Whether you are working with EMDR, hypnosis, visualizations/meditations for helping someone manifest what they desire, or NLP processes, etc., you may have noticed that some of your clients get great results from the change processes you take them through whilst others continue to struggle with the same issue even if they repeatedly listen to a recording of the change work you’ve taken them through.
There’s a couple of reasons why this may be happening.
You haven’t identified specifically what triggers your client, so the change work isn’t linked to that particular trigger. This is something I’ve noticed in working with hundreds of coaches over the years, some of who’ve been in the field for 15-20 years: They don’t get specific enough in identifying what the actual trigger is. A good example of a trigger is the moment that a coachee is asked about the price of the service they sell (context: sales conversation) and that’s when all of a sudden their confidence levels drop to below zero. To the coachee it may feel as if it’s the sales conversation itself that is the problem. By identifying that it is actually the fact that someone asks them about their fees, you’ll be able to shift their neurological (automatic) response to the trigger. This is what makes it easier to behave differently.
You haven’t grabbed hold of the core belief or pattern that is keeping your client stuck
One of my clients mentioned the other day that she had my voice stuck in her head: “Wait, wait, wait. Don’t start solving just yet.”
She was coaching one of her coachees and it became clear early on in the session that the coachee was stuck in all-or-nothing thinking. My client shared that she was so eager to solve that distortion right there and then.
But the “wait, wait, wait” in the back of her mind kept her from doing so.
As a result, she was able to identify the pattern BEHIND the all-or-nothing thinking. Her coachee had completely given her power away. Feeling unsafe and out of control as a result of this, she was creating worst-case scenarios and away from thinking, in addition to the all-or-nothing thinking (making the powerlessness even worse). If she hadn’t given her power away in the first place, the rest wouldn’t even appear.
Since we are taught to get an outcome very quickly in traditional coaching, this eagerness stops most coaches from being patient and truly getting to the core. It’s that, and a lot of coaches don’t actually know how to dive deep in a quick and effective way. I’ll write a separate post about that later.
You may not be working to shift the right element to change.
Let’s take a closer, more in depth look at this last point.
When we look at how an experience is created, the same elements are always present and all of these elements together are how someone responds to an external (or sometimes internal) trigger.
We create meanings using different forms of meaning making: language, sounds, and visuals.
“If I can’t figure out this technology, then I am helpless,” is meaning making through the use of language. Usually the meaning making doesn’t stop with just one belief about the external event. We create meaning upon meaning upon meaning. So if the above is true (If I can’t figure out this technology, then I am helpless), then that means that I am weak. And if I am weak, it’s true what they say about women (that they are weak).
The higher you go in that hierarchy, the stronger the meaning will be experienced in the body. Now there is a somatic response that goes along with the beliefs. At the same time, the client will conjure up images, create internal dialogue or hear someone saying something to them, revisit a situation from the past by projecting a movie on an imaginary movie screen in front of them.
All of these elements together are what create your client’s experience.
Each of these elements can be what holds your clients experience (and therefore unresourceful behavior) in place. So you may be shifting the core beliefs (language) of your client, but if they are still playing the movie in their mind, it still triggers the somatic response.
Also, if the somatic response is super intense and you don’t help your client work through that, then the moment they are triggered by the external event all of those body sensations are fired off (as a result of neural pathways) and the new thoughts are simply overruled by something far stronger.
Now, some clients WILL be able to take the new awareness and thinking and integrate it on their own, able to immediately take action on it.
Or you work with them on accepting their emotions and as a result they automatically create and install new meanings, enabling them to take action right away.
However, oftentimes that’s simply not the case.
So it doesn’t matter which modality you use, if you only focus on one of the elements and you don’t identify where the leverage point is, it’s unlikely you’ll consistently get lasting results.
This, by the way, is also a big part of the reason why mere reframing of a situation (as you do in life-coaching) does not stick.
You need change processes that create change on a neurological level and take into account all aspects of someone’s subjective experience. Here’s what you can do for each of the elements.
I can only give a high level overview here, because I could write an entire book with all of the different approaches to specific topics and outcomes.
1. When language (thoughts) is the problem
At this point you’ll already have identifies which (core) beliefs are problematic. Since awareness alone is often not enough, there are a couple of ways in which you can deal with embodies beliefs. Since a belief is a thought that has been confirmed over and over again until it created a highway of neural networks and firmly connected to an external trigger…the simplest way to turn a belief back into just a thought, is through disconfirmation. For your client to be able to do this, they first need to actually feel in charge of their thoughts. And then you can help them by quality controlling the thought from a strong, yet neutral “no”: “Does believing this help you achieve your outcome? Does it serve you? Do you want to continue experiencing this thought in your body?” Doing this repeatedly, loosens up the thought and makes room for something new. Now you can start embodying a new, more empowering belief.
2. When the somatic response is the problem
This often happens when the coachee has a negative relationship with the sensations coursing through their bodies. Usually this is either because of things that has been said to them (boys don’t cry) or because they’ve been so flooded by the emotion in the past, so they’ve ended up tabooing the feelings. They cover it up with other emotions or escape through busy work and procrastination. Building a different relationship with the somatic sensations starts with acceptance and then reframing the objections that pop up. You can then help them “texture” the emotion, so they can feel more in charge and express them more effectively. Eg, you can texture anger with calmth, creating a calm anger. Or relaxed fear.
3. When your client’s semantic space (visuals and sounds) are the problem
Semantic space speaks to how your client uses the space around them as their own, personal movie screen. They map things out around them, like time, their relationship with others, past events etc. It can be incredibly limiting to place your past in front of you, to make authority figures really big in your mind. You can create a lot of overwhelm for yourself when you’re trying to hold onto information by jumbling all the pieces all around you in your mind. These are just a few examples of how we can use our semantic space to create meanings and make sense of the world around us.
By shifting location, size, distance, etc, we literally create different relationships. As I’ve mentioned, it is most powerful to solidify a shift by integrating all of the elements in the change work that you do.
This is an integral part of the work that we do in The Quantum Leap Coach System™ , a pathway for both completely new coaches as well as those already working with clients. Depending on your experience, you’ll enter the pathway at a different point to ensure you get solid results in the shortest amount of time.
Email me to let me know you are interested in my program. We’ll take a look at what your needs are and if my program is a fit, I will let you know.
With love and light,Femke