. I never understood about secondary trauma, until now.
Understanding that there is such a thing has opened my eyes in a way in which I will never again be tempted to think that they’re trying to capitalize on someone else’s grief or sorrow but are genuinely impacted by an event even if it may be somewhat tangential to their own lives.
I’m so glad to have had this learning and will always approach grief and trauma with a more open and sympathetic attitude. -
Response to Amanda:
So funny to see you write about ‘babbling’ about payment – I can so see you doing that. It’s one of the things which is so beautiful about you – you give and you give freely. Figuring out how to have this conversation will be something for you to practice (I’m happy to work thru’ that with you…) so that you can offer the world your gifts while making a living.
I am proud that you talk about your self worth and that your time is money but also that you want a client who is coachable. IMHO that is growth in you over the last year. When I first met you, I think you would have given your time to anyone, however they showed up; I’m proud of you that you sense of self is such that you now feel that you are worthy of respect in the coaching relationship and would be selective about who you work with.
Keep giving the world the gift of you; you are such a light of love 🙂 -
Response to David:
It’s interesting reading thru’ your post as I’m deducing this is how you propose to work with a client – have you been able to do a session which incorporates the threshold experience? Also, it’s interesting to read your approach with the big picture – I haven’t had to do that as I’ve been coaching people who I know or at least have a lot of background on – I’m going to keep this in mind! I am very solution-oriented and sometimes can be in a hurry so making sure I go at my client’s pace and really understand them and don’t have to get everything done in 1 hour is a great reminder for me – thank you!
Do you see yourself being able to incorporate the EBI methodology into your wilderness therapy and, if so, how?
I’m excited for the breadth of impact you might be able to have for people – good luck to you! -
Summary post:
When you are a formal coach, rather than just a Business Partner, there is great intention in how I show up for my client. While both my paying clients are working professionals, where they are at in the careers is very different and their personal lives are totally different. I have to be very present and client-centric to ensure that I create the right space and listen fully to the conversation to offer the right insights and ask the right questions.
I’m finding it hard, with these 2, to get to the deeper need as the type of coaching can sometimes really be focused on the work environment. However, what I have been able to do, over the last month, is to do our sessions outside, really leveraging nature and having them acknowledge the difference that creates in them.
It will never fail to be an honor to serve as a guide and to have 2 clients who want to continue working with me and to have 2 more who are about to engage me has exceeded my expectations and makes me trust that I can do this long term. It’s such a gift to be able to guide people to realize their greatness and beauty and really, at the end of the day, we’re just the vehicle by which they achieve this -
I agree with David – this brings the entire program full circle and requires that we engage all our tools and new learnings in service of our clients’ needs.
A couple of things have always given me huge anxiety – the concept of being able to retain a client, such that they become long term and I can make a career of this and, just as Amanda says, how to charge for my time. However, I’ve discovered a couple of things over the last few months, directly related to both of these concerns. I now have 2 long-standing clients, one of whom has just asked her boss (who approved) to extend her 12 week contract so not only does my client value the support but her boss is seeing a difference. The second is a dear friend of mine, with whom I used to work, who I clearly invited that, at any time, should she want to, could end our coaching relationship. She said that she didn’t want to do that because she found our sessions to be hugely valuable. These are both paying clients and I am about to sign with 2 more! So, my fears were unfounded and I’m actually doing this!
Now, I can’t claim that every session leads to threshold, because it doesn’t but what is interesting is that each week I see progress and can tell that my clients are putting into practice the things that we work on in session. It’s as though the conversations we have and the questions I ask create the opportunity for them to have their own threshold experience during our time apart.
One tool I use in every session, multiple times, are the sacred questions and not because I’m stuck but because I see that the information shared has likely provided my client with a lesson. By asking a sacred question, it requires that they pause, reflect and then, without fail, they realize the power of that experience.
I also have a couple of clients at work with whom I’ve recently started doing work. I’m exploring Partswork with the one I’ve had 2 sessions with and have only met with the other one once so far so am just getting to know him. What’s interesting is that he is also engaged with an executive coach but feels he is disconnected from himself and nature which is why he’d also like to work with me.
1 year ago, I couldn’t see how I would be able to do this as my career but I trusted my vision. While it’s not my full time career yet, I have now set myself the intention to leave corporate America by August 2022 and be a full time NCC and I know that it will happen as I continue to add clients to my roster. -
Summary post:
As I write this, I realize that both the clients I’m working with currently (and the 2 which are getting scheduled) have suffered trauma which is showing up in their daily lives. This module opened my eyes to the fact that trauma is present in all of us but is so often unseen. As I watched the Ted talk ‘My Stroke of Insight’, I would never have guessed that she had suffered such a violent and dangerous physical event but what was really fascinating was the awareness with which she moved thru’ the event, how she could live every second of it, recount it and go on to be such a successful professional.
Just this week, my client talked about her fear of abandonment and how it is rooted in her childhood. She’s very aware of it being an issue and, while aware of how it’s impacting her professionally, she is currently unable to manage it and prevent herself from becoming obsessed (her word). She’s not so much a storyteller as a very distracted client so finding ways to have her focus on 1 thing is extremely challenging. However, I’m going to continue to probe on this issue as it is impacting how she performs in a broad way. Fortunately our coaching time is going to change which I think will make it easier for her to focus. She’s let go a few times in session but, because she knows she’s going straight back to work after session, she’s unable to fully embrace the emotions. I believe it would be helpful for her to experience this trauma and feel safe with it so I’m looking forward to the new time which, I really believe, will give her the ability to focus. -
Response to Sandy:
I was pretty blown away by the resilience of someone who views cancer as ‘just another thing to meet and overcome’. Having spent a week with you, I’ve no doubt that you were the perfect coach for her – you have such a calm and gentle demeanor that I’m sure the space you created was just what she needed to feel safe and held.
I also love how you walked us thru’ how you guided her thru’ the visualization exercise which led her to focus on the area of historical trauma. So often we feel pain or discomfort but never create the space/take the time to identify its source and/or location. By guiding her thru’ that exercise and then inviting her to continue the practice for opening her chest, I’m sure that the physical manifestation of that trauma will cease to have such a hold on her – what a way to support your client!
One of the things I find most profound about your post is the integration of so many of our learnings – body work, meditation, breath work, trauma, visualization; it’s great to see you incorporating so many techniques in a meaningful way with a single client – congratulations – I know you will go on to help many people! -
Response to Ben:
Reading your post was really interesting as this had previously been my narrow understanding of trauma – the blood, guts and hard core physical injuries. I had never considered it from a different perspective and I’d certainly never considered the possibility that trauma can be suffered either as a group or that what is trauma to one person might not be to another.
It was also interesting how while logic says she’d done everything medically possible, her emotions and the trauma of the death are stronger than that logic. I guess that’s how trauma takes a hold of us.
As I know that your practice is focused around exercise, I’m interested to know if that works or if that would be considered a distraction from sitting with the pain and discomfort of the death, thus enabling the trauma to live on.
Nice job with the pendulation! I did that with a client recently and it’s amazing how effective it is. I used a fountain but glad to know that a water bottle works too! -
Summary post:
Personally, Partswork was illuminating to me as it is a language which I have used without necessarily understanding fully what it means to be made up of many parts. Once we did the work to start to unpack our parts, I started to make sense to me! The inner conflicts felt more normal, the ‘mood swings’ made sense because there was a part of me which was trying to be heard while being suppressed by my environment, the despair was my unheard and unfulfilled soul crying for attention. Just mind-blowing.
Why this matters so much as I embark on my journey as a partner to others is that it makes so much sense to me that I feel I can articulate the concept of Partswork to others in a way which, hopefully, makes sense to them too. It has been so liberating to understand myself at this deep level and it’s a gift I really want to share with my clients. I’ve started dropping it into sessions with 2 of my clients recently and it has immediately resonated with them. They haven’t yet committed to doing the deep work but, superficially, they both use the language and as they do, they recognize that they are speaking about a part of themselves.
It’s a powerful tool to understand that we have different parts of ourselves which are either leading or wanting to lead at any given time and the real power comes when you allow them to surface and speak.
I’m totally in love with Partswork, for myself personally and also as something which I’d like to continue offering to my clients. -
Summary post:
As I mentioned in my initial post, the broad definition of grief was a revelation to me which has provided me with a degree of self-love and patience which I didn’t have for myself before. Also, my approach to coaching people thru’ challenges will now be different as I have a more complete understanding of the word grief.
We ultimately have a choice for how we live our lives and the degree to which we embrace grief and give ourselves permission to feel it fully. However, it would also be a disservice to others if we were to allow grief to become our focus. To be clear, I’m speaking as someone who, fortunately, has not experienced the loss of someone very close to me so I’m speaking in more general terms. Being human, now, is very challenging and we need to choose to be consumed by world affairs or to be informed but not burdened.
Setting aside any judgment as to what grief is to each person will be critical as I serve my clients. -
Response to Elizabeth:
This struck me ““What breaks your heart?” My answer was “Our collective inability to live in harmony with Nature and one another.” I reflected on how this has played out in my life, realizing that it’s been an underlying sadness I hadn’t identified as grief.” It resonates with what I had also understood to be simply sadness and anger, not as grief – that broad meaning of the word.
I happy that you have been able to find a way to move forward WITH grief instead of in spite of it and that it is providing you with a freedom to be more optimistic. I must say I am envious of that as I still think that I avoid my grief because I’m not sure how to process it on a daily basis with all the wrongs which are being done to innocent people and animals.
As you guided your client, what humility you demonstrate in recognizing your own limitations in realizing that someone is grieving without necessarily presenting as grieving and how you created self awareness around how you show up will change as a result of this understanding – you talked of slowing down. I am reminded of the imperativeness of our presence as guides not as directors of someone’s experience, our role as witness and how critical it is that we meet our clients where they are at.
I wonder if, since you have written this, you have experienced anything different in your own presence of sense of stillness while coaching? -
Response to Kent:
First – the image you painted of her getting ‘bopped’ on the head by an acorn had me laughing.
Second – WOW! What an incredibly impactful session and what courage you displayed by, while on zoom, having her leave the session to go out into nature, reflect and then come back to you – that’s so intuitive and such a gift! I wonder how I might ‘borrow’ this technique for my own sessions; I often struggle with the fact that I’m coaching people over zoom in a conference room and how I can incorporate nature into these sessions.
It’s so interesting as I was at an offsite last week and we came up with an image of an acorn which is buried underground, becomes a sprout as it breaks thru’ the earth’s surface and then becomes a tree. Her description of the acorn living in the dark and then breaking free to become the tree is profound. I wonder how far you could take that analogy with her?
I also appreciated how you were able to incorporate Partswork into this. It is so clear that it is directly relevant; how else would we be able to function if the whole of us was overcome by grief? That’s how modern day society has conditioned us though – to keep going while just a part of us suffers and how unhealthy is that and how little we are honoring the grieving process by denying that suffering. -
Client experience:
I’m thinking of a dear friend of mine who I formally coach on a bi-weekly basis. She is successful professionally, is an amazing human and a divorced mother of 3. I know a lot of her personal story around her divorce and that she continues to grieve to this day. However, during coaching, she is resistant to allow this grief to rise and I continually try to find ways to, gently, allude to it.
As a lawyer, she has a very structured mind so trying to bring her personal life into the coaching sessions, which has deemed to be focused on her professional persona, is very challenging. Because I know her well, I strongly suspect that the reason behind her divorce is affecting her self confidence in every aspect of her life, both personal and professional. Her ex recently remarried which triggered many feelings in her and a deep sense of loss and grief, not for him but for the loss of the family unit she so valued.
As I read thru’ all of your posts with your clients, it seems that the clients, while not clearly experiencing grief, per se, that grief seemed to be right under the surface, ready for you to crack it open. With my client, over the years, she’s buried it and so trying to get to it is a challenge. However, I wonder how I might gently introduce it as a way to open that box and see if there are any connections between that loss and her current challenges with self confidence.
I meet with her later this week and am interested to try to find a natural way to introduce this topic. -
Initial post:
What surprised me about this topic is how broad the definition of the word grief actually is, how narrowly I have historically defined it and that it is omnipresent. This intensive was a revelation to me on multiple levels.
Grief can be individual and/or a collective experience. Grief doesn’t have to be about the end of something/someone; it is essentially about loss. We grieve all day every day about something.
When I think about the destruction of the rainforest, the disenfranchisement of so many groups of people, the state of the world politically – I had never considered these as being able to be defined as grief, yet I do mourn them, and more. I feel anger about these situations which is likely my way of avoiding the deep pain that grieving would bring about.
As I reflect, anger is a default reaction for me, to avoid feeling pain; I definitely have lots of boxes inside me which are locked and full of pain and disappointment!