Ani
Hi, and welcome to the Somatic Coaching Academy podcast. Hey there, Brian.
Brian
Hey, Ani, episode 55.
Ani
You’re feeling good?
Brian
I’m feeling good about 55.
Ani
Okay. Me too. That’s all right. What are we talking about today?
Brian
This is a good topic. Well, they’re all good topics, but this is an interesting one. Today, we’re going to be talking about the five ways that coaches oftentimes unknowingly retraumatize their clients.
Ani
That’s going to be a really helpful topic for a lot of people. Yeah.
Brian
Yeah. Because I think if not all of these topics, we’ve been on the receiving side of some of these retraumatizations, right? Because we’ve had a lot of coaching in past. We put ourselves in the water that our clients are in a lot of times. We wanted to learn what it’s been like to be coached and to be in different environments and to coach with different professionals and to coach with people that have different belief systems and stretching ourselves into places that aren’t comfortable for us, right? So we’ve learned a ton by working with lots of different coaches and business advisors and those sorts of folks. And so a lot of our awareness around these topics, which are based in physiology, were also experienced by us.
Ani
Yeah. And we have actual credentials to back up the expertise around it as well. The thing about going through programs where retraumatization has been a thing, I think that one of the benefits of knowing about this stuff is when things come up and I’m feeling retraumatized in some capacity, I know that’s what’s happening. Whereas with a lot of people, they don’t know that that’s what’s happening, and so they think there’s a problem with them. Like you said, unknowingly, the whole thing goes to pass, and neither the coach or the coachee would have said, if they didn’t know, that there was any retraumatization because the coachee just couldn’t do it or they, in some way, were flawed in some way. Then the coachee goes ahead and takes it on, and off we go to the next client. Unknowingly, there was retraumatization there. There’s this unknowing aspect that happens with the coach and with the client. As we’ve been clients, we’ve been able to advocate for ourselves, caretake for ourselves, and have conversations with the coach or consultant or mentor, whatever where it happened, to be able to educate and really be good to ourselves and care for ourselves around those things because we know.
Ani
I’m excited for this topic today so that people who are listening will have a healthier awareness, whether they’re coach or they’re the coachee, to be able to advocate for a ‘do no harm’ professional experience.
Brian
Yeah. Let’s maybe set the table here because you might be listening to this podcast for the very first time. Welcome. And thanks for being here. You might not realize that we have a whole bunch of podcasts that we’ve already done on trauma responses and how we think about trauma and what trauma is. But let’s just maybe lay the table here for anybody who’s stepping in right here to maybe pick up and moving forward. What is trauma? How do we think about it here at the Somatic Coaching Academy? Well, obviously, something happened somewhere in the past that challenged a person’s capacity to deal with it on multiple levels, psychologically, emotionally, and physiologically. Something happened in the past. What is happening now is what we call an autonomic nervous system dysregulation. That’s a big phrase to basically say that your physiology gets knocked out of balance or re-knocked out of balance because of something that happens in the present moment. So a long time ago, something happened that created imbalance in a person’s nervous system. And even though the event that caused the imbalance is in the past, the subconscious mind, since the subconscious mind is the nervous system and the nervous system is the subconscious mind, then…
Brian
And by the way, nervous system isn’t just your brain. It’s your spinal cord, it’s your nerves, it’s your enteric nervous system, it’s in your gut, it’s like your whole body. Your nervous system reaches your whole body. So when I say your nervous system means your whole body. So something happened a long time ago, knocked your body nervous system out of balance. The event is in the past, but your subconscious mind has not fully integrated the experience. So on some level, your nervous system still retained some of that out-of-balancedness. We call that dysregulation. So some days you might feel relatively stable and regulated. Other days, you might feel really stable and regulated. Some days, you might feel really dysregulated. But what can happen is that when we’re in a coaching relationship, because coaching is about growth, coaching is about stretching ourselves, coaching is about creating a different outcome in our lives, we’re really basically challenging the current status of the nervous system. Coaching will almost always create an opportunity for retraumetization, no matter what coaching it is. I also will say that we cannot 100% ever always prevent retraumetization. That’s another thing. It oftentimes will happen because of the way our nervous systems function.
Brian
Now, a really highly qualified coach will do two things. They’ll do whatever they can do to prevent retraumatization, number one, and number two, if someone does get dysregulated or retraumatized, then they’ll know exactly what to do with it. A trauma-sensitive coach. A trauma-sensitive coach will be able to do that. But someone who’s not trauma sensitive doesn’t have awareness about it, they might not be aware of either one of those things. Absolutely. A coach might not be aware that someone’s nervous system has been chronically dysregulated from events way, way, way in the past. And they also may have no idea what to do with something when it comes up for people. Let’s just put that there. Hopefully, does that seem like it lays the groundwork for how we want to talk about the five common ways that people are retraumatized?
Ani
Yeah, I just want to add that 90% of people or so, I think it’s higher, are walking around with traumatized nervous systems. That statistic doesn’t account for the fact that you were probably raised by someone who had a traumatized nervous system. So all of us have this in us, and it’s not a conversation where we can say, I’m going to opt out, because if we work with people, we work with nervous systems. And if we work with nervous systems, we all work with traumatized nervous systems. Yeah.
Brian
So let’s talk about the things that happen that can retraumatize a nervous system, right? Or bring back to the surface an old pattern that was set up a long time ago, and that pattern has a part of it, nervous system dysregulation. It’s another way we think about it. Yeah. All right. So one of the common ways, I think probably one of the most common ways that non-trauma-trained coaches will retraumatize their clients is that when their client meets resistance, they’ll just tell them to push through it. They’ll say, push through the pain, push through the fear. “You just have to push through it. Keep pushing. Don’t be a baby. Keep working. You got to just do it. Just do it. I don’t care if you vomit on the way to doing it. You got to do it.”
Ani
I’ve heard that one a number of times and I’m rolling my eyes as you’re saying it out loud. Also, one way I see this show up is not addressing resistance as a part of the change process at all. So I recently was talking with a colleague who’s working with a coach, and I said, How’s it going? And she said, Okay, but they keep telling me things to do. And honestly, I’ve already got so much on my plate. I’m not really doing the things. And I thought it was interesting because there was no conversation about the resistance that is going to be a part of the change process. There actually wasn’t even an acknowledgement that creating new habits in our lives requires our subconscious to change. And so that wasn’t even a part of the conversation at all. So I think that this idea of pushing through can also show up as not acknowledging that that’s even a part of the change process.
Brian
Sure. Yeah. That the resistance is a natural part of it. Yeah.
Ani
And fear is also a big one. And listen, we hear this on Instagram and whatever in the news and all over the place. If you’re afraid of something, that’s where you should leave. There’s some truth to that. And from a standpoint of retraumatization, there’s ways to be able to expand the window of tolerance and grow into change that is safe and allows the person to do it without, like you were saying, breaking something. Yeah. Breaking could be the body. You get to the place where you’ve done your thing, you’ve leapt off of the proverbial cliff, but your body is broken and exhausted. You can break relationships on the way. That happens all the time, a lot. And other in the wake of the disaster that was being pushed through.
Brian
Yeah. So it’s really important for a person to know what their own, what we say, window of tolerance is. So everyone has a window or a degree of variability that the nervous system will be able to tolerate when it comes to experiencing change. Some people have a really narrow window. Some people have a really wide window. You have to know it, and there’s no judgment on any of that. It doesn’t matter if you have a narrow… You have to know what yours is. Yeah, know thyself. Know thyself. Because the problem is that when a coach pushes a client outside of their window of tolerance too far, what can happen is they can stay then dysregulated for a really long period of time. So the idea of when someone’s operating inside of their window of tolerance, their nervous system is generally regulated. When they’re outside of the window of tolerance, their nervous system is dysregulated. Now, if someone goes outside of the window of tolerance a little bit and then comes back in, that’s actually okay. I mean, that’s actually grows resilience. That’s a good thing. But if they get kicked too far out of their window of tolerance and they can’t get back in again, that’s technically a retraumatization.
Brian
So by pushing someone way far outside of their nervous system regulation zone, that creates issues where then the person is in a dysregulated state, which can be all kinds of things with dissociation and shutdown or complete manic freaking out. A lot of things can happen. Go back to past podcast and find out more about what are the signs of nervous dysregulation. But when someone gets pushed too far out of that window, they can’t get back in, that’s a technically retraumatization.
Ani
If you’re looking at working with a coach and you’re asking them about how they go about creating the changes for their clients, if you’re talking with somebody who has this massive action philosophy, more typically that person is not a trauma-sensitive practitioner. Of course, you can always ask them if they have trauma-sensitive training. That’s a good idea. But that massive action, just leap off a cliff thing is usually we’re not taking into consideration people’s nervous system.
Brian
We do want to just say here, too, is that trauma-sensitive coaches are not soft on trauma either. It’s not like we’re saying, Oh, well, don’t do it then. It’s okay. No stretch. We’re not doing that either. A trauma-sensitive professional will know exactly the right amount of stretch for someone to go to to both grow their nervous system without causing dysregulation. So that’s the skill of being trained as a trauma-sensitive coach.
Ani
Absolutely. And they also know how to modify the sensations so that people can actually create modification internally as they’re moving forward with those new actions.
Brian
Yeah. Okay. So the first way of our five ways that coaches unknowingly retraumatize their clients is they just push through it. That’s number one.
Ani
Okay, number- We count it backwards or we count it forward? I don’t know.
Brian
It’s not really a countdown. It’s just, here’s the top five. All right, so number two? Okay, number two. Number two is when a coach… Say a client comes with an issue that they’re dealing with, and maybe it’s an issue about how they’re approaching something, or it could be how they feel about something, or it could the way that they’re perceiving something, and the coach just tells them how to fix it.
Ani
That’s not coaching. It’s not actually coaching.
Brian
Right. But coaches do that.
Ani
It’s right. You’re right.
Brian
Yeah. They just tell them “This is what you need to do. This is what you got to do, A, B, and C. Just fix it. Do this to fix it.”
Ani
Yeah.
Brian
Right. And so why is that technically your traumatization? Why does that show up that way? Well, lots of people who have experienced past trauma, whether it’s been on a large degree or a small degree, it’s all in degrees. And there’s a pattern of dysregulation in the nervous system, and those patterns can come up over time for people. And it’s interesting. I’ve worked with clients who at work, they’re like rock stars, right? They can just show up at work. But then they go home, and in their home, they can barely keep it together. You never know certain environments can activate people in different ways. For some other people, it’s the opposite. Home is their rock star. Isn’t at work, they’re dysregulated constantly. It can happen in all kinds of ways for folks. There’s no judgment around any of that. But what can happen is that, say you’re a rock star at home, but then every time you go to work, you have a hard time keeping together, you can really come up with this idea that you’re broken, that there must be something wrong with me, that I can’t do this. There must be something wrong with me.
Brian
When working with a coach and a coach just coming out and telling someone how to fix something, what that can do is bring to the surface because a fix, we fix things that are broken.
Ani
Oh, yeah.
Brian
That’s what we do. If something’s broken, fix it. Something’s broken, fix it. I mean, that’s basically how it works in our society. Just using the terminology and the approach of this is how you fix it can unearth a pattern of “I’m broken within” somebody. And that broken becomes that retraumatization that then comes to the surface. That can be very shameful for someone, can feel very humiliating just by the direct approach of, if you haven’t been able to figure this out for yourself, there must be something wrong with you because it’s very clear to me this is how you’re going to fix it. It can bring up so much for people. It can.
Ani
And the coachee who does have a traumatized nervous system will oftentimes really just take that I’m broken on. It just keeps perpetuating.
Brian
No one’s broken. The thing is, actually, your nervous system is working perfectly. It’s doing exactly what it was designed to do. There’s all kinds of signals and switches that have to happen to help us survive and to help us stay safe. Lots of times that’s what’s happening when we have a nervous system dysregulation episode.
Ani
When we say no one’s broken, we’re coming from a physiological homeostasis balance thing. It’s not just some nice thing that we say, “No one’s broken”. It’s actually from a physiological homeostasis perspective, the body’s always in the dynamic balance. You really actually are not… Yeah, your body’s working perfectly.
Brian
All right, so that’s number two. It’s a really good one. Not in a hierarchical order at all. That’s just the number on our list here. Okay, So number three, the number three way that coaches tend to retraumatize their clients, oftentimes unknowingly, is by not getting consent, not receiving consent from people. We have to remember that the origination of trauma, one of the key features of all trauma, any trauma that anyone has ever experienced, one of the key features is loss of choice. We didn’t actually choose to have that experience. Whether that’s a… Again, I don’t want to go into any of the details around trauma, but whatever trauma anyone has ever experienced, if you go back to it, you have to realize, Oh, my God. So really what happened was I didn’t have choice around that.
Ani
Yeah, it again, going back to trauma sensitive work isn’t soft work. So you’ll hear our trauma sensitive coaches asking all the time for consent all throughout the course, not once.
Brian
Not just once. Not once.
Ani
All throughout the course of their program. And it’s not soft at all. The client super appreciates it. It creates a tremendous amount of rapport and connection. It really allows the person to, maybe even for the first time, recognize that they truly are in choice and the other person actually is holding space for whatever they choose to be okay. It’s a tremendously powerful, important relationship.
Brian
Yeah. Ongoing consent. In the systems that we teach, we have it baked into the systems and the processes, a point of ongoing consent to go through, because it actually does something for the nervous system and the subconscious mind as well, right? It’s to really help that. So there’s that choice piece is just critically important.
Ani
And whatever they choose needs to actually be okay. I think that one of the things that stands in the way of a coach being able to be in that space with a client is the coach needs to actually be able to detach from getting their self-worth because the client’s, quote, unquote, successful. Because in the moment that you really do truly give your client consent and you really are okay, truly okay, with whatever it is that they choose, it could bring up some stuff for you as the coach, and you need to be able to detach from what you think might be the wrong answer. A quick example? Sure. Okay. I remember we were in class one time, and years ago, we were working with a student, and we were talking about this exact thing about choice, and we were workshopping it. And the student wanted to work on the fact that they couldn’t get themselves to stop watching television so much. They watch television so much, and they shouldn’t watch television so much, and they should be doing this, and they should be doing that. I should be cleaning my house, and I should be exercising, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Ani
I don’t remember the exact conversation, but we got to the place where the choice point came and the student chose later in the day to actually watch television, which paradoxically looks like they’re going to do the dysfunctional behavior. But what actually the magic point was that we gave conscious consent to the client. They consciously chose in that moment. I remember we got off the call and I immediately got a direct message from another student going “I don’t get it. She made the wrong choice. She was supposed to go exercise. Why did you let her get away with that?” And there’s some thing in the coaching industry about how we’re supposed to be, not all the time, but it can be, we’re supposed to be badasses, and we’re supposed to go, go, go, or whatever. I explained the concept of consent at that moment to the student, and she also had a traumatized nervous system. Really appreciated it again, hearing it again. Oh, okay. We got to be curious together to see what would happen next. That curiosity to see what would happen next allowed us to then, again, be open when the student came back and described what happened next for her.
Ani
She was able to really move through that trajectory to change pretty big things in her life. That was a pivotal moment. It was not only really pivotal for her as the coachee, but this other people watching were like, “That wasn’t the right answer!” There’s no right answer. Right. Yeah.
Brian
And so leading with that consent and choice made it… Consciously, I love what you said about that, Ani. Conscious. Conscious. The conscious choice actually changed how the behavior ended up, what it ended up bringing or resulting in.
Ani
Because she was making an unconscious choice to watch television more than she wanted to. It was not a conscious choice. It was just her default. Then she made the conscious choice and something changed. Yes.
Brian
I love it. I love it. I love these conversations because they go into these interesting little sidebars that are so incredibly valuable, right? That’s a great, hugely valuable. Okay, so what’s the next one? So number four. So the number 4 way is when a, and I have to say, I have been guilty of this. Actually, this mistake that I made is the one that changed my life. I still sometimes wrestle with this one, particularly, that I did. What is it? Here’s what it is. When a coach opens up an issue for a client that then they cannot handle and deal with.
Ani
That happened?
Brian
Oh, yeah. Actually, that happened so profoundly for me that I opened up an issue for a client, and it created so much dysregulation. So this is before I was trauma-informed, trauma-sensitive trained. And I opened up because I thought, Oh, I know about trauma. And when what I knew about trauma, what I thought I knew about trauma was, “Let’s release the trauma.” That’s what I knew. It’s like, Oh, here’s the trauma. Let’s release it. And so I was really good at probing questions and doing manual work with people to release trauma. But then once it was released, I had no clue how to help support my client around it. It was so devastating for me, the harm that I caused this person. Thank God, she was helpful to me in understanding what had happened because she could reflect that back to me. But that changed my life, and I realized I never, ever, ever, ever, ever want that ever to happen to anybody ever that I work with. I never want anybody else professionally to have to deal with that ever again or at all for someone that they work with. That’s when I decided just go all in on really getting deeply trauma-trained, trauma-informed, trauma sensitive trauma-specific trained because I realized if I’m going to wade into these waters of somatic coaching more deeply, then I have to really be able to support whatever comes up for somebody and then refer out if I can’t support.
Brian
But I have to still be able to do First aid for somebody if something happens in a situation. Even if I’m not doing ongoing care or support for somebody, I have to at least do first aid when stuff comes out. Because, again, a lot of dysfunctional behaviors and challenging and difficult behaviors that people have are being driven by trauma responses. When we address the trauma responses, that’s how we can change those behaviors. As Ani pointed out, if you’re working with people, and especially if you’re working with people in an embodied way, in a somatic way, whether you’re doing that with somatic practices or whether you’re doing somatic coaching, there’s a great possibility that someone will become dysregulated or retraumatized, and you have got to know how to manage it.
Ani
Okay, I got three examples to inform pretty quick. So one is that if you are doing, like you said, any somatic practices with people, you’ve got to understand you could be opening Pandora’s box. I recently was doing some coaching on an app. I’m working on Sleeping Better, and they were doing some somatic practices. I know what I’m doing. It actually dysregulated my nervous system, but I knew what I was doing, and I could handle it and go from there. And the app is fantastic, by the way. And they were doing somatic practices. The somatic practices dysregulated me. There was no support for that. So that was one. Shoot. I thought if I said three, I’d be able to remember them all. No, I don’t remember the second one. I wanted to point out in your story that you were working with people’s tissue. This was before you would have called yourself a coach. You were calling yourself a manual therapist. You were practicing manual physical therapy. You said something important in your story. You said you were asking questions. Asking questions is actually a function of coaching. Asking questions is something that other professionals do, which is one of the reasons why we really like to talk about we’re not in the business to make a million somatic coaches.
Ani
We want to give people somatic coaching skills. Because a lot of practitioners ask people questions. Doctors ask people questions. Nurses ask people questions. Manual therapists ask people questions. If you’re a person who’s working in somebody’s body and you’re asking people questions, then you have the possibility of opening up this box.
Brian
Yeah, absolutely.
Ani
I don’t remember the third one, but that was enough.
Brian
Okay. All right. That’s a really common way. I mean, all these are common ways, but that one for me, strikes home. So when you open up something that then you can’t deal with, boy, that can be really retraumatizing for people.
Ani
Yeah. And if you’re not going to be a trauma sensitive practitioner yourself, you really has to have a referral network with people who know how to handle things.
Brian
Yeah, exactly. Okay, so the last way that we see coaches tend to retraumatize people is like this toxic positivity spin that can happen. A client is really struggling with something. They’re maybe already a bit dysregulated. Something came up. It could be something really important, like a big, like they lost a parent, or someone passed away, or they maybe lost their job, or maybe they got a health diagnosis. Oftentimes, it’s an important thing. So someone gets a health diagnosis, they bring it to their coach or to somebody else, and they say, Well, there’s- I think on the bright side. I think on the bright side. There’s something positive here. This is the positive thing. There’s an opportunity, right? This is the positive thing. Now, you don’t have to go to work anymore. And so that toxic positivity spin, it actually says a little bit more about the coach than the client. And what it says about the coach is that they’re not able to be with trauma, being able to be with it.
Ani
Yeah. It actually means that the coach is coming from a place of toleration rather than win-win opportunities because a person who’s going to put a positive spin on something that really needs to be addressed, like you said, knows there’s something deeper in there? It’s subconsciously, I think. It’s a sign that you’re coming from a place of toleration in your own life, actually. That’s something interesting.
Brian
The other way that it really can seep into this retraumatization is it really completely invalidates the way a person is feeling. So someone’s really feeling into the upset or whatever it is, and someone says, Oh, well, think on the bright side. You’re just completely invalidating someone else’s experience.
Ani
Everybody processes things differently. I have clients who really need to go into the emotional process that’s happening with them. I have clients who need to dip their toes in, and I have clients who just keep going. Each person is different in how they’re going to process things. Yeah, the toxic positivity. We get so much of it from everywhere in the media. I think that it really can be challenging for us to allow ourselves to have a self-compassion if that’s how we process things. It’s not just big things, by the way. It’s any degree of things that matter to the person. I’m thinking about a client who I saw who, Brian, they were going through their children. It was a natural progression is what I’m trying to say. Their children were going from being kids to being teenagers. The person was experiencing grief around that. They were, for themselves, trying to make themselves think positively about it. I’m going to have more time on my hands. Now I can explore things that I like to do. When they came to the session, What do you want to work on? I said, and whatever they told me.
Ani
I’m thinking more positive about it and all this stuff. Well, it didn’t take long for me to say something like, Hey, let’s talk about this or that, or I heard a catch in your voice, or what was that? It doesn’t feel like you’re taking a nice deep breath or whatever. There was a lot of grief underneath there. The client told me, “No one’s really given me the space to acknowledge that this is really, really sad for me. I’ve given 18 years of my life dedicated to serving my family and growing these relationships with these children, and now they’re leaving, and I’m scared.” All the things that went into that and just acknowledging that, not just, acknowledging the grief, being able to listen, witness, validate, allow the person to come to a place where they could find opportunity. But it wasn’t even about that, but it really was this lovely place. You know what it reminds me of? My favorite movie, Inside Out. How in order to create true connection with people, it’s not just happiness that we need to be able to do that. It’s our sadness, it’s our grief, it’s our ability to show up and be vulnerable and to be seen by another person who can then reach out and connect with us.
Ani
That’s what creates depth and connection to really help us to feel human and connected with other human beings. So all of our emotions are important. Inside Out will tell you that’s true.
Brian
That’s right. If Inside Out said it, then it must be true.
Ani
If Inside Out said it, it must be true.
Brian
So it really, again, what we love to help our students learn how to do is to meet people where they are. And so we’re not saying that a positive reframing at some point in time isn’t valuable. It actually is valuable, but it’s all about timing. It’s about meeting people, which you just said so eloquently, meeting people where they are and then helping to walk with them as a guide, helping to guide them and walk with them to a place of resolution within themselves. They’ve already had the resolution within them. We already have everything that we need within ourselves. Coaching will tell us that. Coaching will tell us that. We just have to be able to guide them to that resolution. Jump too fast to the positivity spin that we stick on somebody invalidates their current experience, and it also invalidates their capacity to find the resolution within themselves, and that’s retraumatizing.
Ani
Yeah. All of these are really important, and I’m so glad we’re having the conversation. It’s so fantastic to be able to have more people recognize that that’s what’s really going on. I think it helps us to be kinder. It certainly helps us to get better results with people. It helps us to really make a profound difference. I think the ripple effects that we see with our clients and their families and the people that they serve with their work and things like that are just so profoundly transformative. Yeah.
Brian
So watch for these five ways, learn how to address them, and becoming more of trauma-sensitive coach and provider can make such a huge difference.
Ani
Yeah, absolutely. And if you’re ready to embark in becoming trauma-sensitive practitioner, then our certification programs are definitely where you want to look because we do a lot of that work in those certification programs. Perfect. Thanks for joining us for this conversation. All right.
Brian
See you next week.