You're at the Coaching Inn, 3D Coaching's virtual pub where we enjoy conversations with people who engage in the world of coaching. Welcome to this week's edition of The Coaching Inn. I'm Claire Pedrick. And today we're going to be thinking about coaching and long COVID and chronic fatigue, which has been on my mind for a long time. And I've had a few people interested in having the conversation and not quite got round to it, but here we are.
And today I'm in the great company of Zane McCormack, Claire Davis and Kat Gray. Welcome Zane, Kat and Claire. Let's find out a little bit about your journey and what made you interested in coming to the coaching in today. Kat, you start. Yeah, so I might have a different slant on it to everyone else, but I got ME, so type of chronic fatigue when I was 10. And it was no one believed that kids got chronic fatigue at that time. So I lived with kind of no medical support for that condition.
and was just very intrigued to then watch all the long COVID stuff kind of play out 30 years on and was like, how have we not sorted this out or done real research on this or have any more information? Yeah, so that's me. And your coaching journey, Kat? So I found out about coaching through someone who I now believe works for 3D. coaching, read a blog about what they did and how amazing coaching was and decided that was for me. So trained in 2016 and haven't looked back since.
Let's shout out for you, Zoe Dickinson. So Claire, what about you? So yes, I'm a GP in East London. I'm also a coach. I coach doctors. My interest in coming on this podcast is there are obviously a lot of health care professionals around with long COVID. I've also had an autoimmune illness with a lot of fatigue associated. So I really get an empathize with people that are struggling with the things like fatigue and brain I had some coaching in that time and it was really, really helpful.
In my medical practice, I've seen a lot of people with fatigue -related conditions, particularly with stuff they caught overseas. So, yeah, it's just been a general journey throughout my career that's brought me here today. Great. Well, welcome and welcome, Zane. Hi. Hello and thank you for having me.
yes i'm on the plane call my com founder of assured man so all the coach and little training to businesses but prevention but recovery and resilience and what you restarted about four years ago when also will be at all the coaching after just about that month now on the storm last year i was policing i was with them formal for sixteen years my mother looks at the burnout we have four years ago when i collapsed so i straight through stage five, out straight into crash.
And it was sort of on my recovery from that. At the time a lot of things were sort of bandied around, PTSD, CPTSD and all the rest of this with generals and the stuff that goes on with policing. But it wasn't until burnout was mentioned that everything made sense. And what I did find is that there was just no real understanding of the difference of what it was and just how, then as I sort of went through my recovery.
and discovered a little bit about coaching, just understood just how effective coaching would have been if I'd had access to it four or five years prior to my episode. And from there, my interest in coaching was at a peak really. then so another three years pleasing after my collapse and left last year to go full -time doing this. So we're right there. Well, welcome, all of you. I love how everyone's got a slightly different story and yet there are connections between us all.
So I guess my question is, in terms of the work that you are delivering, what are you noticing, what are we noticing about the impact of long COVID on the kinds of people that we're working I'll jump in there. Like I say, for me, what I'm finding is that a lot of the burnout issues are around people's personal resilience levels. And I think with long COVID, it's just been the final straw for a people. They were just keeping everything above board. And long COVID has been the final straw.
It seems to something that's took a lot of people over now. the further we got this COVID situation behind us, the more people are realizing it's... It's just something they're not getting over. Yeah, yeah, they're not getting over it thing. What are others noticing? think I've had quite a few people come for coaching because they've watched people they love have something long term happening and it's making them adjust their views on how they're living their own life.
Wow. So it's not only how do I support this person, but am I doing everything that I want to be doing while I can? Yeah, interesting. Claire? So I think health professionals with long COVID are used to being very busy, very active people who use their minds a lot and having a condition with such fatigue associated and with things like brain fog is immensely frustrating. It's one of those invisible conditions that has some stigma attached to it. So that can be a real struggle.
think doctors find it very hard to be patient sometimes and not being part of the collective effort. It can affect people's livelihoods. From the medical perspective, the evidence base around it isn't actually very good. So a lot of studies have been produced, but a lot of them are not very high quality. And there's a lot of discussion going on. Is same as ME or is it something different?
Some people have definitely gone down a much more sort of medical investigation route of it and there are a lot of unknowns and I think people find that really really hard to sit with particularly when you're used to being academic and getting things right, having something with a lot of unknowns around it is really hard to sit with. Yeah interesting.
I'm really interested about this connection between the police and the medical profession and the whole thing about people just pushing themselves one step too And I think that point there, it's not even about people pushing themselves one step too far. They've just got no idea what's going on. They're turning up every day. And I was exactly the same. And the point I make with some of the stuff I do is that 30 minutes before I collapsed, someone asked me, are you OK? And I said, yes.
And I genuinely believed I was. I had just, because it's, particularly with burnout, it's such a slow boil. It's the boiling frog analogy. You're just so used to that normal for so long that you don't really see any difference. It's only looking back, you once you sort of come back out of it, that you realize that you've been a walking cliche for years. Yeah. So what difference does coaching make in this particular context for people who've got?
Yeah, in this context, it's just about raising awareness and understanding when things are happening to you, why they're happening to you.
then, you know, because at the time, you you can always little signs and symptoms, but you write them off, you know, the brain fog, just the fact that you're working shifts and you're exhausted and talk about poor gut health, again you're working shifts, you're drinking a lot of coffee, you get irritable, you get to an age where you're working with difficult people, both inside and outside the office.
And so you just rationalise all these little signs and symptoms, actually one or two in isolation are fine, but if you sit down and can make the link between the five or six quite major symptoms of burnout, all of a sudden it all makes sense. then you can start looking at some meaningful interventions in place, and that's where Co -Chute comes It is about developing that emotional or mental skill set to be able to take that step back.
then you're working with your whole idea around effective self care and making sure that you're making the best use of your rest to make sure that your resilience levels are being topped Claire and Kat, you've had chronic fatigue and you're coaching people. So for you, what's useful about having a coach? So I think from my perspective, when I was very affected with fatigue, one thing a coach did was just get me to move away from that.
You can get very, very focused on this is what is happening to me physically and trying to find an explanation and getting into this classic boom and bust cycle. using all your energy or thinking I can go for a run today and then 48 hours later, you're flat. And I got certainly really, you know, hooked into this and you can't be happy and or enjoy life or have a purpose while you're feeling like this. And coaching really helped me get out of that mindset.
had a very interesting coach, very different style to what you teach, Claire. She said I had to go away and write down 200 reasons why I was grateful for this illness. And I was like, no way, but you know what I did 200 things that it had taught me. And I think it really set me on that journey of a kind of post -traumatic growth theme.
you know, I look back at that episode now for myself and I wouldn't change having gone through that partly because coaching really just started to change the way I thought about myself and the situation. I love that 200 things though, because I think we had a podcast the other day where we were talking about getting people to think about large numbers of things. Because when you invite somebody to go over what's a realistic number, you actually have to get really underneath it, don't you?
Yeah, yeah, you do. I looked at it and thought that absolutely no way and I thought this is ridiculous. But you know what, I got there over a couple of weeks. still got the list. I found it the other day and I like, yeah, I agree with all of it. wow. So what was the most surprising reason? good question. I am not sure, Claire. I'm not sure I have an answer. I'd have to think and come back to you. Okay. It might come back to you later in the conversation. You never know. Ask me later. I will.
Kat. I think for ages, from being on the coach side of things, rather than the long -term illness side of things, I was like, how can this best help people when coaching predominantly as a future -focused thing and the worst part of many worst parts of being ill with something unknown and ongoing is you don't know how long it's going on for and what the answers are and when the good days are coming and when the bad days are coming. And I think I went around in circles with that for a while.
But actually to have somewhere where you can talk to someone about all the stuff that's just all consuming anyway, but also not quite know what's going to come next. is, is a really interesting space to have. Because I was thinking, even as we came into this call, and you know, the first question that everyone asks is, how are you? That's actually quite a triggering question. Along with what do you do? I'm like, well, I don't know how I am. And I do nothing.
So I like all social situations and even family trying to find out how you are there isn't an answer. So to have a coach who's asking you questions just completely outside of that norm. it's just really helpful. Yeah. I have my answer, Claire. great. that it was still possible to live purposefully with those symptoms. wow. And commit small acts of purpose every day. It was, you know, it was still possible to be, a full person and with a full life. And that's something about agency, isn't it?
Yeah. So there's, there's some. There's some really strong themes here that actually are so fundamental to coaching. So one is how do we work with people so that they can engage in their own agency? But another one is the whole thing about coaching and as a coach, how do we deal with not knowing? And how do we deal with not knowing when the person who's come for coaching is also in a totally immersed in not knowing? Now, that's actually true in every conversation we have.
But in long COVID and other chronic fatigues, it's more obvious, it, than not knowing? So how do we work with people ethically? Well, this is definitely, isn't it? Can you say a bit more about the question? If I think out loud, you know, one of the, one of the things about somebody who's got some kind of chronic fatigue, whether that's long COVID or something else, is that there's an up and down thing.
So they may arrive in the conversation with us anywhere in that feeling, or indeed they might not arrive today because today's not a good enough day for that to be possible. It's likely that with other people, we set standards around how we work with them. That's, know, you show up and da de da de da. But actually what, what, what you've got in this population is a different ability to engage in the process. So that's what I mean by the question.
Well, I think I would contract that at the beginning and I would be flexible in how work as far as I can be. it may be, are we going to do 20 minute sessions? What can I offer if you're unable to engage in the session? I think there's a lot to be said about planning for that and contracting. Are they going to do it in bed? Are we going to do 20 minutes? I think that's what you're getting at.
Yeah. I think that's addressed in the qualifying process too when you know with those initial discovery calls and when you're initially speaking to people that have made enquiries about working with you. It's about making sure that they're ready for coaching as well and they understand that they're not going to be sat there and you know that's what they want and they're looking for a mentor not a coach. I mean, quite clear, but being quite clear about what you're offering and what you're doing.
It's not that dissimilar from other contracting though, is it? Because I think I would be thinking, well, what's most useful for you? Yeah. And actually, is it screens off? Is it a phone call and not a computer screen? it let's just check in about that every time and see what happens. And also not dissimilar from working with people who are having a mental health journey as well.
We might start off by contracting the same time and rhythm and routine is helpful, but of course that's not going to be true every day that you come to something that's technically scheduled. Yeah. Yeah. So a level of flexibility. What else are you learning from your experience of working with people in these communities? I think that everyone is feeling their way at the moment.
is, I think what COVID did was just threw everything up in the air and all the norms that people had been used to working with have been sort of washed away and not just the, obviously that the podcast today is talking about the physical issues with COVID but also the knock -on effects that COVID's had on families, on workplaces, on people's had a lot of time all of sudden to sit in their front rooms for three, four months watching Netflix
and sort of having a proper think about where they're going, what they're doing. So people emerge, different people with different ideas, different values and different motivations for what want to be doing. So I think on the whole it's been a big deal. And I don't think we can underestimate just how impactful it's been. and we're still getting those ripples are still coming through.
are still fighting, you know, after lockdown finished, people went back to how they were, but they weren't the same. And it's taken another year or two for those sorts of things to come through with people. And what you've described there, Zayn, is quite a high level of engagement. You know, I want to have a different kind of life. I wonder whether there's also other responses, which is I've become a bit more of a passive receiver.
because actually what I learned in lockdown was to just let things happen to me. Which goes back to what you said, Claire, about agency earlier. Well, I think some of that with what was happening in lockdown might be different to health professionals because we were the other extreme of course of being active. I think there can be a really big thing around identity for doctors who become long term patients with symptoms that have some stigma attached to them.
There can be a lot of guilt and shame around that for some people and real frustration of Contributing to your medical community, some people can get very into medicine, it's such a huge part of their identity and that's where doing more values based work and personal strengths rather than achievements can be really helpful for people. I find that doctors are quite in their heads and not very much in body. If there are any doctors listening, they probably won't know what I mean at all.
I know you will there. So getting people into body, even if that's where the physical symptoms are, sort of getting more in tune with emotions and what's going on physically, I think is really helpful. Yeah. Yeah. What else are we noticing is useful? Not sure if it's useful, but I think along the same lines, very, it's much easier to go straight to a identity and purpose place with someone who's already got those questions of who on earth am I if I can't do things.
Whereas I find it very interesting in the rest of my working space of I'm selling a product or an outcome, but really, and I know that if I'm seeing someone ongoing by about session two, we're clearly going to be onto a question of who am I and what on earth am I doing? But they might not have realised that themselves until that point. So you just, you get there a lot more directly, I think, when someone's already had that kind of lifestyle shock.
There's a quote in a book by Richard Raw about falling, his book's called Falling Upwards. And he talks about our capacity to change after basically after we've fallen over. And that once people have fallen over, we engage, he calls it the second simplicity, we engage in stuff in a very different way. where we might have engaged in it with our head before, we now will engage with it much with our soul.
I'd like to say something about that from a personal point of view, that's exactly what happened to me in recovering or getting autoimmune illness into remission. I really think that managing my thinking really helped the recovery. But I also noticed that I became, as a doctor, a lot more comfortable to sit with the big stuff. Like when someone came in with a bereavement, my younger self would have gone, I don't have the words. What shall I say?
You know, now it's like, that's OK, I'm just going to sit with this. And I definitely think that that is one reason why I'm grateful for what happened, because it took me to that place. So you're not knowing from experiencing this. has given you a much higher tolerance for not knowing in the Yeah, definitely. I actually really into not knowing and letting doctors know that it's okay to say, don't know. I actually love saying I don't know. That's a me thing. But I think it can be really powerful.
Yeah. And it's understanding, like you say, with policing, spoke to a of people with personal crisis and grievance as well. It's just been able to sit there and provide that space for them. You don't have to provide solutions or answers. just providing that space for people that with you to be able to express what's going on and not looking to you for answers and being able to understand that.
Having, like I say, having expressed yourself, being comfortable in that, holding that space for people can be real thing. So some people are listening because they are still experiencing long COVID.
And I'm just really curious what you would like to say to I think all three of us looking at it, we'll probably hundred things spinning around at the moment, but it's just trying to find something, just something to say that's just going to ground them, try and sort of pull all the feelings that are sort spinning around.
Because obviously with the change it brings on with people, it's just about sort of pulling all those thoughts down and grounding them first, and then taking it from position of of calm and strength really, and sort of working out what the new reality looks like and how we cope with that and how we move forward with that.
Letting go of what it was and understanding that this is not better, it's not worse, this is just different and taking it from I think I would say that it's really important to have compassion for yourself, which is a new thing and a difficult thing for some people. the question is, how do we be kind to ourselves in this moment? What do we need in this moment? Some people find that really, really difficult to start with, but it can be built up with practice, asking what we need.
And I think it's still possible to live, you know, life passion and purpose with the right help and the right tools. And speaking as someone who has really struggled with a fatigue related condition for about five years, I would say it'd be helpful. Thank you, Claire. I think almost permission that it's all right to feel so exasperated with everyone else and tired of explaining that there is no explanation, but also that there's more people out there who understand than you think.
So to look at, go and find those people whilst doing what Claire said about keeping the boundaries and really letting people know what you need and that actually that's going to change hour to hour.
and you don't have to apologize for I also love the thing that you all three of you said at the beginning of that, which was that you actually sat in silence, which I'd like our listeners to also receive as an offer of somebody just being So thank you Cat Gray, Zayn McCormack and Claire Davis for coming to The Coaching In today to talk about coaching along COVID. And thank you listeners for listening. I'll put their contact details in the show notes.
So if you want to get in touch with them, you can do that. Thank you for coming to The Coaching In and thank you for listening. Bye -bye everyone. Thank you, Claire. Thanks. Thank you. Bye. friend or leave a comment on social media. And if you'd like to become a regular at The Coaching In, you can subscribe on Podbean and all major podcast channels. We look forward to welcoming you next time. You've been listening to The Coaching In, 3D Coaching's virtual pub.
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