Navigating Grief as a Coach and Practicing Self-Management: Debrief of Coaching Session #4 with Dr. Mary

In this debrief episode of The Holistic Physician Coaching Podcast, Dr. Jessica Singh reflects on her fourth coaching session with Dr. Mary, a family medicine resident physician. During the session, Dr. Mary explored grief following her grandfather’s death, including feelings of guilt and blame, and reflected on changes she had experienced at work since her previous coaching session.

In this debrief, Dr. Singh begins by sharing how she grounds and prepares herself before coaching. She reflects on creating an intentional environment, cultivating presence, and allowing time before and after sessions to process and reset. She also explores the importance of prioritizing personal well-being and setting boundaries as a coach.

As the debrief unfolds, Dr. Singh considers what it means to navigate grief within the coaching scope of practice. She reflects on following the coachee’s agenda, recognizing when additional support may be needed, and practicing self-management when a coachee’s experience evokes the coach’s own emotions or memories.

Dr. Singh also reflects on the value of going beyond the mental through a whole-person approach to coaching. She discusses how somatic awareness, breathwork, emotions, energy, and spirituality may support deeper awareness and meaningful shifts when these approaches are welcomed by the coachee and used within the coach’s competence.

The episode closes with reflections on recontracting, translating insight into action, seeking mentor coaching, and approaching professional growth as a coach with humility and self-compassion.

Timestamps

0:00 - Grounding and Preparing Before a Coaching Session

3:56 - Prioritizing Yourself, Scheduling Sustainably, and Setting Boundaries as a Coach

10:03 - Navigating Grief as a Coach and Practicing Self-Management

23:53 - Going Beyond the Mental Through Somatic Awareness and Breathwork

30:18 - Reflections and Key Takeaways

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Transcript

Grounding and Preparing Before a Coaching Session

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to the Holistic Physician Coaching Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Jessica Singh. This podcast explores physician health, well-being, and fulfillment, embracing all aspects of the human experience. Just as a medicine, where a single interaction can transform a life. This podcast is grounded on the belief that each coaching conversation has the power to inspire, heal, and bring about meaningful change. In today's session, I will be debriefing my fourth coaching session with Dr. Mary. And the first thing I realized for debriefing was talking about grounding and preparation prior to a session. And so for me, this involves also physically creating an ideal coaching space energetically and spiritually. I like to have either fresh flowers or a plant, some kind of plant life in the room. Plants give life, energy. For me, they also bring so much joy and peace. I also light an oil lamp, which often does not get visible on camera, but it's right in front of me, and there's so much peace I find in just gazing at that flame. And this comes from a long-standing tradition in India of lighting an oil lamp and fire just throughout so many cultures. It signifies purity, clarity, peace, cleansing. So going through this preparation for each session, I find really elevates the environment. It's also an internal preparation while preparing the external environment. And the physical space I have right now, anyway, isn't that big. I'm in the corner of a bedroom. Gotta love technology, but it's important that no matter where my space is, especially while traveling, that everything to me in the room is clean. Because if there's clutter in the room, I feel like it disorganizes thoughts and actually interferes with my ability to be present with the person that I'm coaching. And so I will always make the effort to have things clean and orderly before a session and with the physical space, making sure it's conducive to confidentiality. And one of the most important things that I do before each and every coaching session is grounding the intention, setting the space. And for me, that happens with prayer. And so I thought about debriefing it because when you think about the time it takes to prepare for a session and what goes into it, I've realized that often my preparation for a session, it's not traditionally how you or how I would think of preparing for meetings, looking at notes, trying to read up on different questions or coaching tools. Lately, especially as I practice more and more, it's about being present in the moment, which grounds my ability in faith to recall all the techniques that I know. It aids in asking powerful questions, my ability to form thoughtful, evocative questions because I'm more present. And so this is a practice that has evolved significantly, preparation before a session from when I first started until now, and I know it will continue to evolve. But I imagine no matter where I go in my journey, that I will always leave time before and after a session to process, ground, be present, to really be there, especially energetically

Prioritizing Yourself, Scheduling Sustainably, and Setting Boundaries as a Coach

SPEAKER_00 3:56

with the person being coached. This particular session was also a unique circumstance. I knew going into this that this would be the last coaching session for several weeks. And as a coach, it's interesting. Sometimes opportunities in life come up that are last minute and are too good to miss. And so for me, on my own healing journey, I learned of this really beautiful meditation and spiritual healing program. And it was for 30 days. There was no day off in this program. And I found out about this program after already beginning several coaching engagements. And so integrity, commitment, follow-through, having regularity with coaching sessions is so important. But for me, in my heart, I knew this program was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and it came first. It had to come first. So I could be there better in every aspect of life. And so I was initially wondering how everything would work out, but I was very transparent with all of the people that I was coaching and they understood. But it's also interesting having this coaching conversation from this lens, knowing that it would be the last for a while. Specifically in my coaching relationship with Dr. Mary, we were coaching every one to three weeks pretty regularly with check-ins in between. And this is the first time there would be more than a four-week gap in between sessions. I feel like, in a way, it maybe works out for a client because they get used to having a coach there. All of a sudden they're on their own, and it gives them a glimpse of what they may want to focus on or where they may need support before the end of the coaching relationship, and also gives them a chance to really ground their insights into action on their own and cultivate their independence even more. Or it could completely backfire and be disruptive to the coaching process. And so it depends on the individual, and I'm curious to see what will happen. It also made me think of just scheduling as a coach in general. Because as you coach either for a platform, an organization, or in your own private practice, yes, you have autonomy. But then there's also it's not like you can just show up to work from nine to five and people will come. Or maybe that's how some coaches create their hours. It's mutually dependent on when the thinker is available. And there's often a lot of flexibility involved. Yes, it's important to keep boundaries, but it makes you think about do you have seasonalities to coaching clients and when you accept clients throughout the year? Is there a certain time a month, like one week a month, or that you block time off for yourself? Are there certain times of year that this happened? Are there certain days in the week to block time off? Because otherwise, especially with coaching and having other projects and other commitments, there's really no end as to when a coaching session could happen. And for me personally, I am very well aware of this. Because as much as I love coaching, I also enjoy deep work, like writing and building curriculums and doing projects. And I realize on the days that I take meetings or coaching clients, I cannot get into that deep space of creative work to the level that I would as if I have blocked the day off from meetings and coaching. So I personally on my schedule will do everything I can to have dedicated coaching days in the week. And I just personally have boundaries. So in terms of weekends, unless it's an emergency, especially with physicians, sometimes the schedule is so erratic and changes and there's night shifts that I will occasionally accommodate a weekend, but it's something that I really try not to do for boundaries, personal reasons, time with family, time for myself. I will also make sure on the days when I am coaching that there is an adequate buffer in between sessions so there's time to breathe, process, and really be present for each one. So I will never schedule one back to back to back to back without having time off in between. Because that time off in between is so needed. In healthcare, one of the biggest things when I was practicing emergency medicine was that patient care often felt like you have this sick patient, this gravely ill patient, and then there's no time to process, no time to breathe. You have to move on to the next. And so in transitioning into coaching, it's so important to have that emotional awareness, that self-awareness, enhance that emotional intelligence and process, process what the thinker is telling you, maintain our own inner space, have empathy without being entangled. And all of these things take time without rushing. And it's been really well received, actually, by the people that I coach and the employers that I coach for. So the biggest takeaway with that is just transparency and self-advocacy, feeling empowered to advocate for ourselves so that way we could be the best coaches we can for the people we coach. This session was also special

Navigating Grief as a Coach and Practicing Self-Management

SPEAKER_00 10:03

for another reason. Before recording these podcast episodes, I briefly check in with the person being coached. I briefly checked in with Dr. Mary before hitting the record button. She had just shared with me right before getting into this coaching session on a podcast that her grandfather had passed away. No matter how many times we face death, and I'm always amazed because as physicians, I know frontline workers experience this, paramedics, officers of the law, people who have survived war in conflict zones, they see death a lot more frequently than most people in this world do. Many people in their lifetimes will see maybe a handful or less of dead bodies. Physicians, especially in emergency medicine, which was my specialty, we see so much more. And while that brings an acceptance for life and death, it also, because of the environments we're in, we're not really taught how to really process it, let alone realize the effects of seeing death frequently. And no matter how many times that I faced it, it never really gets easier to bear. And so what changes is the acceptance of the events. The other thing is as a coach, it is so different holding the space for a coachy, for a thinker, in light of a recent passing of a loved one. It's such a different conversation that I would ever have with a colleague or a former patient as a medical professional, as a physician. It's different than the conversation I would have with a friend. And it really for me requires a lot of self-management. And I think it's a good thing. So when she told me, for instance, that her grandfather had passed away, in my head, I'm like, why aren't you crying right now? I want to cry for you. Or how are you right now? You know, I just want to give you a big hug. I'm so sorry. And while expressing sympathy is appropriate from a coach, especially if the coachy shares that a loved one has passed away. I realize that the coaching skills and communication skills and the thought partnership and transformation is so powerful with coaching with respect to grief. Because it's not judging the response that someone's having based around sympathizing with them, even though expressing sympathy is appropriate. It's about completely about the thinker, the person being coached, helping them, asking powerful questions to help raise their awareness, to help them process what has happened, and shift. Have some kind of cognitive shift that ultimately makes the experience easier to bear and empowers them in moving forward. And the other thing is with grief and coaching, see, this is still something that is a newer experience for me because of the frequency. It's not a frequent conversation that comes up. And so I'm really grateful for the experience to coach for grief in this setting because it's also important to recognize when counseling or therapy may be needed. In this case, I didn't feel like Dr. Mary had shared anything that would have led me to go down that pathway. And even if I had intuitively felt like maybe this would be beneficial for her, I never would have advised it or suggested it. I would have communicated with her in such a way to ask, maybe ask her permission, may ask, do you think that this would be valuable to you or what other support might you need? Because Dr. Mary is educated and she's well informed. And so it's just empowering her to see what other support systems might be useful to her. Initially, at the beginning of the session, Dr. Mary had shared that she had difficulty thinking of a topic to be coached upon. And this again required self-management for me because I felt like what could be more important right now than processing the death of your grandfather? How could there not be a topic to explore in this coaching session? I know that as coaches, we're not supposed to choose the topic of focus. It's completely for the thinker to decide. What happens if they say they don't have one, but at the same point in time they're sharing a situation that might heavily benefit from coaching? And so I felt like it was an elephant in the room. This also frequently comes up with physicians, especially with death and grief and processing life events. And I think a lot of it has to do with how we're trained and the environment that we worked in, how we're expected to perform and always put patients first, performing at a level, regardless of what's happening internally. And so we learn how to survive. And sometimes we don't even get a chance to be aware or process or our reactions because there's no time. I remember feeling at some point you just see so much death and illness. And it's like, well, what's the point of feeling sad? This is how life happens. I need to function and be there for my patients. So if these thoughts are not serving me, I don't need to go there. And while that mentality got me through so much, I was able to function. What I didn't realize until the effect became cumulative years later was that these incidents are so powerful and they have stuck with me. I haven't practiced clinically in a few years, and I've had a lot of healing to do and a lot of processing to do from a lot of the experiences I've had caring for patients who were critically ill and dying. And I wish, in hindsight, there was more recognition of that and acknowledgement of that in medical culture. Because it's like slowly, slowly, slowly, these gradual changes show up in our lives and they change our personalities. They change our experience of life. And it's like one day you wake up, don't even recognize yourself without taking time to process the life and death in front of us. I'm grateful for developing my practice in coaching because, again, though I might have gone through so many things, on the one hand, I can't bring these biases into coaching and ask leading and guiding questions. But on the other hand, all of the experiences that I have are able to really help inform the questions that I'm asking and go deeper with the thinker, with the person being coach, to help raise awareness, right? That's the goal to help raise awareness. And with that awareness, help empower the person being coach to have these cognitive shifts and to experience healing or letting go or whatever it is that they're looking for. And without going through that, personally, I don't know if my ability to have that level of impact would have been there. So for instance, at about a little after two minutes, Dr. Mary said, but otherwise I'm grateful to be a doctor and working in the hospital right now. And honestly, in terms of work-life balance, can't complain. And so when I heard this, I know that I approach everyone I coach as wise, resourceful, and whole. But because our previous sessions had focused so much on work-life balance, I felt like there was much more to this. Masking of emotions is so common in medicine. And that was one of our topics from before. And the word masking came up again in this session. So on the one hand, I was really happy to hear that she said that she can't complain and has gratitude for being a physician. On the other hand, however, I was like, really? Underneath the surface, there must be more that isn't being shared at this moment in time. And so I asked her just organically about do you feel like you have resources to process through the grief, or is this something you'd like to explore? And it ended up that Dr. Mary said, no, let's explore this grief. And she wanted to let go of blame and guilt. And so I only asked the question about what topic she would like to explore because of what had been shared. Otherwise, I don't know if I would have, because that is guiding or leading in a way. But in this case, I guess sometimes I wonder, and I will bring this up in mentoring, is if you're working with someone and they're so bright and so intelligent, and even though you've been coaching, this was our fourth session, and the thinker understands what coaching is, what happens if they're not able to choose a topic for a session? I have had people, especially physicians, just sometimes they want direction. We're so used to direction, you know, from having the straightforward path of career and how to get to a physician, pre-med, med school, residency, fellowship. It's like a conveyor belt, right? You know your path, even though there's so many options. And so all of a sudden, going to the space of the unknown where it's self-directed, it's really a huge transition. And I understand and appreciate the importance of reiterating that and coaching with that because that's what we do as coaches. That's our scope of practice. It's thought partnership, it's not advising, guiding, or giving medical advice. But I do feel like sometimes those elements come in. And so part of me wonders is that me at those points, how do I make myself a better coach? And on the other hand, is that what the client needs at that time? And having faith in myself from the past experience to know that this is helpful to them because sometimes maybe they just need a little bit of direction. And so, is that completely out of the scope of coaching? Especially if it's done in such a way where you ask permission, ask questions, and co-create an environment. So things that I thought about during this episode with debriefing. Another critical part of this conversation that really required a lot of self-management for me as a coach was when Dr. Mary shared that she believed her grandfather passed away from medical error and how she didn't really want to share those emotions with her family, which I understood and respected because she shared that she did not want them to have a negative memory of her grandfather's hospital experience. And that was really humbling for me. I had to pause, ground myself, constantly make an effort to be present on her words, and make a conscious effort to be present with her. And while recognizing whatever may be coming up for me, breathing and letting them go, and just being with Dr. Mary. I had a similar experience with a grandparent and feeling like their death was more untimely than it needed to be, more stressful than it needed to be due to medical neglect. And so I just ignored. Knowledge what was coming up and again grounded a lot of breath work, which is wonderful because nobody can see when you're doing it and we can do it all the time. But for me, that's how I was able to let go and just be with Dr. Mary. Because at one point in time, if a friend was sharing this with me, and I would have said, Oh my goodness, that's terrible. I would have said other statements of that nature, but I did not say them as a coach because I realize they don't really help the person that's sharing or going through it as much as active listening does. And the nuances with active listening is listening without judgment, including positive and negative judgment. That means not agreeing and not disagreeing, which is how we provide that neutral space to just be with the thinker, with the person being coached, allowing themselves to explore and process without adding ourselves into the picture. And I feel like that is the kindest way of showing empathy, of showing care, building trust and rapport, having psychological safety. And there is so much healing that comes from truly providing this kind of space. And so that's where I'm really grateful to coaching and the unique environment that it creates, especially coaching in difficult situations and through navigating grief, because different forms of support are done differently, like counseling and therapy. And so coaching is really, really powerful just in providing a space to process, allow that safety, that brave space to freely express ourselves without judgment, and making powerful cognitive shifts that often lead to self-empowerment.

Going Beyond the Mental Through Somatic Awareness and Breathwork

SPEAKER_00 23:54

A process that I try to utilize in coaching whenever possible, if the coachy is receptive, is going beyond just the mental and acknowledging energy, emotions, even just grounding in the body and spirituality, because all of these things are all dimensions of our being that go beyond the mental, and the mental is where we all tend to stay in and often fall into ruts or continuous thought cycles that don't get us anywhere in terms of forward motion or a shift in perspective. And so in this episode, I asked Dr. Mary where she was feeling the grief and where she was feeling regret. And she had mentioned her forehead and then her stomach. And then by asking her how she mobilized these, she said by taking deep breaths. And so in the moment, this was the first time where it felt appropriate to offer a guided meditation in the middle of a coaching session. And sometimes I do offer this, especially if strong emotions come or there's a release, always asking permission because it has to be up to the coachy, obviously. Never want to force anything on them. And she was receptive and intuitively it seemed like the right thing to do. Usually when I incorporate breath work, it's at the beginning of the session. But sometimes, like in this case, the middle of the session seemed very appropriate. And so she had a powerful experience because she said she was able to feel relief. And for me, it also felt like a celebration. It also felt like an honoring, an acknowledgement of her grandfather's death. And so again, is there an element of guiding in this? Yes, I'm guiding and meditation. But we are being in this space of togetherness, just doing this universal human function of breathing. And just grounding in that presence is what allows us to get out of that fight or flight, to go beyond the mental and really shift cognitively. And so I feel like these tools or these techniques of somatization and breath work and incorporating yoga philosophy, whatever it is, alternative methods of addressing our whole person are essential for transformational coaching. Because no matter how powerful mental work can be, it's only one part of ourselves. And unless we address all parts of ourselves, that is the most powerful way to shift. What was interesting is usually after the breath, speaking of shifts, I felt like because Dr. Mary had shared, she had a relief. So that was a great time, I thought, to recontract with her. So it was almost halfway through the session, 17 minutes after the breath. She had a reset and she wanted to talk about work. And so she drove the agenda. And so I'm always humbled at the power of recontracting. Because the topic that someone comes in with, it may not be the entire topic for a coaching session. And so it's really important to allow space for pivoting. I was also really humbled at what Dr. Mary shared because she shared that at work after our last coaching session, she had such a shift in perspective that she experienced noticeably less frustration, tension, and anxiety going to work. And so it's really humbling the power of coaching when someone is receptive, does the effort, and shows up. It's the power of one coaching conversation to affect positive change in life. And how coaching, this type of interaction, creating a non-judgmental space with psychological safety, seeing the thinker as wise, resourceful, and whole. These simple skills that are not taught to us in medical education, in terms of how we relate to ourselves and our colleagues, have power to transform our lives by transforming how we feel and transforming how we think and how we see the world, which impacts all of our actions and has a ripple effect for ourselves, the people we live with and interact with, families, friends, our colleagues, and our patients. And so I'm so humbled and grateful to be able to do this work. It's also important as a coach not to have any expectations because you never know where a coaching session will go. It really is up to the thinker. And the possibilities for life-changing transformation are endless. The last point from debriefing this episode was realizing the amount of time dedicated to form an action plan, visualizing through steps, thinking through potential barriers, exploring what success would look like, and accountability, and really allowing time to explore this. And so in this case, in this session, I left more than the last 10 minutes of a 45-minute coaching session. And that's a little bit more than 20% of the session. And this is more time than I initially used to spend as a very novice coach for a set of training. You know, it's like, oh, it's the last few minutes. This is what needs to get done. Because I realized that although that percentage varies, I find myself making sure I leave a significant amount of time to really explore grounding insight into action and having the thinker have the space to think through it unbrushed and anticipate challenges or barriers, come up with accountability and learning because it's really the work in between sessions that is so important and makes coaching so powerful.

Reflections and Key Takeaways

SPEAKER_00 30:18

And so there were many learning lessons from this coaching session. I do plan on getting mentoring on this because of the grief and addressing grief from a coaching perspective compared to the lens I had as a physician or as a family member or as a friend to really see what and doing well and figure out areas that I can improve on. And so there really were so many learning points from this coaching session. And I look forward to receive mentoring on this because of the grief, I think it would be really valuable to go through this with an experienced mentor coach. And I'm so grateful to have the opportunity to be mentored by Claire Norman. It really helps stay in the coaching lens, strengthen coaching skills, and it helps me be able to serve with more impact, especially the next time a situation like this shows up. In terms of takeaways, the two of the biggest ones are the differences in between addressing grief from a coach within a coaching scope of practice compared to other roles. And how no matter what the topic is, we can address it by staying within our scope of practice. That being said, it's also important to know when other resources are needed or referral or is needed. But there's nothing to be hesitant of, at least to even assess the situation and see is coaching appropriate. That should be done calmly, with faith, from a coaching foundation, and just really having faith in ourselves as coaches and faith in the process. And faith in the people we are coaching is wise, resourceful, and whole to be able to make the best decisions for themselves. The other parts with the debriefing to other takeaways are really grounding, going beyond the mental and coaching sessions in any way that the thinker is receptive and that we feel confident in, and continuing to develop skills to move just beyond the mental into other realms to address our whole being and how that's so needed for transformation. And finally, the process of self-management, really taking time to acknowledge what's coming up for us and seeing is it biasing us? How can we put this away so we can best be there for the people we coach? So lots of learning and also just setting a gratitude intention and some self-compassion because sometimes with discussing what could be done better, it's important to also reflect on what we did well and having that acceptance and acknowledgement that coaching is an ever dynamic process. We are evolving and our intent is to serve and sticking with our scope of practice to the best we can. Thank you for listening to the Holistic Physician Coaching Podcast. This podcast is dedicated to making coaching more accessible and to support both physicians and those who coach them. Subscribe to access exclusive subscriber-only episodes, including physician coaching sessions, coaching debriefs, and coach mentoring sessions that offer valuable insights for professional development for coaches. Your support helps sustain this work. Subscribe and leave a thoughtful review at www.holistic physician coaching podcast dot com, sending you warmth and light.