Terri Cole: Global Relationship and Empowerment Expert

Join us for a chat with Terri Cole, a widely recognized expert on mindfulness and relationships.

Terri speaks of mindfulness, an easy thing to do every day that can make life better, help clients reduce stress and improve their mental well-being.

Have you ever thought about sharing your coaching skills in a book? Terri shares her experience of writing one. She talks about the important things you need to think about before writing and how to find the right people to help publish your book.

She also discusses boundaries and codependency, two things that can affect relationships. Terri offers helpful thoughts that can help you understand these issues. You can use this understanding to help your clients identify — often misunderstood —patterns of excessive emotional or psychological reliance on others.

So, join in on this chat with Terri Cole. It is full of simple, easy-to-understand advice that can help you become a better coach and serve your clients better.

Transcript

Coaches on Zoom Drinking Coffee
Terri Cole

(interview blurb)

Terri: We’re not giving from a magnanimous healthy place. We’re giving from a need. We’re giving to be needed. We’re giving to save the day. We’re giving because we can’t stop being the hero in someone else’s story. But then we’re pissed and it’s bad for our relationships but it’s also incredibly bad for our health.

(intro)

Alex: Hi, I’m Alex Pascal, CEO of Coaching.com, and this is Coaches on Zoom Drinking Coffee. My guest today is a licensed psychotherapist, global relationship and empowerment expert, and the author of Boundary Boss: The Essential Guide to Talk True, Be Seen, and (Finally) Live Free. Please welcome Terri Cole.

(Interview)

Alex: Hi, Terri. How are you?

Terri: I’m great, Alex. Thanks for having me.

Alex: It’s a pleasure to have you today. Let’s start where we always start on Coaches on Zoom Drinking Coffee. What are we drinking today?

Terri: Coffee. Even though it says tea, it’s actually coffee.

Alex: That’s wonderful. On the road so I just picked up some Blue Bottle Coffee, one of my favorites so it’s going to be great for our conversation today. Let’s start at the beginning. You have a very interesting career. You used to run a talent agency and then you became a therapist. You’re an author, you’re a coach. How did you end up today? Guide us through the journey.

Terri: Well, I ended up in entertainment sort of — I’m not exactly positive how I ended up there because I didn’t even know that it was a job that you could have. One of my friends was working at a talent agency in New York City and I was working in the garment industry, which I really did not like at all but it was just the first job out of college, I just took whatever came, and then my boyfriend at the time said, “You know, Jen,” we all went to college together, “is working in a talent agency. I think you’d be really good at that.” I was like, “Wait, there’s a job where I can just deal with actors? Amazing.” And I ended up actually calling in sick to my job for three days because they had somebody out sick and I filled in at the talent agency and I was like, “I cannot believe people get paid to do this. This is so amazing.” and that was the beginning of that career. And I did that for almost a decade but what was happening simultaneously is that my own therapeutic journey was really happening. So, I stopped drinking my senior year of college, which is sort of a weird time to stop but I figured if I can stop now, I can stop for good, which I did. I got into therapy when I was 19, so by the time I was in my 20s, the therapeutic journey was really moving and I was having all of these realizations. and I couldn’t believe how much therapy was changing my life internally and externally, like I felt like it was the best kept secret. I was like, “Wait a minute, does everybody know you could just go to therapy and figure out all these things that are ruining your life? Amazing.” So I loved my process and by the time I got to working with — I first was working with regular actors in a commercial agency and then I got a job where I was running the television department basically for a modeling agency and I stayed in that career, that was the second half of my career in entertainment, and as I was getting healthier and healthier and healthier, the industry was becoming less and less healthy, even though actually it was always a toxic bed of not mental health but I didn’t really know that so it’s almost like I got too healthy to stay in the entertainment business. I kept trying to change the way that the industry interacted with the models. And, finally, the woman who owned the agency was like, “Do you actually still want to be doing this career?” and clearly in my mind, the answer was no, I don’t. Because what ended up happening at the end and really what made me decide to become a psychotherapist is that I really cared about the mental health of my clients. I stopped caring about the Pantene deal and the movie deal. I was getting people into drug treatment clinics, eating disorder clinics and therapy, and so I was like I need to get out of here before I start not doing a good job here, because it was already starting to happen. You can’t have two primary goals, right? Suddenly, my primary goal was really about the mental health of my clients. So, I decided to actually apply to one grad school because I was already living in New York for almost a decade and I was like I’m not going to Ohio for grad school, no offense, so I applied to NYU, thinking I don’t really have a good shot of getting in, I went to kind of a crappy undergraduate school, no offense, Long Island University, but it wasn’t the best, and then when I got in — and what I did to get in, part of it is that I thought if I could get an in-person meeting and I was explaining the parallels of like the lack of mental health in the entertainment business and how that sort of spurred me into wanting to become a therapist and then I got accepted to NYU and I was like, oh my gosh, now I actually have to go, like you’re not going to get accepted to NYU and not go, and I went and literally opened up a private practice immediately. That’s why I wanted to go to NYU because they had a focus on clinical work and I knew I wanted to become a therapist in private practice. There’s many things you can do, being a clinical social worker, but I wanted to actually just be a therapist. And that was in 1997, I believe. And from that point, I started seeing, once I started my practice, I started seeing all of these pain points that my clients had which were pain points that I had had and a lot of it was around boundaries and honest communication and all of the things that I’ve gone on to either write a book about or I’m writing book about now or teach in my courses. So I did have a private practice, like one-on-one practice for many years in New York, I had like three different locations, but I got to a point in that work that I realized there was only so many people in the world that I would have the opportunity to impact doing it that way, even though I was training younger therapists and whatever, but I wanted to have more impact and so from that point is how I decided to eventually — I mean, 20 years into my private practice, is when I decided to write Boundary Boss, which is a book that I wrote and came out two years ago on boundaries. But I started teaching classes in 2015, I’d say, online virtual stuff, and as soon as I became a psychotherapist, within five years, I actually became a coach because I knew I was not going to stay in that pay-per-play private practice world forever, I knew that I was going to become a coach because it’s more widely accepted to do that in a virtual space. What I do online, I can’t call it therapy, I don’t call it therapy, because it’s not therapy if there’s 300 people in a course. I think that’s the long way around the barn but that’s how I ended up where I am right now.

Alex: Thank you for sharing your story. Do you remember when you first got acquainted with coaching?

Terri: Yes, I remember because I actually had someone coaching me and this became a spontaneous relationship with a woman that I met in, I was eating alone in a coffee shop in New York City, her name is Debbie Phillips and her brand is Women on Fire and we just became friends and she just took me under her wing and started coaching me. It was so mind blowing how much her coaching helped me and how it felt emotionally. It’s so different than therapy, because I’ve always had a therapist, I’ve been in therapy for 30 years probably at this point, but coaching was a very different thing and I loved it so much. I loved being on the receiving end and that definitely influenced my desire to become a coach.

Alex: I know that one of your areas of interest is meditation, which is also something that I practice and I’ve seen so many powerful things that come with a meditation practice. What has been your experience with meditation and how do you use it with clients?

Terri: It’s interesting, I always knew I needed to meditate myself, like I knew that that was something that was missing in my life, but I was also very impatient, when I was younger, very type A, like, “There’s got to be a hack for this,” was my thought about meditation, like, “I’m gonna do a weekend intensive at the open center, I’m gonna whatever,” I thought there was a way around actually meditating because that’s how young and how much chutzpah I guess I had. And after not successfully learning to meditate or having it incorporated as a daily practice, I actually went to the Chopra Center and there was a weekend and I met, the person, his name is David G, who became my meditation teacher and actually who then I became a certified teacher through him and I learned to meditate in a way that made sense to my very sort of New York fast-paced brain, because David G, who became my teacher with Deepak and David Simon, there were other people there, but David G is a total New Yorker from Queens with a New York accent and I was like, “If this guy can meditate, I can meditate.” It was coming from someone where I felt very identified with him and he basically taught it to us. He created the 21-day meditation challenge format and that’s basically how we learned it, like you do the weekend and then you commit to meditating twice a day for 20 minutes in the morning and right after work for 21 days and he was like, “If it doesn’t work for you after 21 days, don’t do it.” You can then say you gave it an honest try and then, of course, after 21 days, I loved it. I started incorporating that in my therapy clients and even before I became an actual teacher, I was already recording audio for my clients spontaneously in session. I would create the whole therapeutic atmosphere and I would be planting the seeds in their unconscious mind of whatever we had worked on that day so that they would have that meditation for a week that they would listen to every day, even if they weren’t, quote-unquote, “meditators,” if you wanted to be in therapy practice with me, if you wanted to be a client, you had to at least be willing to try and I made it as easy as possible by recording these audios that they could take with them. And I have meditation CDs out, not that anyone listens to CDs, but 2011 I think is when my first one came out, but I’ll tell you my personal experience of what changed for me and why it became one of the foundations of my therapy and my coaching practice is that I noticed such a difference in my ability to not react with anger or for my ego, where I feel like I gained about two to three seconds of response time in every situation that I found myself in, and I was a bit of a hothead, like a bit of a — I’m a very passionate person so I was a bit of a, if I was pissed about something, I would write that email and just hit Send. And then, of course, after that, you’re like, “Okay, maybe it was a bit harsh,” like there’s all the apologizing and crap that comes along with that behavior and I could not believe how creating inner expansion bought me time in my real life and my actual external interactions with other people. And so, I was like, wow, if this is helping me this way, imagine if I could teach my clients to meditate and they could gain two to three seconds of response time to either not self-abandon, to set a boundary, or, like me, to not respond or react in a way that you will probably regret or to have to apologize for later, and so I saw it, I still see it as a very valuable tool and everything that I do, all of my online courses that I’ve had for years, all have a component of guided meditations in them.

Alex: I love that and I love the description of what meditation does for you. Yeah, creating that space, this identifying yourself a little bit with just your thoughts and being able to create that space and that gap is super helpful for clients and I think it’s even more so for coaches to be able to just sit in a session and be fully present and I find it also so incredibly powerful when doing coaching. It’s a fun thing to do and I love how you’re kind of mentioning like this New Yorker mentality and, as a New Yorker, approaching meditation is just like an interesting thing because things just move so quickly. Being able to slow down in a city like New York is incredibly powerful but it’s not really embedded in the ethos of what being a New Yorker is so it’s interesting. 

Terri: Indeed.

Alex: And when you say the Chopra Center, is that the one in San Diego?

Terri: Yes, but, actually, what they used to do and I think they still do is they would have, because I’ve been to events all over the world with them, where this happened to be in New York at the Dream Hotel. They don’t even do it anymore, it was called Weekend Within, and I went with my husband who, funny enough, my husband is 10 years older than me and I was so amped about meditation, like as if I invented it, you know what I mean? To a degree where I was like, “This is awesome, we’re gonna do this,” and then years later, and we meditate together still and separately, of course, as well but that’s the first thing we do when we get up in the morning together is meditate, and years later, it comes out that like in the 70s, he was meditating, doing transcendental meditation, I was like, “Why didn’t you ever tell me that?” and he’s like, “You were so excited and I don’t wanna take the wind out of your sails,” and I was like, “Oh my God, you’re so funny. You like pretended that I turned you on to meditation when, really, that was not what happened.”

Alex: That is so funny. I love that practice of waking up with your spouse and meditating together. That sounds wonderful. So, you were pretty productive during the pandemic and you wrote a book so let’s talk about Boundary Boss. What is it about? How did the idea come about? And let’s also talk a little bit about your experience writing this book as well. I think coaches listening in always, from what I know about our audience, they like to learn about the journey writing a book. It is such an important thing for coaches to specialize to the extent where they can write a book on a certain specialty so there’s always a lot of interest around just the genesis of the idea and also the diligence that it takes to actually get those ideas down in paper. So, let’s take us through that journey, both from the content perspective but also the experience of saying, “I’m gonna write this book,” and having the diligence to do it.

Terri: Well, so many good questions, Alex, thank you. The content perspective, I’m really passionate about this and I love what you just said about encouraging coaches in this group and anywhere to become such an expert at the way you do it or what it is that you’re doing that you could write a book about it. Because, for years, literally, Alex, I was saying, “I was writing a friggin’ book,” I swear to God for at least a decade before I actually wrote the book because I knew I was going to, I knew this was in my future, I just knew it in my gut, I knew it, but part of why I didn’t do it then is that I didn’t have the thing that it should be, like the question that I would ask anybody thinking about writing a book, the question you want to ask yourself is, “What do I do better than almost everyone else different than other people?” Where, for me, part of the process of what makes me different is that I have a great ability to take complicated, complex theoretical information and make it accessible and actionable. Because all the theory in the world doesn’t do crap to change your life if you don’t understand what it looks like in practical steps, like what is step one to becoming a boundary boss, right? Everyone knows they need healthy boundaries, and, hello, we’re all the choir when it comes to that, but what I knew I could do differently is the way that I teach it is different, the way that I perceive this whole process of setting boundaries, there wasn’t much out there. So, the reason, anyway, the content piece, get really good at it. And here’s the thing, actually become an expert. So that means do the work and that might mean you’re not writing a book in year 2 of your coaching practice and that’s okay because my feeling of being a legitimate author or an author where you want to be well respected, what does that look like? That looks like doing the work to be an actual veritable expert at what you’re doing, having something to offer. I remember meeting with a young person who was a coach years ago and she was saying to me, “You have all these, quote-unquote, ‘high-profile friends,’” it was a lot of people in the wellness space that apparently were aspirational for her, they were really actually just my friends, and she was like, “I want to be friends with those people.” I was having lunch with her, I was like, “You have an hour and a half to pick my brain. I’m not sure that’s the best use of our time. I don’t even know how. I’ve been friends with these people for years,” because I knew what she was saying though is, “I want to be at a certain level,” and what I just said back to her is, “Hey, work to be at that level. You can get to that level.” Every one of those people she was looking at were experts in their field and had been in the game for years, so I think there’s something that can be lost if we’re trying to put the cart before the horse when it comes to writing a book because we don’t want to overestimate our expertise. And this is not to be discouraging either because I also find in my therapy practice a lot of women in particular feel like they just need one more degree before they can actually do the thing. So, I think that we need a realistic view of what we have to offer. And, sometimes, you can reinvent the wheel, because a lot of us, listen, we’re all talking about similar things, right? Everyone wants to be empowered or want to have good relationships and healthy minds and healthy bodies, make a lot of money, like think about what the world wants, what people want, we want to heal from our childhood wounds. You can have your own spin on that that will make it accessible to people. It wouldn’t be accessible too if you don’t write the thing that’s in your mind or that’s in your heart. So you’ll find your people, so now let’s move into the actual process and we can talk about all of that. We can talk about selling a book, we can talk about promoting a book, I’m going to first hit writing a book so I wrote my very first book during my very first pandemic while my mother was going through cancer treatments and living with me. This was like a triple whammy of firsts. So, writing the book is one thing. And then, the reality is it ended up, I was already sort of through most of the book when the pandemic came, but then it was full pandemic when I was supposed to be promoting the book so went from I was going all over the world, that was going to — I had three cities in Australia, I was doing like five in Europe and I was doing a bunch across the US, the people who know my work are like in weird places, like I would go nowhere in the middle of this country because they would be like, “Who?” but the coasts were the places I would go, maybe Chicago. Anyway, all of that planning and all of that, goodbye. Now we’re not going anywhere because nobody was going anywhere, think about before the vaccine, so the process of writing the book, I cleared the decks and I’m normally pretty busy but I had to actually have a period of time where I really couldn’t do anything else. And at that point, I wasn’t doing a lot of press, I wasn’t doing a lot of interviews in my career. I knew I was going to once I had a reason to but I never heard core pursued visibility externally because I was like, I used to be a talent agent, I was like why waste the effort unless I’m selling something really, unless I’m doing it for a reason? So it was strategic that I had spent a lot of time doing the work, mastering my courses then writing the book, but then when the time came, now, it was time to actually get the book out there. I think that for how people can actually get it done, I chose to sell the book so I did a book proposal that took me longer to write than the book itself. So, it’s something that even though it’s so hard can be, I found it like, oh my god, where do I even start so I hired people to help me and I did all the things but that becomes a very specific and tight outline for the book, which doesn’t mean you can’t change it but I had already, to write a book proposal, I already had to think so hard about the content. You’re not just sitting looking at a blank page being like, “I don’t know what I’m writing today,” because you do know, you’ve got the chapters outlined, you’ve got the chapter summaries, the overall summary of the book, you do comparative titles, so then you’re actually writing about other books that could be similar. If somebody likes this person’s book, I believe they would like this book. So, all of that set me up to have the writing process be, I believe, doable in a short period of time because I wrote that book in less than three months, but it was an all day, everyday thing. I would not suggest — I’m not doing my second book that way and I wouldn’t necessarily suggest doing it that way, I just didn’t know that there could be a better way to do it. And I agreed to a short timeframe because of my ignorance, right? I really didn’t know and I just couldn’t get myself to ask for more time, which you can do. It’s not the end of the world, that happens all the time. So, I ended up selling the book to a publisher who had already been working with me, talking to me, Sounds True is my publisher, I think they’re great. I wanted to be with the female —

Alex: I love Sounds True.

Terri: You do?

Alex: One of my favorite — yeah, the woman that runs Sounds True, did this amazing interview with Ken Wilber in the early 2000s, it’s like 12 hours long, it’s called Cosmic Consciousness. Tammy, yes. She’s so good at interviewing people. Incredible. Yeah, so that’s so cool that that’s your publisher. Love that.

Terri: Yes. And they’re really great and I specifically wanted a female-run place because of what my content is. I didn’t just want someone saying, “I think we can sell this book,” I wanted someone to really know my content and be like, “This is different. This is special. We’re gonna really go for it with this.” And I was working with them, they had approached me to do something else, and then when the time came, because they wanted me to do an audio something and one of my friends, Danielle LaPorte, I said, “Oh, Sounds True approached me about doing an audio course on boundaries,” and she was like, “Don’t you have your own course on boundaries?” I was like, “Yeah,” she’s like, “Don’t you want a book deal?” And I was like, “I do,” she’s like, “Don’t sign that contract, Terri. Go back and tell them,” and I was like, “How could that have never entered my mind?” I never thought of that. Literally never thought of it. So I ended up going back to them and saying, “Hey, I would really want to do a book on boundaries, not a course because I already have a course,” and they were like, “We thought you had a book deal with someone else,” I was like, “I do not.” So we started the whole process and then I realized before signing contracts with them that I really had to bring it to market, that I actually had spent over 10, 12 years building a very substantial platform that translates, because anytime you want to address — trust me right now, you want to put a book in the world, build your platform. That is literally the first question when I started looking for book agents 10 years before this, they were like, “How many followers do you have on Instagram?” and at the time, I was like 900, I don’t know, and they were like, “Yeah, you need a million more than that in order —” because they really do expect you to sell your own book. 

Alex: Right. 

Terri: Anyway, I ended up talking to Sounds True and saying, “I love you guys. I hope it’s you but I really feel like I have to take this to the market. I need to know what it’s worth,” and they were like, “We’re bummed but we understand,” and so it took to market, we had nine other publishers interested in the book, we were starting a bidding war and they came to me and said, “Can we make you a preemptive offer so that you don’t take it to market?” and I was like, “Yes, offer me enough money and I don’t —” I don’t want to, it was also the height of the pandemic, I’m like do I want to go meet with nine groups of people in New York City? No, I do not. So I didn’t have to do that which was wonderful. But from a strategic and business point of view, depending on how big your platform is, you’re going to have places that will offer you no money to do a book and that’s okay, you can self-publish for no money. Having a book if you’re an expert on something is absolutely valuable because it makes it so much easier to get on stages and to get on TV and to — this becomes your calling card. Trust me, nobody’s making a ton of money on books. You’re absolutely not. So if you’re like, “I can’t wait to write a book and be rich,” no, that is not happening, even if you get a really good advance because I cannot even tell you how much money I’ve spent on promoting the book. I have a PR agent that I pay every month, like there’s a lot of costs that go along, but it depends on where you are in your business as to what makes sense for you.

Alex: So where did the interesting boundaries come about and how did that interest and expertise develop over time? I mean, it is really a core component of therapy but how did you make it your own and just expound on the actual topic and how — I’m always fascinated by how a specific topic become someone’s obsession to then be the driver to write a book about.

Terri: Yeah. Part of it was, you know, what do they say? You teach what you most need to learn. And I was just a friggin’ boundary disaster. I just didn’t know what boundaries were. I didn’t, until a lot of therapy, I didn’t even understand that the pain that I was experiencing in my relationships and in my career and all over the place were directly related to the fact that my boundaries were disordered and that I was a people pleaser and that I was over giving and overdoing and I’m a high functioning codependent and all these things that I didn’t know were related to boundaries. So, then, I started getting my own boundary stuff together through my own therapeutic process, get into my own private practice, and then all of these women in particular coming into my private practice and I’m seeing the same thing over and over and I realized it was just an epidemic that we don’t know how to establish healthy boundaries. We don’t even know what it is. And that, as women in particular, and I’m not leaving men out of this conversation because I think a lot of men struggle with boundaries too, but the way that women, if we’re looking from a gender traditional sort of point of view, are raised, especially women in my generation, so anybody 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, you were raised and praised to be a self-abandoning codependent. Please other people, be a good girl, turn that frown around, if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. Nobody was teaching us how to assert ourselves in a healthy way and there’s all of these myths around having healthy boundaries that if you have good boundaries, you’re bossy, you’re bitchy, you’re mean, you’re controlling, you’re all the things, which isn’t true. Really, the way that I teach it is that boundaries are basically your own personal rules of engagement that let other people know what’s okay with you and what’s not okay with you. So, from the point of view of my own sort of evolution in this process and then seeing all of these clients, I just started taking copious notes for years about what are the things that I see over and over again and what are the interventions that actually move the needle, what works and what doesn’t, because I had lots of great ideas that I thought would work that actually didn’t so, obviously, none of those made it into the book, but I knew that there was going to be a need for this because I’m like this can’t just be my private practice in New York City, this isn’t just a problem here. This is a problem everywhere. And then when I started, I created a course in 2015, my first course, boundary boot camp, I had women, in that course alone, I had women in maybe 90 countries and not one of them was like, “Oh, yeah, I learned about boundaries in the home that I grew up in,” like nobody did and it was cross cultural. It was global this actual problem. The real thing that, honestly, Alex, the thing that — the passion that created me taking the leap from doing this course for years to actually writing the book was seeing people on the other side, getting notes from people who took the course and were like, “Oh my God, my life is so much better. The quality of my life, so much less suffering, so much more joy,” which is really that’s my whole trip in life is how many people can I help lessen their suffering? How many people can I help increase their joy? So that’s what really got me because, the thing is, I didn’t want it to only be for people who had money. If you can afford to take a course with me, you probably have some money. So we did a whole campaign to get the book in libraries everywhere. I’ve also gifted a zillion books to a zillion people, but I wanted it to even the playing field because mental wellness and empowerment is it should be our birthright, it’s for everyone, so I really worked hard to make it accessible and available to as many people as possible.

Alex: What has been one of the most exciting outcomes from the book?

Terri: I think part of it is just seeing my dharma in action. Just knowing that through my podcasts that I’ve had for seven years, through all the ways, my dream years ago when I didn’t have any of these things was that if I did the work, if I built it brick by brick, that my life’s purpose of actually making a difference in other people’s lives could come to fruition and having people tell me about the book and having all these reviews on Amazon and getting notes from people, that is probably — I mean, I’ve had other things that are exciting in a flashy way, like TV things and blah, blah, blah, but the truth is that the most meaningful thing to me is helping the single waitress with three kids in Omaha who thinks she’s completely screwed see that she has possibility and potential and that she can stand up for herself and that her past doesn’t have to dictate her future. Those are the stories that just — I mean, I could just cry of talking about it, it’s so meaningful and that’s what keeps me going on this path is being like I’m making a difference in the lives of others.

Alex: That’s beautiful. And, yeah, just looking at the reviews on Amazon, I mean, the book really struck a chord with people and it’s been incredibly well received so I’m sure you’re very happy and satisfied with just having gone through the process of — it’s a difficult process to write a book and the experience working with publishers and sitting down and writing and putting all of these life experience into a book, to see it resonate with people, I’m sure is a really great feeling.

Terri: It is and I have to say, pushing back, one thing about with a publisher, the real flex here for me was actually, as a first-time author, writing the book I wanted to write, saying what I wanted to say, even though there were many things that I wanted to do that they did not want to do, they wanted me to change doing, they’re like, “That’s not the way people do it,” I was like, “I don’t give a crap, that’s the way I’d do it and I’m telling you, this is how people learn.” I know my people. And even with the cover of the book, we had a whole thing, they kept sending me covers and I was working so hard, my husband’s an artist and he whipped up something that I really liked and I was like it doesn’t have to be that one but the idea, and I also have a designer on my team who lives in London and after going back and forth many different times, I just said to my designer, “Wayne, make me four covers,” because I have brand colors, brand fonts, I want it to be this and I wasn’t trying to be difficult but I also knew, like I really think there was a parallel process, Alex, going on throughout this process of me becoming a hardcore boundary boss in respect to the fact that I was it had to be the way it needed to be, like they’re going to — they’ve got a million other books that are coming out, other people, and, yes, they focused on mine and that was lovely, but this is going to be my first book for the rest of my life, I’m going to be looking at this thing, I’ve been looking at this book for two straight years, and it needed to be the cover. And then I ended up getting those four covers, putting it out to my audience and saying, “What do you think?” and I’m sure my publisher was like, “Great, just feel free to go rogue,” but we were getting down to it time wise and I was like it has got to be the right cover and it is the right cover and we have a great working relationship because I told the truth about how I felt, which is what it means to create healthy boundaries, is that I could not say that that was okay, that cover, the 57,000 they sent me, none of them were the right cover and I would be honest and say, “Hey, listen, I’m not trying to be difficult. This is not the cover to the book though. It just isn’t,” and they were Like, “Oh my God,” but they dealt with it and part of the reason I ended up doing a three-book deal with them, started as one, turned into three, is because of how they handled and respected my boundaries because that’s important.

Alex: It sounds like you really applied, you know, you walked the talk in this process and actually saying, “Look, these are my boundaries, this is how we’re gonna move forward,” which is nice to see because, oftentimes, I’ve met a lot of people that wrote a book on a specific area and then you interact with them and you’re like how are you writing a book in this area if I’m seeing all these patterns come up, so we’re human, at the end of the day, and writing a book on something doesn’t mean that you’re perfect, especially certain topics that are nuanced and difficult for people. So, in this case, I like how you’re tying it together, the topic of the book with your experience of writing the book and setting boundaries through the process so I love seeing that in action. So, now I’m curious, what are the next books or at least the next book and what are you thinking? How does one go from specializing, in this case in boundaries, to thinking about a series of books ahead? What are you focused on for that next book that you have coming?

Terri: So the book I’m writing right now is on a concept that I originated called high functioning codependency, so it’s similar to how the boundary thing became the thing, which is that my clientele are highly codependent but they don’t know it because they’re highly capable and they have an idea that codependency means involved with an addict or like that you’re dependent on someone and all of my people are like, “What? I’m not dependent on squat, lady, everyone’s dependent on me. I’m doing all the things.” I’m like, “Yeah, you just don’t know what codependency is.” So, high functioning codependency is what this book is about and, again, I’m really writing it because it’s what my audience needs and wants from me interacting with them and teaching it in courses for years.

Alex: You threw that term into the conversation a few minutes ago and I thought it was very interesting so let’s unpack it a little bit because high functioning codependency is making the point then codependency is a drag on our ability to kind of go around and live great lives so why is it so and why are so many people codependent?

Terri: Well, let’s just establish what codependency is, according to me. Codependency is being overly invested in the feeling states, the outcomes, the relationships, the circumstances of the people in your life to the detriment of your own internal peace. So, all you lovers out there, I got you, of course, we’re invested in the people who we love, but when you’re codependent, you’re overly invested. Something bad happening to your adult child is like something bad happening to you when you’re codependent. And if you’re wondering how you can tell, when your best friend calls you in a crisis, you need to check your urgency. How quickly does their crisis become you being like, “Alright, I’m texting Bob on the other line. Okay, here you go. I know somebody I can connect you to. I’ve got a book I’m underlining right now. I’m getting in my car. I’m coming to your house.” Like how quickly do you feel responsible to find the solution to someone else’s problem? Because that’s a lot of codependent behavior. Again, with Melody Beattie’s seminal work, which is wonderful that came out originally I think in the late 70s and she’s revised it many times and her work has evolved over time, but in Codependent No More, the biggest takeaway was that you’re involved with someone who has an addiction issue and what I saw in my therapy practice and in my own life is that I was highly codependent and not involved with any addicts. It wasn’t that. That did not need to be a prerequisite for my over functioning, over giving, over feeling basically in life. So I knew if it was me and I was having that experience with my clients, if I would mention, “Oh, hey, what you’re describing, this is a codependent pattern,” they’d be like, “No way, man. I’m me. I’m not dependent on anybody. Everyone’s dependent on me. I’m making all the money. I’m doing all the friggin’ things for other people. My family of origin counts on me. My friend group counts on me. I’m the center of my family, the family I created.” So I was like, “Oh, they just don’t know what it is,” and with my clientele and with the people that this is going to speak to, we’re very capable humans, hence the high functioning moniker, where nobody is thinking about Terri Cole and being like, “I hope she’s okay,” they’re all like, “She’s fine, man. She’s fine. She’s the one we go to when we’re not okay,” and so this is a very invisible to a degree and painful experience for people who have it because we feel like we have so many balls in the air so much of the time and we are over giving, over functioning, overdoing, but what I’m seeing in my practice and what happened in my own life before I got into recovery from this is that you become pissed, you’re bitter, you’re mad, like you were over giving to people and even if they’re grateful, you know what, Alex, they cannot be grateful enough because we’re not giving from a magnanimous healthy place, we’re giving from a need. We’re giving to be needed. We’re giving to save the day. We’re giving because we can’t stop being the hero in someone else’s story. But then we’re pissed and it’s bad for our relationships but it’s also incredibly bad for our health. So what I’ve seen in my practice over the last 25 years is what happens when you are expending this much bandwidth and really, at the base and how it’s related to boundaries, is that at the foundation of codependency are disordered boundaries. At its base, codependency is an overt or a covert desire to control other people’s outcomes. And we think it’s love. We think we’re doing it because we’re so freakin loving. Dude, I thought it was Mother Teresa before this all came to light in therapy. I was like, “What? I’m just a lover like that.” My therapist is like, “You mean you’re just controlling like that.” I was like, “What?” 

Alex: This is very interesting. It’s very interesting for coaching because I think it’s easy to be codependent as a coach in terms of your clients’ outcomes as well, like it is hard to step out of it if you get involved with people and you are invested in their success and their growth, especially a lot of coaches that don’t have the therapy background, it could be something that pulls you into a place where you’re actually less effective. Caring more doesn’t always mean that you’re actually aligning the way you’re interacting with the most effective or impactful outcomes for your clients so I know you’re doing a session at the WBECS Summit so I’m really excited to see kind of how you frame these topics for coaches because there’s so much to unpack within the domain of coaching in terms of boundaries and so many things to explore. I’m really excited about that.

Terri: Me too. It’s going to be so great when. We were already just working on it. Actually, there is so much to think about and there’s so many ways that coaches can become proactive in their businesses right now that are simple changes that you can make that will save you so much pain and dollars later so I’m going to be sharing all of that in the actual session.

Alex: As tempted as I am to just unpack all of that here, we’ll wait for the session. I am super excited for it and really want to thank you for joining me today in this episode of Coaches on Zoom Drinking Coffee. Really enjoyed our conversation. You’re doing incredible work and looking forward to continuing to learn more about the work and seeing that three-book series. We talked about the second book, I’m very excited to hear more about the third pretty soon.

Terri: Thank you so much for having me. This was great and I’m really looking forward to our session together.