Hello everyone and welcome to this week's edition of The Coaching Inn. I'm your host, Claire Pedrick. Just a bit of housekeeping, remember to subscribe or follow and like this episode on the places where you listen to it and tell us what you think. That would be absolutely fabulous. And you can check out other stuff that we do on the Inside The Coaching Inn sub stack. Today, we have as our guest, Teresa Wilson. Rebecca Cuberli, shout out to you, Rebecca.
sent me a message and when you have to interview, chat with, have a conversation with Teresa. Teresa Wilson, welcome. And here I am. I really think we've met before. But because it feels like you feel familiar. I do feel like I've been walking the coaching corridors a long time. I don't know why I've got that kind of draggling the rattling cans along behind me and covering cobwebs. I don't know why that image appeared, but it does feel like I've been walking these corridors a while.
But yes, I saw you at a conference you were presenting pre-COVID, which feels like a lifetime ago. Yeah, yeah. I haven't been out for five years. don't It's overrated. Yeah well it's great to have you here so tell us a bit about your coaching journey. So my background was community development and I did that for a number of years and I used to run a lot of training programs all over the UK and Europe. But there was one group of women in particular that I credit with sparking my coaching journey.
I just loved them. I loved them. I fell deeply in love with them and their aspirations for themselves. It was a confidence building training program and they really came alive through the work that we did together. And we made a uh feature film about their local estate and screened it in the local community hall. And there was like a hundred people came and it was a really big deal.
And at the end of it, these women were wanting to make really significant changes in their lives at the point that I was leaving them and I was gutted. because I knew how hard, what they were wanting to do, how hard that was gonna be. And I was like, but I wanna go on that journey with them. And like, who gets to do that? And it was like, coaches do. So it did two things.
It sparked an interest in coaching and I started training and working, but it also sparked the fantastic business plan, which I wanted to coach people who couldn't afford to pay me. In a sense, that was my shorthand. It was those women that I had in my mind, you know, how could they benefit from coaching?
So it's been a track, it's been a bit of a thread and a theme as I've gone on my journey about, you know, trying to take coaching to those places and spaces where it might not ordinarily be, which is included prisons and working with people at risk of offending in the community and... and latterly working within organisations where there's no hierarchy. you know, anybody within the organisation can access coaching. So I've tried to stay true to that as much as I can in my work.
Thank you for saying that. Somebody just jumped into my mind and I'm really grateful that you reminded me of them. Where I did some work with some women who were returning to work and hadn't got money or resources or anything. but huge amounts of zhuzh. You know, I always remember there was a woman who fled domestic violence situation, was in a room with her children, and she didn't have the bus fare to get to the session, you because the choices that she was making around every penny.
But she would walk to be in those sessions with me. you just, I mean, I goosebumps thinking about it because it's like, it matters. And then it's deeply honoring work, isn't it? To sit with somebody who had... you know, the sequence of choices and sacrifices that she's made to be there. you know, it's powerful stuff. Yeah, and the investment, her investment is huge.
I'm really struck because we had Gary Crotas on an episode the other week and he was talking about high value coaching and how much you can charge for coaching all stuff. And that is also a valid part of coaching. But the numbers that he was talking about them are inconsiderable compared to the lady who walked. Hmm, yeah, yeah. They're meaningless, aren't they, because... An investment like that lady from what she had is extraordinary.
Wow. And so many things to talk about, because I also noticed that you work with Sanctus and do stuff around neurodivergence. Yeah, that's right. So some of my, I've been so lucky with my associate roles throughout my career as a coach. I've always worked as an associate and they've always enriched the kind of the scope and the reach and, know, so I've been really grateful. so, yeah, Sanctus I've been with quite a long time, many years, which started as mental health coaching.
It's traveling a little in terms of how it wants to position itself, inevitably the market's changing. And I also, yeah, I do a lot of work with civil servants who either have a disability or a long-term health condition or neurodivergence. So building in that kind of capacity at that level just before they tip into the senior civil service. So we're doing that five years now and we're about to have a conference this year to celebrate the fifth year.
I'm so excited because when people can see the cohort, when you can start to see leaders like me, because that's part of the issue if you have a disability, you can't see when you look up leaders who look like you. So to get everybody together in a room is going to be very exciting because it's like, yeah, here you are, here you are and what does that mean? And what more becomes possible? You know, so yeah, great work. You know, I've been touching wood, you know, it's been a good ride.
And do you do any private work or is it all associate? No, I've always had a small, it's small because I've never really marketed it. And often people from my associate work will continue to work with me. So I work with people who discover me. I don't really kind of market and then I have, yeah, that's, that's, that, and then latterly, after a little bit of a false start when I was 50. I was like, Claire, I'm turning 50. It's about time I had a proper grown up coaching business.
And so I did all the proper things that you're supposed to do if you want a proper coaching business, launched it on my 50th birthday with this ta-da. And then I think about three weeks later started mothballing. Yeah, it from the head, not the heart. And it just didn't feel right. So I just put it all away and then sat and waited for something that did feel right, which is the working with shadow.
And that's, know, latterly, that's my thing then, which has been a long time coming, a long time coming to find something that feels like it really came through the heart, actually. Yeah. So. us, I just love that you did it, that you undid it. just think that's fantastic. are you gonna do? Like my heart wasn't in it. I was like, what are gonna do? respect, three weeks, I think. Congratulations from putting it in the cupboard so jolly quick.
So you're just describing this thing coming from the heart. So just say a bit about the thing that's come from the heart and how it's come. Mm-hmm. So. I did a uh week long deep dive into Gestalt coaching with Georgina Woodstra um about five years or so ago. And it was such a happy week because I think I was like, here is a language that best describes the kind of coaching that I've been doing without really realizing that that was the coaching that I was doing.
So there was a really delicious sense of arrival and homecoming and nourishment within the language of Gestalt. And in particular, the paradoxical theory of change and this idea that we change when we become more of who we are. That was a really transformational thought, actually. And that thread, who am I becoming? was so important because it changed what I hadn't realised I was doing, which was I'd been changing to get away from myself.
So like that improvement train, if I just, if I just, if I just, then I'll be. I hadn't realised that I was trying to kind of get away from myself. Whereas the paradoxical theory of change was like, no, if I just stay here and then more of me will continue to appear here. And so it felt... like a much healthier way to come into relationship with oneself.
Like running a bath with the plug in, you know, rather than doing all that self improvement work, but that's running a bath with the plug out, quite frankly, you know. And that sparked my interest in shadow then, because if we're talking about integration and allowing for more of yourself to be here, inevitably, you know, that took me to shadow work. And it was a personal journey.
know, shadow work was a personal, it was personal development for professional development because I could see quite quickly how it was bringing so much scope and capacity and ease into my coaching. I stopped being so hard on myself quite quickly actually, as I learned how to be in relationship with the edges. So I'd meet an edge or I was rubbish. was stupid, I should have done better. But I could meet that with curiosity. It's what shadow work allowed me to do.
So rather than just pushing away what was uncomfortable, I could come into relationship with what was uncomfortable. So that was my personal journey. I hadn't intended to market it, but I was lying in bed one night and I swear the first part of the retreat program landed fully formed and it was like, get up, get up, write that down, get up. And eventually I had to get up and write it down, put it in a drawer and try to forget about it for a year, but it kept tapping. It would bother me. Woo!
And I'd see it because it was visual. I was seeing the first bit playing out over and over. So after about a year or so I went to the drawer, took it out and thought maybe there is something here and started writing up what is now my weekend retreat for coaches. Well. That's a note to me. I have that in the night and then I go, I'm not getting up. Get up! And then I stay awake all night going, don't go to sleep, she might forget it. Don't get up.
That, I mean, that's what it feels like, an extraordinary gift from somewhere else when they come with that sort of insistence. I can feel I'm going to. There's a mansion. not infrequent. little things, not a whole course, that felt like a box the way you were describing that. So tell us what you mean by shadow. So, it's a credit young with giving us the term.
He talked about we have a personal shadow and then we live within the collective shadow for the purposes of my work because we are the instrument. I'm very interested in what it means to come in relationship with our own shadow. And essentially the way that I understand it is that You know, we're born whole. You see babies, babies don't edit themselves because they don't have the self-consciousness to do so.
So they can be, you know, revolting and demanding and grabby and they can slap and spit and poop and, you know, it's all the same. And then as they get a little older, they need to be socialized. And that will be different for each of us, depending on our gender, our family system. When we get out into the world, you know, like school, nursery, we'll be socialized and we'll learn, yes, we like this, but not that. Don't do that. know, girls, Boys don't cry.
When I started working in men's prison, the first day I was in a men's prison, all four clients in session said, I was always told, boys don't cry, boys don't cry. It struck me, it really struck me that, you know, this is how it gets in and it's insidious. And parts of ourself get jettisoned then, through that socialization process. Can be, you know, good or bad things.
It's kind of, you know, that labeling is given, it's just stuff, our expressiveness, our temper, you know, our jealousy, our spitefulness, but also our joy, our creativity, our exuberance. Too much, too much, too much. Why do have to be so giddy? And off it goes. And it's fine because it gives us a cohesive sense of self then to meet the world with and we get to say, this is me I am, I like this.
that cohesion helps us to build relationships and off we trot with our identity that this stuff travels with us. And as we get older in particular, it starts to kind of make itself known. Those moments of I don't know what came over me. It can be an example of the shadow tapping and the mask drops and the shadow emerges. And we say, gosh, that wasn't like me. I was very out of character.
I'm terribly nice, but here I am having a thought or a feeling or an action, a move that doesn't feel like me because it's unfamiliar, because it's been living in the shadows. Can I test something out? As you were talking, it felt like that that could also be, it doesn't feel like me because it really, really truly is me and I have been masking for my whole life. Yeah. Yeah. in the neurodivergent space, there was a familiarity about what you just said. Mm, mm.
Yet that will then that allowedness and the messaging, because I think one of the things that can make shadow uncomfortable for people is when we retrieve, when we willingly say, and, so this is me, and, shadow work is that curiosity that sits on the and or that allowing that says, I am what I identify with and, am I that? Am I that too then? Oh, gosh, what does it mean to come into relationship with that too?
And often what makes that tricky is that it was put there with a shaming or belittling or a humiliation, just an ouch. You know, with that neurodivergence, you can imagine, can't you, just that confusion actually, so destabilizing, so much harder to kind of... the ground that I'm walking on, like nothing quite makes sense here and yet all the things and these things that are helping, not allowed, you know, can imagine, you know, this disorientation you're living with.
I'll take that somewhere else. It feels as though you've taken something and really made it your own. I get, yes, and I get that. And people's experience of me is that I really live it, because I do really live it. And it's kind of, I think for me there was a, it felt like a necessity a lot of the time, because I've lived with those hard edges most of my life. You know, not good enough, not good enough. Always being told, gosh, you're so hard on yourself. But that was my normal.
And no soft or kind or compassion or self compassion, no any of that. So it's quite, it became quite an imperative for me. I considered giving up coaching several times because it was too brutal. I was too brutal for myself. You know, and there were times I just, it really hurt, I hurt myself. You know, that lashing after a session, what's wrong with you? what's wrong with you and really they should have worked with anybody else other than you.
What do you think you're doing in that charlatan-esque, you know, you're putting it on. So I couldn't live there, it was untenable, it was painful. So then when you find something that starts to make sense, the language of shadow really made sense to me as a self-reflective practice. I could start to breathe more. I could remain in curiosity when things went a bit sideways and grow from there finally. So yeah, the enthusiasm is real. I'm not bullshitting anyone.
It's just like, whoa, this is good play. Is it? What a great thing! So you're talking about coaches using it for themselves, for their own stuff. Are you a supervisor? In training. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm loving it. I have to say, I'm absolutely loving it. I've surprised myself. And noticed actually from a... you know, shadow, one way that when we might experience shadow is this idea of ghosts from the past, you know, like energetic ghosts from the past.
And with my reflections, I could, I was like, what's going on here? It's like, I'm trying to make it hard. I'm trying to look for where it's hard because that feels noble and true and, you know, honorable and appropriate. But it kind of, and... It's like, so all day, like, can barely say it out loud, but I'm just having a ball. That's so exciting! And it's really weird, like an on strange, but you know, I've sat with, I've really sat with it and it's like, no, there is ease here.
And that feels like new ground to allow that to be true. Yeah, and it sounds like you're taking your inner wisdom. and expanding it and that your inner wisdom is still a big part of that thing. And I'm guessing that you won't. I'm guessing that when somebody has supervision with you, they won't be able to identify where you trained because it will be Teresa shape really quickly. That's it, getting out of the way, isn't it?
Our work, our work, our work, how can I get out of the way and really just sit in that? It's such a tricky thing and you'll know it so well, won't you? That grace maybe, all that humility of, I'm greeting you with I don't know. Yeah, yeah. So one of the things that I hear a lot in supervision is the tension between wanting to be in control and knowing that not knowing is a good idea. So are you OK to just push that a little bit through the lens of the shadow? Mmm, yeah, yeah.
What does that look like? Or might it look like? I mean, I think anytime, either in my ears or my inner ears, hear anything like control or taking responsibility. It's that, good, good. You know, good, so that's here. Yummy, okay, so, you know, something substantial. And I think there's so many ways in, isn't there, because it'll be different for different people.
Part of the way that I've come to work with shadow, really what I started off by calling it clusters it was it looking for clusters but then I had three other P's you know when I work with shadow I work with projection polarities parts and so clusters became patterns Of course they do. As you do, you know. But really, when I started working with Shadow, I was like every... Every inn is just a flag in the sand and it's like, let's dig.
actually there's real, things open up when you get into the nuance. So, you know, top level might be, might be controlled. And so we dig a little and actually, well, what's here with it? What's clustered? What is it that's giving it meaning? Because that's gonna be really different for different people. uh And so how you language it is really interesting for me because you and I might language it really differently.
um And it might be, you know... m you know, expert, if you clustered it really quickly, it might be, you know, expert, stupid, then you might be the polarity kind of emerging there. Stupid always turns up in my clusters and victim usually turns up. So if I sit still long enough looking for some meaning to emerge, I can see some of my frequent fliers, you know, so wanting to control in a coaching scenario.
might seed me back to victim, it's too hard, don't know what I'm doing, you know, that, or it might take me down the kind of the stupid exposure, fear of humiliation. It might take somebody else in a completely different direction. But once we've worked the ground a little, you know, it might be then that there's a part emerges, so we can disidentify, you know, so. When it's here, it's all too tight and close and contracted and somatic and I can't get a breath in.
ah But maybe if it's a part, because we know how to be in relationships, so then if we can see it as a part, maybe then that helps us come into relationship. Gosh, so what does that control? What's it seeking? What's it trying to do on my behalf? What do I know that it doesn't know? I can be resourced then in my imaginal relationship with this part that's working really hard for me which is why we can say great you're here again, thank you so much for showing up, what a gift.
Haven't quite got the message have I? Lovely okay and let me help you and all of that good stuff. Dialogue. Yeah, yeah. Parts is a thing that's emerging in the coaching space now, isn't it? And you're talking about it in a slightly different way than I've heard it talked about before. But I sense that you talk about lots of things in a slightly different way than how they're talked about elsewhere. I really like that a lot. I that's where the, I think you've made this your own came from.
I was having a conversation with my therapist recently about parts work and I said, what do you think about parts and coaching? And she said, well, it seems okay. then we talked a bit deeper and she said, of course, I'm a psychotherapist. So I know the part that's going to emerge because I've seen it coming, it's been waving. And therefore I can also see and know if it's a traumatized part and whether that needs a different kind of attention. So there's something about cautious.
but not, isn't there, about treading gently, which is what we do in all of our work, of course. Yeah. You know, a nice segue because the thing I haven't really mentioned, mean, kind of touched on it in passing, but as I have gone on my own kind of personal shadow journey and different trainings and experiences, and I've also been doing a deep dive into self-compassion and compassion focused therapy and mindfulness self-compassion and those things together. those things together work.
You know, so it's so it's so again with the work that I do with other coaches, that's the deal. In a sense, it's like let's prepare the ground, you know, so that whatever comes forward, it's all about capacity, right? Isn't it so that the self compassion is it, it builds that capacity, so that if something ouch does come forward, we know how to keep breathing.
and to hold space for, or not, or say not right now actually, or I'm not ready, you know, all with that tenderness, know, and that humanity. But yeah, self-compassion, hand in hand with shadow is so important to me. Yeah. It's like you're describing a practice and then you have a wider, there's what you do and then there's your wider exploration, interest, understanding. And that's so important, it, for coaches to understand that what we're able to do versus what we're interested in.
What we're able and safe to do is always going to be a space than what we're interested in because we have to grow that bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah and that's it. How would I phrase it? I wanted to say I'm quite strong and I was stopping myself thinking, am I? don't know that that's quite right, but I hope at least that I'm clear that this is work for you.
And every now and then coaches will, you know, I might get a question if I'm doing a talk or something, people might say, so when I'm doing this at a client and I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, that's really not what I'm saying at all. No, this is not, this is, it's personal development. for professional development.
But even then, because if we change ourselves, if this curiosity, if this softening, then allowing, languaging myself and my experience as a human, it's going to show up in my presence. It will affect and change my work through my presence. And for me, let that be enough. I don't then need to start doing it at. That's none of my business. I'm really not interested in that. But let it, let it. you know, bring depth and richness to my presence, my capacity.
That, and that unflappability that people are reading all the time. We are reading each other in ways that we're not aware of all the time. And that there's a knowingness, isn't it? That people can sense and feel and know there's a safety in my presence through the work that I'm doing. So that's more than enough for me. I'm doing some writing about deeper work.
And one of the things you've just described in a much better way than I have, that when we deepen our own work, we open the door for others to deepen their work, but that doesn't mean that we do to them what we've done to us. But it just means that, you know, often in coaching, when I started out, people would say, you can't coach people on something that you haven't done. And then other people would say, you can coach anyone about anything.
But I think until we've done deep work, It's really hard to, well, we can't do deeper work with others because we don't know what that means, even though what it means for them and what it means for us will be completely different. So you're talking about expanding our capacity to understand and be compassionate to ourselves in order that in a relationship with someone else. we're not bothered when they start deepening and expanding their capacity to be themselves and it doesn't freak us out.
Yeah. And that's these little nervous systems talking to each other, you know, is this okay? Is this still okay? Is it still safe? Are you still with me? We're all at that kind of neuroreception level, you know, just checking out. And that's beyond our control. And so then that's just due diligence, isn't it? That's the due diligence that we do.
lovely listeners, if you're listening to this on audio, I do recommend that you go over to YouTube and watch it on video, because there is another conversation going on here that you can't see. I'm good. As we begin to move towards the end, Teresa, I'm really interested on your take on trauma-informed coaching, which is another buzzword around in the space. And I would love you to Teresa-fy it. It is now. verb or before nine o'clock in the morning. I'm so excited.
em Well, Claire, that's a question. That's a question. I did a talk about shadow and right like one minute towards the end, somebody asked a question about the relationship between kind of shadow and trauma. And I was like, there is a minute to go. I can't do that justice in a minute. So then arranged another talk with a coach who's trauma informed and fully trained. And we had a dialogue and then opened it up for questions. and This dead air is me even having that conversation.
um There's a resistance, there's something in me that resists stepping over into that space. yet look, it renders me silent. It's the first time I haven't been, you know, and I appreciate that in me because for me it's not a casual thing. um It feels right and important um that there is a differentiation. I love and I get that coaches can and do work in a trauma-informed way.
And I haven't taken that uh and I haven't taken specific trainings and so it's right that I leave it alone and it's another of those my head might understand I could answer with my head and I don't want to until everything's joined up it's none of my business. That is such a good line. Until everything's joined up, it's none of my business. That's brilliant. I really appreciate the way you responded to that because it gave me an insight.
Not about trauma, but about neurodiversity and the difference between neurodiversity informed and neurodivergent aware. Mmm, mmm. because you're clearly trauma aware. Clearly, from everything you've said, that what you're saying is, and there's a different thing. and I'm not joined up yet. Yeah, m So how do people find out more about you and your stuff? So mostly on LinkedIn. I'm quite chatty over on LinkedIn. Lovely, yeah, think Teresa Wilson coaching.
And then I've got a couple more retreats scheduled, one for the autumn and one for spring next year. They're for coaches, it's a deep dive, it's a chance to kind of get away and dive in. You leave with the resources to be able to begin your own journey and work in the way that you want to. into relationship with your own shadow. So that's the intention of the retreats. And I'm about to start thinking about more and different ways that people can work with me.
So I'm just at the start of a journey. The retreats have proven the concept, they've proven the appetite, they've proven that, yeah, that there's something there for coaches. So now I'm thinking about different ways that people can come and play in the space. And I think you might be contacted by some people from outside the UK. So if you can put that into your melting pot, that would be great. Great. Good. Thank you so much for coming to the Coaching Inn. an absolute delight to talk to you.
I know, completely. uh So thank you, Teresa, for coming to the Coaching Inn. Thank you, everyone, for listening. and do check Teresa out on LinkedIn and we'll be back next week with another episode. Bye bye.