John lives in the US, is married and has a 1-year old daughter. John's reason for the coaching programme was to be supported with his recent career transition from teacher to Stay At Home Father. We defined his goals for the programme to be:
John shared that he is a perfectionist and when we explored the origin of this it turned out that a negative experience involving a pet when he was a young boy resulted in him not having the confidence to make decisions today! This was obviously also impacting all of the areas above and in most parts of his life. With a small ceremony we were able to forgive the younger John, which helped John to break the association between making decisions and feeling bad and liberate him from the impact of this shadow. Bringing shadows to the light is such a helpful event as the person will feel lighter and stronger as it will feel as a victory. John also realised that overthinking was comfortable for him, using some somatic (bodywork) tools he got to understand the underlying fear and that it didn't help him to get to better solutions.
The impact of this deep-dive was tremendous, it led him to have confidence in taking actions, supporting his role as stay at home father and husband. He took the decision on his further education, increased the frequency and lengths of his hiking and started playing hockey again to improve his health, he clarified the type of father he wanted to be for his daughter and what experiences he wanted her to have. He understood the importance of zest and spontaneity in life and took action to improve the relationship with his wife and connected with a local group of SAHFs to start building his community.
In John's words:
I think the coaching program, honestly came at the right time for me. It came at a time where I was very unsure about everything in my life aside from my marriage. Felt very strong in my relationship with my wife, but in everything else my identity, my future my outlook on life felt very unsure and that, that led me to a place where at times, I was very doubting myself and I think this whole process has allowed me to really focus on all the good things in my life and not necessarily just on a superficial level, but for myself personally for kind of understanding better of who I am. I think all of that and then that magnified by the isolation in the social and emotional effects of COVID-19.
This programme gave me interaction, it gave me direction it gave me an area to focus on improvement of myself of improvement of my interactions with my family and is really kind of reinvigorated me as I go forward to not feel so defeated in those lower times 'cause I think it's important that we feel those negative emotions so we can experience growth to feel the other end of the spectrum of those emotions the extremely positive emotions and it kind of shook me out of kind of being somewhere stuck in the middle that I was staying in kind of like a lukewarm homeostasis of life and it's kind of reinvigorated my ability to feel that range of emotions, so very appreciative of your time in this process.
I think it's really given me a new approach to how self betterment doesn't have to come with the shame of feeling inconsiderate to others or selfish and that I just feel like even if it's not some outward drastic change or I don't necessarily have the, the full benefit of this yet, it has really allowed me to start on a new path. That feels new, which is good for me in general just to have something that feels new, to feel free from shame and worry. Like Yes, maybe I could have gotten through some of that on my own at times, but, I think just having this interaction with you allowed me to deal with a lot of that sooner than I would have been willing to and I'm very thankful for you and what you're doing.
- Improve his health
- Clarity on his further education
- Relationship with his daughter
- Relationship with his wife
- The need to belong to a community
- Doing more DIY
- Further career choices
John shared that he is a perfectionist and when we explored the origin of this it turned out that a negative experience involving a pet when he was a young boy resulted in him not having the confidence to make decisions today! This was obviously also impacting all of the areas above and in most parts of his life. With a small ceremony we were able to forgive the younger John, which helped John to break the association between making decisions and feeling bad and liberate him from the impact of this shadow. Bringing shadows to the light is such a helpful event as the person will feel lighter and stronger as it will feel as a victory. John also realised that overthinking was comfortable for him, using some somatic (bodywork) tools he got to understand the underlying fear and that it didn't help him to get to better solutions.
The impact of this deep-dive was tremendous, it led him to have confidence in taking actions, supporting his role as stay at home father and husband. He took the decision on his further education, increased the frequency and lengths of his hiking and started playing hockey again to improve his health, he clarified the type of father he wanted to be for his daughter and what experiences he wanted her to have. He understood the importance of zest and spontaneity in life and took action to improve the relationship with his wife and connected with a local group of SAHFs to start building his community.
In John's words:
I think the coaching program, honestly came at the right time for me. It came at a time where I was very unsure about everything in my life aside from my marriage. Felt very strong in my relationship with my wife, but in everything else my identity, my future my outlook on life felt very unsure and that, that led me to a place where at times, I was very doubting myself and I think this whole process has allowed me to really focus on all the good things in my life and not necessarily just on a superficial level, but for myself personally for kind of understanding better of who I am. I think all of that and then that magnified by the isolation in the social and emotional effects of COVID-19.
This programme gave me interaction, it gave me direction it gave me an area to focus on improvement of myself of improvement of my interactions with my family and is really kind of reinvigorated me as I go forward to not feel so defeated in those lower times 'cause I think it's important that we feel those negative emotions so we can experience growth to feel the other end of the spectrum of those emotions the extremely positive emotions and it kind of shook me out of kind of being somewhere stuck in the middle that I was staying in kind of like a lukewarm homeostasis of life and it's kind of reinvigorated my ability to feel that range of emotions, so very appreciative of your time in this process.
I think it's really given me a new approach to how self betterment doesn't have to come with the shame of feeling inconsiderate to others or selfish and that I just feel like even if it's not some outward drastic change or I don't necessarily have the, the full benefit of this yet, it has really allowed me to start on a new path. That feels new, which is good for me in general just to have something that feels new, to feel free from shame and worry. Like Yes, maybe I could have gotten through some of that on my own at times, but, I think just having this interaction with you allowed me to deal with a lot of that sooner than I would have been willing to and I'm very thankful for you and what you're doing.