In this short epidose today I break down a concept I worked with recently to support an executive coaching client who was in a spot of shame, pain, and self-punishment after a mistake and a challenging situation. If you're a heart-centered and progressive leader who finds themselves on occasion walking on eggshells after making a mistake and wallowing in feeling like this is something that's going to be very hard to come back from and you are stuck feeling raw and like you want to disappear, this is for you.
Learn more how I can help you:
In this short epidose today I break down a concept I worked with recently to support an executive coaching client who was in a spot of shame, pain, and self-punishment after a mistake and a challenging situation. If you're a heart-centered and progressive leader who finds themselves on occasion walking on eggshells after making a mistake and wallowing in feeling like this is something that's going to be very hard to come back from and you are stuck feeling raw and like you want to disappear, this is for you.
Learn more how I can help you:
Hi, this is a short episode today. It's really meant as a bit of a breakdown to help you if you have really struggled with getting over the feeling of shame or self punishment that one can endure after making a mistake, and it's applicable to you, to all of us, in our work and in our personal lives and across the board with relationships. I hope this is something that can help, that can help you. Hi, you're listening to the Inner Light with Ellen podcast. I'm your host, ellen Wyoming Deloy. I'm an executive coach, trainer and facilitator who helps people and teams get from where they are to where they want to be, through inquiry, reflective listening and by expanding what's possible along the way. On this show, I bring you conversations with leaders and wellness, spirituality, healing, mindfulness and more. Be sure to subscribe wherever you listen and, if you love the show, leave a five star review so others can find us. If you want to learn more about my work and what I do, go to ellenwayomingdeloycom. Thanks, enjoy the episode.
Speaker 1:So I just ended an executive coaching session with one of my clients and we had a really profound conversation today that I wanted to share because it was as often happens when I'm in a session with someone. Sometimes the discussion and the experience raises an underlying narrative or theme that is so powerful that I often feel like it comes through me not that I'm physically the one thinking it and it's a lesson for both me as the coach and my client as the coachee that we're unpacking this concept together. And that happened today and it was if you don't follow me or haven't listened to an episode of mine or know a lot about my work, I'm very intuitive for how I work as a coach kind of a brief refresher on that. And I got into coaching because people would come to me in my old work or just life and talk with me and I would always feel slash, see things that would start to appear in my mind. This has happened to me my whole life that I can see the picture that's underneath the story, or I can see the story or hear the narrative that's underneath the situation that they're describing to me and I'll start to present it to them. This is what this makes me think of, or this is what I'm hearing or sensing or feeling from you as you're saying this and I'll share this information. That kind of arrives and it often like would open up sort of a doorway that we didn't know exist, about how to be in the situation, how to encounter what's happening, how to navigate through something challenging. It's just been really interesting. So I've always been interested about what that is, but I also know that it is something that is valued and works, and works well with who I work with. And so, just as that is a brief explanation of some of my coaching methodology, this deep listening, it could also be seen as right, this deep, active listening of going underneath what people are are saying and then kind of highlighting it.
Speaker 1:And so my client went through a really difficult and challenging situation this week and I'm sure a lot of leaders out there and heart centered, empathic, want to do the right thing. Individuals can have empathy and resonate with this situation. I'm going to be a little bit nonspecific, obviously for confidentiality purposes, but there was a mistake that was made that this person, my client, had interpreted themselves as deeply harmful to another individual. That made them question the entire tenet of their being that they had done this and the story that was coming out in our conversation today was I'm a horrible person. How can I recover from this? I've also potentially hurt other people unintentionally because of the association within what happened, right, believing that they're a POS, that they're inadequate, and all of these extremely punishing, painful, invalidating senses of themselves, because they made a mistake and, yes, another person got harmed and, yes, it will be difficult to recover from it if we continue to hold that punishment. So the first thing it reminded me of was a conversation, actually, that I had had with someone else earlier in the week, because they texted me and they said I am just sitting inside of such frustration right now because of all of the judgment and biases that are running through me right now. And I said this is a text conversation. And I said like the judgments and biases that you're having at other people or about yourself. And they replied to me both, but mostly within myself, because, again, here's another acutely aware person of the injustices in the world and the behaviors that happen because of different circumstances in life and because of their profession. It's to be neutral and to offer support and care. But they were struggling so hard that day that they reached out to me and I wrote to them briefly. Here was the thing that I said there were a number of texts, but this was the one that I feel is most relevant to share.
Speaker 1:Judging ourselves makes it worse. We live in a society that has taught us to punish those who don't fit a paradigm, right, whatever that is. It could be dominant culture like white, heterosexual, abled, high success, career oriented person, right, like there's these like golden standards that have happened in society. And if you're not that, you are less than Like. We're in a society that has created a construct of what's okay and not okay, and so much of society today is working very hard to dismantle that one right way of being. But it still persists within us because we're born in the 20th and 21st centuries. We have not evolved past this yet. It is the root of so much of the division, right, if you're in the United States, so many of the divisions that exist right now in our country.
Speaker 1:But I wrote, judging ourselves just make it worse. We live in a society that has taught us to punish those who don't fit a certain paradigm, so of course we judge. Once we can accept that, it's easier to address the shift that you want to make. I think accepting the ugliness that can exist and take residence within us and then identify how to release it, to then make better choices, is easier than continuing to convince and punish ourselves that we're just bad. And I said this next thing because that's what oppression wants us to do those negative thoughts and feelings that shut us down, that make us small, that make us ashamed and afraid of speaking out, because we already think we're terrible because we've done something or because we're judging something. That is exactly what oppressive powers or energies want us to do is to be quiet and not say anything. So we have to accept the ugly, right. If you go into, like Jungian analytical theory, this is like accepting our shadow side and able to be able to work with it.
Speaker 1:And the way that I talked about it today with my client, that I found to be kind of a different way to say it, at least for me it was a fresher, newer perspective that kind of came through because of the vision I had in my mind. As my client was speaking with me, I said there was an energy that took up residence in your body, that exists in our culture, that is oppressive and unkind and it blinded you. It made you run on a conditioned autopilot to do this thing. You now have an awareness that you have a capacity to allow an energy like that to run through and be embodied in your body and now that you know that, you can actively try to do better and know not to do that. And it didn't say it exactly like that, because there's a little bit more than just knowing it and not doing it again. Right, because these autopilot conditioned behaviors are very difficult to stop in their tracks and the particular sort of energy right that took residence and had this person make this harmful mistake that they made. And I know that's interesting because there's a part of many of you listening who will say oh Ellen, this is so convenient, you're getting them off the hook. It's not their fault. And what I want to say to that is it really isn't, because so many of us do it.
Speaker 1:The negativity of racism, transphobia, sexism, any kind of discrimination that you can think of, is so in the soup of the culture in the United States that we live in that it's very difficult to notice when that's what's operating, how we are, versus our true selves, which I believe do not have these things innately. We learned them and in many cases they feel intertwined with our identity because no one has ever given us an opportunity to see that it is separate from us, because so much of it is so rooted for a lot of people in tribalism right, us versus them, my group versus that group, being allowed to stay in my family versus being kicked out of my family. So those thoughts and behaviors are necessary for my survival to not be abandoned or kicked out, right. And so it's difficult, especially when we identify as a progressive, anti-racist LBGTQIA community, supportive ally or member of, or person of color, or person of color advocating for other people, all of the things that we could be in terms of trying to dismantle these layers of oppression. It's very hard when they still run through us also and I say that as a non-black person of color Right, it's hard and it shows up and when we recognize that we have, oh, even though I do all these things, even though I believe all this way, this energy is so insidious that it still takes a residence within me. And then I do things that I'm not in agreement with, but they happen A lot of times. This is where the break happens, like the mental break, like we shut down, we don't want to look at it because we are so ashamed that we could have possibly done something like that, that we take personal responsibility for it and we clam up and we get stuck and we believe that we're bad and we start to walk on eggshells and tiptoe around everything. But what if it's an energy that has taken residence inside of you, that has started to operate through you? That's actually not your truth and you're like Ellen. What do you do about that? That sounds like hocus pocus, but let me explain it like a little bit in a different way. So polyvangel theory is about our nervous systems interacting with our environment all the time. Like this is more evidence-based, scientifically proven stuff. Right. You can look into polyvangel theory. There are many books on it.
Speaker 1:One of the facets of polyvangel theory is co-regulation. Our nervous systems are always reading each other. Before I even go to co-regulation, they're also just perceiving. There's neuroception. They're perceiving the world and environment around us at a rate faster than our minds can think. They're picking up on vibes. Am I safe here and welcome, or is this a place of danger? It's that fundamental. What do I need to do to protect myself so that I'm not in danger? So it's a nervous system energy.
Speaker 1:And then if we're co-regulating people who may be safe but not safe, we're trying to fit in and be safe. We might be adjusting where our nervous system is at so that we're always working in a certain way that maybe is not to our highest and best benefit and the highest and best benefit of others. It's not conscious, it's physical and it's operating at a nervous system, neuroception level, which is feeling energy and experiencing it in our bodies, making the decisions for us Polyvangel theory. I've done a few podcasts episodes on this so you can look back to them with Beth Ann Fisher, but 80% of the information that informs the stories that we tell, therefore, the choices and behaviors that we make, come through our nervous system and the connection to our brain is 80% body to brain, 20% brain to body. Our body is dominant in the narrative making process.
Speaker 1:So if our body feels unsafe, it will be informing the mind to make some choices that may be harmful to others but that keep us safe. Even if we don't believe in harming other people, we may still do it on autopilot because we're running that nervous system safety energy through us. So I bring that in because this more simplistic idea that I have feels a little light touch when I say an oppressive energy has taken residence in our body and it has decided to make the choices for us without our consent, so that we do things that are out of alignment with our true values and our true beliefs. How do you fix that?
Speaker 1:The person I was working with today is very receptive to meditation, mindfulness, visualization practices, and we were joking how I feel and this may not be everyone else's opinion, but I feel that there are many ways to the top of the same mountain of clarity and being your full, true, authentic self, versus the self that you have to be to be in safety and security because of real or perceived threats many of them not real. We're almost kind of all living in a dreamy illusion because we're safer than we think we are, unless we are in a war zone, and I don't want to even begin to diminish that, because what is happening in the world in some places is horrible. I feel very deeply about those things also, but in our day to day, walking around in the United States, whether you're white or black or brown, asian or indigenous or any shade of human, gender, expression, sexuality, able or disabled, everywhere we all have the capacity to be running energies that aren't ours, that are informing who we are and how we are, and there are practices polyvagal theory, meditation and mindfulness, or what I did with my client today visualization, to start to release what's not ours and reorient ourselves with the energy that is us, which is the best kind to create from, to solve challenges from. And sometimes, when we're just in our full, authentic self, it's almost like we radiate that out and it undoes what doesn't need to happen. By the very act of our own deciding to heal within ourselves, we offer that almost as a healing to those around us and that we interact with. So I can't get into all the protocols of how it could work for a person in just a podcast episode, because I do tailor it to the specific individual that I'm working with.
Speaker 1:But I wanted to talk about it today because the concept of realizing that you might be running an energy that's not yours and it's influencing behavior into undesired outcomes and you're wondering how do I fix this, how do I release this so that I'm actually more in myself for who I really am and I can show up in a way that's consistently like that, without being in fear, is what I'm really interested in, and that's a thing to think about the next time you're punishing yourself and you're telling yourself that you're bad or you're telling yourself that you're not good enough, or you're in deep anxiety and fear and guilt, and shame and remorse and sadness and worry about whatever just happened. All of those can be viewed. It's hard to feel it just by hearing it, because this is a very intellectual conversation I'm having with you right now. But there's a way to begin to integrate an embodied sense of realizing that you don't have to hold all of that. It's not actually all yours. It doesn't mean you get to walk around like a pretty pony right, like we still have to have accountability, we still have to have integrity.
Speaker 1:And like Maya Angelou said I always love to say this once you know better, you do better. So stop beating yourself up for the thing that you didn't know better about before. That's growth. That's being the change. That's creating more equitable and just systems for our brothers and sisters. That's making the better world. Don't beat yourself up. That's what the oppression wants you to do. So you stay small. Be the light. Let your own light back in. This is why I named my business Inner Light Coating. Not that I use it very often, I usually just use my name. But that's why I named this, because that's the light and many of us have had parts of it dimmed, taken out, bisected, twisted. The breaker box broke and it's not on anymore, right? And there's other things in there that we're running that are not ours. And in leadership and in coaching, whether it's executive or like person just wants to come work, do the work like this is what I'm working on. It doesn't always sound like this. This is a very core truth of what this is.
Speaker 1:So thank you for listening. It's very inspired to talk about what happened today. It was beautiful and that's it so. Welcome to Reach Out with Questions, some e-notes. It helps me think of other podcast episodes and, yeah, I hope you have a beautiful. Let's say I'm going to put this out on a Friday, so I hope you have a beautiful weekend and, if you're listening to this later, have a beautiful day. Thanks so much for tuning in today and listening to the show. Be sure to subscribe wherever you listen and, if you love the show, leave a five star review so others can find us. To learn more about my work and what I do, go to ellenwayomingdolloycom. Thanks, see you next time.