Rebecca asks Coach Linda for Help:
“I need some insight to help me change a pattern. This one hurts!!!! Ouch!!!”
About six weeks ago my back went out and then I broke my big toe. This past Saturday I fell on my face and skinned my mouth almost losing a couple of teeth. Scared that I would lose my front teeth and the expense it would create, I immediately went to the dentist. All I could think about was how stupid I was to do another stupid thing.
After reading your blog post about Janice whom I feel a kinship to as I often feel invisible, I started thinking about what all three situations have in common.
My answer is pain, my physical pain!
1. Back problem - started when I found out I would loose my job because the company is being sold.
2. Broken toe - I was frustrated because my personal relationship is going nowhere.
3. Skinned face, loose teeth - I had set some very firm boundaries with myself to not get in the middle of my children and their father, my ex.
Help, I need some insight into this pattern before something else happens!--Rebecca
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Linda’s Response to Rebecca
“I feel your pain. Unfortunately, I have been there - done that! I am sorry it took three bouts with pain before you figured that you better reach out. Congratulations you figured it out. It is hard for most people to be vulnerable enough to ask for help. Pain seems to help.”
After talking to Rebecca her “change” looks like this: Let’s break it down to review the components of her situation.
SITUATION:
Rebecca wanted insights and some relief of these painful reminders that something was off. She also said that she felt invisible in her life. Pain is not invisible and must be addressed. She would have to be courageous and strong with herself through the pain.
1. Back problem - started when Rebecca found out that she would loose her job because the company was being sold.
2. Broken toe - She was frustrated because her personal relationship is going nowhere.
3. Skinned face loose teeth - She had set some very firm boundaries with herself to not get in the middle of her children and their father, her ex.
OBJECTIVES /GOALS
Rebecca realized she had been following a pattern - the outcomes were familiar but the cause unknown. She knew it was a pattern and help was needed to create a different healthier pattern.
She did a great job of determining some similarities in each circumstance. Since each occurrence created greater pain she knew it had to stop and the only way was to call a professional - Coach Linda. She only needed a little guidance in the right direction to find her answers.
SOLUTIONS
Whenever change is in the air our well-honed patterns and skill levels start to kick into high gear. Here is the pattern as I see it:
1. Rebecca’s job and back support her. Both on the physical level and for making money that supports her emotional and mental well being.
2. Her broken right toe impeded her ability to stand up on her own and to move forward with ease and balance in all areas of her life.
3. When dealing with her mouth and face, she literally fell on her face and injured her mouth causing pain to talk and eat. Two ways of taking care of herself.
So all three situations have key similarities: money, support, self-care, and moving forward.
TASKS AND SYSTEMS TO REACH SOLUTIONS
In facing the key concerns in supporting herself with money and self-care Rebecca would need to move forward with trust, courage and strength instead of physical pain.
By standing up for herself and setting the strict boundaries in regard to her children and ex, her process of change included discovering some well-honed patterns that had always showed up to keep her stuck in the old ways. She consciously decided to feel the emotional pain rather than physical pain.
Remember, she said that she was ‘determined’ to stay out of the middle of money matters and that unleashed a score of little tricks she didn’t even know she had up her sleeve. Old way—physical pain. New and retrained way—emotional pain.
She had to add to her “feeling” vocabulary. One that would let others know what she is feeling and to vocalize her needs. Rebecca had to learn how not to be invisible by retraining her way of communicating in all of her relationships.
AH HA BREAKTHROUGH MOMENT
Rebecca’s ah ha moment came when she realized that pain was a feeling. She also learned that she had an underdeveloped emotional vocabulary, and physical pain was something she would equate as emotional pain. Calling herself stupid for falling or hurting her self again created the all too familiar shame and guilt cycle of feelings.
The second ah ha came when she realized that it took a lot of courage to withstand the pain she felt to stick up for herself……even though she felt selfish and it showed up as a lack of trust in knowing that she did and would do the right thing by getting out of the middle between her ex and her children. Instead, she had felt the fear (of doing a selfish act) through physical pain.
RELEASING AN EMOTIONAL BLOCK
Rebecca was learning to trust herself instead of fearing the loss of her job, children, money and relationship. She felt invisible which equated to the fact that she felt she was not going to be heard or not have her needs met. By being honest in her relationships she had to risk being supported emotionally—in order to grow through, and past, her inability to state her emotional feelings and the needs that came with them.
BREAKTHROUGH RESULTS
Rebecca told me that in her process of changing her old ways of “same old, same old” she had to come face to face with the challenges of creating balance in her life.
She said feeling frustrated at the physical pain and realizing the emotional constraints she put on herself by not feeling the emotional pain, opened her up to make a new choice. She said that she would work on consciously choosing to feel vs. feeling the physical pain.
She now works with her feelings to guide her versus thinking her feelings and then feeling the physical pain.
Well, Rebecca, here is to standing on your own two feet! Day 1--A change is made!
No comments:
Post a Comment