Coaching, crying and truth.

Almost every day, I make someone cry. 

There’s this amazing moment during a coaching session when we hit on just the right thought or the right question and suddenly my client (or me when I’m being coached!) lets go of all the tension they’re holding, then the tears start. 

And the first thing that everyone does is apologize and then ask if they are the only person that cries during coaching. 

And I can always tell them honestly… you’re not even the first one today!

I don’t set out to make people cry.

But what happens so often when people first start to work with me is that they think that they are supposed to somehow “fix” themselves or their lives, and that it's such a painful experience that they hold onto this fake “totally in control of myself” version of them with a death grip.  

Which in itself is so poisonous because you're basically telling yourself that you're not good enough and are broken in some way but trying to pretend that you don't feel that!

Like “no no, everything’s fine. If I just hold it together everything will be fine and no one will notice as I bury myself under layers and layers of avoiding myself…”

Like if they let themselves be real about how they feel for just a second, then their entire life will collapse into a heap and they will never recover. 

And I know that feeling well. 

I have been there many times. 

To this day I still dislike being coached because every single week I have to overcome my own drama about needing help and support

Because I spent so many years telling myself that I had to do everything without help in case people realized that I was less than perfect, if I admitted I had flaws… then they would know the awful truth. I wasn't good enough. I wasn't worthy. 

Even saying that out loud seems ridiculous now!

But still , every week I have to remind my brain that I don’t always have the answers, and that I also need someone to help me figure myself out. 

Like so many of my own clients, I have to consciously confront that part of me that wants to pretend I’ve got it all together. 

I have to be honest and tell myself the truth of where I need support. 

Where I’m hiding things from myself.

Where I’m telling myself stories and creating internal drama.

Where I’m pretending something is ok when it's really not.

Where I’m telling myself that everything in my life is evidence that I’m not good enough. 

I have to loosen the death grip I have on my own bullshit.

That moment where you drop the pretense and tell yourself or someone else the truth is 

MAGIC

Because it's in those moments that we crack open the walls we build up in our minds and hearts that keep us from becoming who we are truly meant to be. 

It's those moments where we really FEEL our fears and can't pretend anymore, that we start to really find ourselves and discover what our lives could become.