Today I am inviting you into my living room, where I’m sitting with notebook and pen, coaching myself. I want to tell you a story, and I want to show you the process I go through as a mind-body coach living a mind-body lifestyle. I’ve seen with my clients that sharing my process helps them to integrate the mind-body work into their lives. So, here goes!
Two weeks ago, I had a little pelvic pain and some mild bladder symptoms. They’d probably measure practically nothing on the good old “pain scale,” and in the past would have probably gone unnoticed. However, this time, something interesting happened. Instead of simply noticing the message from my body and turning inward to feel emotions and clean up my thinking, I completely avoided the issue. I suppressed emotions like mad. I avoided coaching myself. I resisted my own coaching processes and tried to just ignore everything.
Then, today, I realized I’d been avoiding the emotional/mental work. I noticed that my bladder was still slightly funky – still patiently sending me a message. I got curious. Why, I asked myself, am I avoiding this message? If I’d woken up with a headache, a stomachache, or knee pain two weeks ago, I’d have been coaching myself up one side and down the other, investigating, curious, learning, and growing. Why, in this instance, was I not doing this?
And then the aha moment occurred. Thoughts came pouring out of my pen onto the notebook in front of me. Quite soon, a theme appeared. Apparently, in my mind, having a headache or stomachache is perfectly acceptable. Having pelvic pain is not. Why is this an issue to my mind? Because I coach people around pelvic pain. Interesting, no?
As I sat and free-wrote, I began to see my past in a different light. When I first found mind-body work, I was so happy. It worked like a charm, and I went from constant pain to mild bumps in the road here and there. Then, I pretty much felt fine for years. I probably had a mild symptom or two but just didn’t give them any thought at all. I considered myself healthy, I had the mind-body work down, and I was just living my life.
The funny thing is, the first time I noticed a pelvic symptom was AFTER I became a coach. Even then, it was not a major symptom. It was so slight that I had to sort of focus on it to see if it was there. Not surprisingly, the more I focused on it, the more I noticed it. I worked myself up into quite a freak-out. “Why,” I railed at the heavens, “am I completely fine for years and then start having symptoms when I become a coach?”
As it turns out, it wasn’t some punishment from the Gods. It was quite simple. As soon as I became a coach, I put about four tons of pressure on myself in the form of perfectionism. I thought I had to be this perfectly healthy specimen to prove the effectiveness of mind-body work. I felt so passionately about mind-body work and wanted people to have the experience of joy and health that comes from it that I promptly stressed myself into pain. Hmmmm. Isn’t the mind amazing?
At that point and time, I coached myself, figured out what was going on, and then started telling my clients about it. It was a perfect example of perfectionism and how quickly it creates enough stress in the body to result in physical pain. As a result, several clients had breakthroughs, one client said nothing I’d done before could ever match the effectiveness of that bit of coaching, and I felt a whole lot better. No more stress, no more freaking out, no more pain.
Yet, even with that experience under my belt, I still avoided facing the recent mild bladder symptoms for TWO WHOLE WEEKS. Clearly, I hadn’t quite routed the belief system that was creating stress and fear in my body. Prior to becoming a coach, having a mild symptom didn’t mean a thing to me at all. It was so meaningless that I can’t even remember if I had any mild symptoms, though I’m sure I probably did. Now, though, I have assigned meaning to having a symptom. For example, here’s what came out in my free-write:
To show everyone that mind-body work is effective, I have to be perfectly healthy.
To be a good mind-body coach for people, I have to be perfect at it myself.
So, I took these thoughts through one of the major coaching tools. It’s called The Work, and was created by a woman named Byron Katie. Here’s what it looks like.
To show everyone that mind-body work is effective, I have to be perfectly healthy.
Is that true?
Hmmm. Seems true.
Can you be absolutely sure that is 100% true?
No.
How do you react when you think that thought?
I feel panic. I stress out. I get upset and angry with myself. I suppress the emotion created by this thought and avoid the whole issue. I forget to be a coach for myself.
Who would you be without this thought?
I’d be the effective mind-body coach, coaching herself! I’d be relaxed and open. I’d tell everyone about this so they could learn from it in case they ever had a similar, stressful thought.
Turnaround (new, stress-relieving, truthful thought): There are lots of turnarounds for this thought, but here’s one that really resonated with me. To show everyone that mind-body work is effective, I have to be perfectly open.
Here’s the turnaround I like best for the other stressful thought:
To be a good mind-body coach for people, I have to NOT be perfect at it myself.
I LOVE those thoughts. They ring true in so many ways. To understand the mind-body work, you all need to see it in action. What better way than to show it to you as I use it myself? What else would help you see so clearly that in doing this work, you NEVER have to fear symptoms again. When they come up (and they will, because none of us are perfect – we will always suppress emotions now and again), you’ll know exactly what to do. You won’t get caught in the fear and panic, creating more symptoms without realizing you’re doing so. Instead, you’ll say – hey, I know about this. It just means I need to look inward a bit and see where I’ve been in a pattern of dealing with stress that isn’t working for me. (You’ll also see that I’m dead serious about allowing yourself to NOT be perfect – since I’m willing to share my imperfection right here in the written word!)
When you have little bouts of pain after years of feeling great, you’ll know that you just have a thought somewhere creating something that doesn’t serve you. You’ll feel your emotions, you’ll find your thoughts, you’ll do the processes you learned, and you’ll be just fine. A symptom doesn’t have to mean anything scary at all – it’s only our minds that assign meaning and create a mountain out of a molehill. This is the beauty of the mind-body work. It gives you such solid ground upon which to work that you have confidence in your own health. You’re not worried that if you eat the wrong thing or do the wrong thing your health will fall off its precarious balance and come crashing to the ground. Instead, you’ll feel the solid structure of your health supporting you, and you’ll know that if your body pops out a symptom, it’s simply a message. You’ll know that the definition of healthy is not feeling perfect all the time – it’s being willing to listen when the messages arise so they don’t become larger health problems.
I sit here, in my living room, bringing you into the intimate world of coaching myself, full of appreciation for this process. I went from feeling panicky and stressed to absolutely blissed out with gratitude. Thank you, body, for sending me this very important message. I hear you loud and clear – I still had some very painful story around this issue that was blocking my effectiveness as a coach. Without you, I would have kept coaching, unaware, and missed opportunities to truly transform someone’s experience. Without you, someone might have felt the exact way I feel now and thought – well, I must be doing this wrong, because Abigail never has any pain. What a tragedy that would be, because it would hamper their mind-body experience and they might not trust their own process as a result.
I see so clearly that the very best thing I can do is be open, honest, and authentic about my own experience. It’s perhaps the most reassuring thing I can do as a coach. I remember once talking to a weight loss coach who said, “Sure, sometimes I gain a few pounds. But it’s not a problem – it just means I need to do what I know.”
We all forget sometimes. We all don’t do what we know sometimes. But thank goodness we have these bodies to let us know, to keep us moving forward, learning, and growing. I just released some serious mental baggage today that I would not have been aware of without my body and its magical message system.
The amazing this is that when we listen to our bodies, the small little pain reminders never become big, unwieldy pain reminders. The body gives us exaclty what we need to learn the lesson of the day. It never throws a flame torch your way when a match will serve the purpose. You don’t have to be afraid that you’ll be laid flat with the kind of pain that started you on this journey. That pain was what it took to get you started – to wake you up to the stresses and pressures you were unknowingly putting on your self and body. Now that you’re aware, it will only take a small poke here and there to keep you on track.
I know that I feel best when I am absolutely an open book. Whenever I go against myself, it feels terrible and stressful. Whenever I put perfection pressure on myself, it leads to emotional stress. Most of the time, I can feel the emotions and do the work on my thoughts. But, I’m not perfect. Sometimes I suppress the emotions and avoid myself. Thank you, body, for waking me up to that fact. You are a gentle but unyielding teacher, leading me always to my best life.
Have a great two weeks everyone! I’m off to the final week of Martha Beck Master Coach Training, where I plan to be open, honest, and myself. I’ll thank my body for the incredible payoff in learning, knowledge, and joy that authenticity will bring me. More in the Emotions Series when I get back!
