Coaching… meet Emotions…
By Don / Date: March 8th, 2023
During my training as a Coach, I was introduced to the idea of the unreliability of emotions. What I walked away with was an understanding something along the lines of ‘…whilst our clients may show up with emotion, that is in the way of coaching them effectively – emotions are unreliable – circumstances change – only commitment is reliable.’ I interpreted this in a simplified form; ’emotions have no part in coaching’. I do not think this was the intent of the training however it had me stuck for a time.
I had become interested in coaching as a means for myself to change my experience of life. ‘Getting results’ was interesting, but only so far as it was aligned with giving me the experience of life that I wanted. And – guess what. That experience had emotion and feeling written all over it…
I am not going to get into nitpicking about emotion vs. feeling. I will use the word emotion to indicate that field of perception that is not the ticking of the the rational mind and not the flow of our external senses. It is what lives in our field of awareness within our own bodies.
I remained confused for some time about emotions and coaching. As well as working with a coach, I had occasionally sought out therapy where some big emotional furballs came up, however I did not have these well defined. I kept coming back to coaching conversations as – well, something was happening here and I still had a lot to learn.
And then I met a coach who changed all of that (Hi, Denise!). On a group call suddenly there was a new person who stepped in to facilitate as our regular lead coach was unavailable. Within the first two sentences I knew I wanted to work with her.
What I perceived was an absolutely massive and unmistakable HEART in that conversation. There was a palpable presence to it. And this was a coach? (at this time recall I was stuck in the rational, emotions-have-no-place-here version of coaching I had integrated).
I asked for a conversation and started working with this new coach (and letting my previous coach go). Over the next weeks and months I realized there was space for all of me in our conversations. The drama and avoidance of previous coaching conversations I had been in fell away. The tight ‘agenda’ got dropped in place of actually developing a sense of who I was and where I wanted to go. I had a ton of external drama in my life at the time. There was space for all of it, and as a result the significance of all that emotion, meeting no resistance, fell away. In retrospect I think this was what my coach training was pointing to – I just did not understand it at the time.
And then – I hit a wall. I was working as a mentor coach at the time, supporting people coming through their own year-long training program as a graduate of that program. I was trying to balance out all the different aspects of my life; the fallout from my divorce, how to make everything work and co-parent my teenage boys at the same time, dating… Supporting the coach training was not giving me what I wanted; it felt hard, disconnected and frustrating. I went away to training weekends with hope for something different and came away feeling heavier and beaten up. Something was off. I was ready to quit.
On New Years’ eve 2015 I was ready to throw in the towel. I felt terrible. I called the leader of the program who heard me out and said that whatever I decided was fine. I called a coach friend of mine (Hi David!) who gave me a ton of space and compassion, however it did not shift my mind. It gave me a space to breathe. And then, amazingly I asked my coach if she was available. And she gave me a gift I can only pay forwards. Her time – and more to the point, her presence.
I cannot remember details of that call – as my rational mind was barely present. What was present was an intense wave of emotion; grief, heartbreak, despair. I remember running out of kleenex and continuing to clean out my overflowing sinuses using a roll of toilet paper. And through it all what I got was space, huge space from the human at the other end of the phone to be with all of it. No judgment, no ‘enough of that, we have work to do’. Just simple, gentle, HUGE space. I no longer had the burden of trying to manage this immense weight of emotion and keep it out of my life. I let it consume me, and at some point I in this wordless conversation, I became curious and leaned into it – pushed my head into this wall of chaos inside of me. Frustration, anger as fuel. I pushed further. More tears and heaving growls. And a little further. And then. Quite suddenly. -pop-
The chaos of emotion stopped. Internally the sun came out. My heart opened up. The immensity of peace in that moment was incredible. And it continued. I looked for all my problems and could not find them. For the next three or four weeks after that call life was in flow; everything was effortless and easy. I got on with my days, made my calls, did my work. All of it with a lightness and ease that I had only glimpsed before in the times in my life when I was falling in love. Except at this time – it was myself and my life. I will never forget it. It is down in a shortlist of about 5 key experiences in my life to-date. Simply; life moved. The stuckness left me.
What I learned in this coaching relationship was not so much the power of emotion (which cannot be understated), but that there is something bigger and able to hold it all, be with it all. And bringing that level of presence is a skill of being. Since then I have learned a lot about working with emotional space as a coach and facilitator. And I have learned a lot about where therapy can powerfully support personal growth in conjunction with a coaching process, when emotion or trauma is clearly ‘the thing in the way’.
What I have learned is simply this; The territory of coaching is not (in my experience and view) demarcated by being free of emotion. Instead it is all about how emotion is held in that space. Emotions are not coachable – but the person experiencing them certainly is – if you can have space for all of them.
And what about results? I notice I am less interested in the milestones of personal transformation (job, money, relationship, fitness, writing a book…) as how my client is experiencing life – which is all about the inner world of emotion. The blissful monk on the street corner, holding a bowl in silent request for a next meal – or the stressed CEO. Is there really a choice there? Bliss wins. And of course, it is not an either-or choice. I think this world needs more complete humans doing what they do with their awareness, bliss and genius flowing together. I see coaching as a tool to help get us there. All of us.
8Mar23
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Beautiful Don. So much value to distinguish the what space, being heard can look like. Including the distinction between the emotions not being coachable- but the person is. ❤️