A Coaching Power Tool Created by Loren De Feo
(Life Coach, ITALY)
Many of have been taught from a young age that what we want or how we feel may not matter. Often our feelings were often invalidated or often we were shamed for feeling the way we did about certain situations.
For example perhaps when you were a kid and you didn’t want to go to school. Even if your parent was concerned and asked why not, perhaps he or she rationalized the situation and said that we all have to do things that we don’t like to do and “now stop complaining and go to school.” Another parent may have responded with invalidating the kid’s feelings and saying: “Nonsense you know you love school!” Whatever the outcome over time we have learned not to trust our feelings and rather use logic and do and act in a way that was expected by us. We have learned not to listen to our emotions and with this comes other consequences such as stress, depression, addictions, disorders, anxiety and at times sicknesses.
This is extremely evident in situations when emotion and feelings were held in, not appreciated and when any negative display of an emotion was shamed and the consequence was punishment, we have learned over time to suppress the emotions or to not trust our own feelings and therefore intuition about things.
In my power tool, I like to explore the emotion first instead of the rational logic behind something.
For example: a client presents themselves with a situation about work. She is unhappy because she doesn’t feel appreciated by her boss and she feels like no matter what she does, her boss is disapproving of her and critical of her work. She starts to have anxiety about going to work and resents her boss. Instead of listening to her feelings she uses logic about why she shouldn’t leave the job and how good the salary and benefits are. Obviously in this situation her rational logic is not benefiting her. It is preventing her from honoring her true feelings and taking the necessary actions to change her situation.
By exploring the emotions first and acknowledging and accepting her feelings. It is important that our emotions are validated in order to transform the experience. In deeper exploration we can explore what the client actually loves about her job rather than her boss who is making her miserable . By tapping into the positive emotions and her own values we can understand what are her options and also how she would like to address this situation in the future.
The accepting and exploration of emotions relaxes the client and allows her to make decisions that are true and valid for herself, instead of feeling trapped under a logical approach that hasn’t worked for her well-being so far.
With time the original negative emotions have also become weakened or replaced by more positive ones.
Possible questions:
How does this situation make you feel?
How does this effect you on an emotional and physical level?
Would you mind sharing with me are you feeling this way?
Why do you think you are triggered? Have there been other times or situations in your life when you have felt the same? What did you do the make yourself feel better? What would you have liked to have done?
Can you tell me anything that you do like about the situation or the person?
How would you like to things to be?
How do you need to feel in order to move forward? What needs to change in order to feel good about the situation or outcome? What can you change ? Are there other ways of seeing this that will make you feel better?
