How Deep Is Your Love? How Much Space Have You Created To Hold Your Self? In Self Knowledge? In Self Validation? In Self Acceptance? Be Discerning, For Self. And Extremely Cautious of Trendy Quick Fix "Uncertified Healing Experts" Life Coaches With Out Lived Experience, Of Life, and Weekend Certified "Trauma Informed" Healers.
Arden Leigh
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT TO BELIEVE THE LIVED EXPERIENCES OF YOUR FRIENDS AND CLIENTS
"Recently I’ve written a couple posts about the harms of gaslighting and disbelief in the personal development community.
Let’s be clear up front that the personal development community has lots of capitalist programming in it, designed to keep people purchasing coaching. In some cases the programming goes so deep that people in the community repeat it thinking they are being helpful because it’s what they’ve seen other coaches do.
I’ve been speaking out lately about some of the harmful projections I’ve experienced, common tropes such as “well maybe you’re not as healed as you think you are if you’re having this problem,” “if you’re getting defensive that’s how I know I hit on something that resonates,” followed of course by “wow look at how much you’re arguing with me because you know I’m right” and “the fact that you won’t accept my gaslighting as the loving response it is shows exactly why you’re attracting all these negative experiences.”
I want to unpack why it’s harmful to facilitate from a place of telling people they’re wrong about their self-reported experiences.
- Many people’s childhood and relationship traumas include not being believed about their experiences. Many people have been told that their feelings were not actually legit, that the harm they reported was not happening. When you begin coaching from this place you immediately recreate a lot of people’s trauma. This means you automatically qualify yourself as untrustworthy, and even as playing for the enemy.
- I know what you’re thinking - you’re going to say “well then I’m right, if they had fully healed from their trauma it wouldn’t bother them.” If that’s the case I’d like to invite you to notice how deep this programming goes in you. Even if someone has healed from their trauma, they likely still don’t want a facilitator who does the same thing their abuser did. That’s perfectly reasonable and not a sign that they need more healing. It’s actually a sign that they’ve healed enough to draw a boundary against abuse.
- Survivors of gaslighting often learn to overexplain themselves as a coping mechanism because they have learned that being believed is key to their safety. When you choose to interpret their overexplaining as a means of justifying why you’re right (“defensiveness means resonance”), you leave folks no way of connecting with you about what actually feels true for them, and you once again recreate their trauma. You are claiming to be helping them while not even listening to them. How can you claim to be able to help someone if you can’t even connect to their truth?
- You have to provide a safe way for people to be able to say no to you. If you project a narrative onto someone, you leave them two options in responding: “yes this resonates” or “no this does not resonate.” If you decide that both these responses are indicators that you’re right, you leave someone with no safe way to say no to you. This is the spiritual equivalent of “no means yes and yes means anal.” Think about what you’re doing.
- If you actually do believe there’s a skewed viewpoint coming from a trauma bias in someone’s story, it is your job as a facilitator to help them focus on what they do want to create instead and come up with a viewpoint that supports that. It’s possible to healthily inquire around their stories and help reshape them, or better yet, to just ask the client what result they want and then help them take some action steps toward it. None of this involves telling them they’re wrong about themselves and their experiences. Because of the way our human operating system works, their experiences have led them to believe what they’re saying is true. Disagreeing with them from the start only shows them that you don’t understand their experiences and conclusions.
- If someone has to be wrong about their own experience in order for your coaching to work for them, you’re probably not a very good coach. How about giving the benefit of the doubt to everything someone says about themselves and then offering a solution from there? If you can’t solve the problem they’re telling you about, if you have to twist it into being about some other problem, then maybe you’re just not equipped to help them.
- Coaching is not a game of “gotcha.” Nor is it an epic rap battle. I’m gonna just leave that one as it is.
There’s way too many facilitators out there who have taken on the program that being loudly “right” about someone to a point of shaming them in front of a room full of the facilitator’s acolytes is an effective coaching approach.
Don’t just slap a “trauma informed” label on your coaching because it’s trendy and then keep doing this crap. It is biologically, canonically unhelpful.
And it’s a large part of why the unregulated coaching industry is getting the bad rap that it is right now.
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT TO BELIEVE THE LIVED EXPERIENCES OF YOUR FRIENDS AND CLIENTS
"Recently I’ve written a couple posts about the harms of gaslighting and disbelief in the personal development community.
Let’s be clear up front that the personal development community has lots of capitalist programming in it, designed to keep people purchasing coaching. In some cases the programming goes so deep that people in the community repeat it thinking they are being helpful because it’s what they’ve seen other coaches do.
I’ve been speaking out lately about some of the harmful projections I’ve experienced, common tropes such as “well maybe you’re not as healed as you think you are if you’re having this problem,” “if you’re getting defensive that’s how I know I hit on something that resonates,” followed of course by “wow look at how much you’re arguing with me because you know I’m right” and “the fact that you won’t accept my gaslighting as the loving response it is shows exactly why you’re attracting all these negative experiences.”
I want to unpack why it’s harmful to facilitate from a place of telling people they’re wrong about their self-reported experiences.
- Many people’s childhood and relationship traumas include not being believed about their experiences. Many people have been told that their feelings were not actually legit, that the harm they reported was not happening. When you begin coaching from this place you immediately recreate a lot of people’s trauma. This means you automatically qualify yourself as untrustworthy, and even as playing for the enemy.
- I know what you’re thinking - you’re going to say “well then I’m right, if they had fully healed from their trauma it wouldn’t bother them.” If that’s the case I’d like to invite you to notice how deep this programming goes in you. Even if someone has healed from their trauma, they likely still don’t want a facilitator who does the same thing their abuser did. That’s perfectly reasonable and not a sign that they need more healing. It’s actually a sign that they’ve healed enough to draw a boundary against abuse.
- Survivors of gaslighting often learn to overexplain themselves as a coping mechanism because they have learned that being believed is key to their safety. When you choose to interpret their overexplaining as a means of justifying why you’re right (“defensiveness means resonance”), you leave folks no way of connecting with you about what actually feels true for them, and you once again recreate their trauma. You are claiming to be helping them while not even listening to them. How can you claim to be able to help someone if you can’t even connect to their truth?
- You have to provide a safe way for people to be able to say no to you. If you project a narrative onto someone, you leave them two options in responding: “yes this resonates” or “no this does not resonate.” If you decide that both these responses are indicators that you’re right, you leave someone with no safe way to say no to you. This is the spiritual equivalent of “no means yes and yes means anal.” Think about what you’re doing.
- If you actually do believe there’s a skewed viewpoint coming from a trauma bias in someone’s story, it is your job as a facilitator to help them focus on what they do want to create instead and come up with a viewpoint that supports that. It’s possible to healthily inquire around their stories and help reshape them, or better yet, to just ask the client what result they want and then help them take some action steps toward it. None of this involves telling them they’re wrong about themselves and their experiences. Because of the way our human operating system works, their experiences have led them to believe what they’re saying is true. Disagreeing with them from the start only shows them that you don’t understand their experiences and conclusions.
- If someone has to be wrong about their own experience in order for your coaching to work for them, you’re probably not a very good coach. How about giving the benefit of the doubt to everything someone says about themselves and then offering a solution from there? If you can’t solve the problem they’re telling you about, if you have to twist it into being about some other problem, then maybe you’re just not equipped to help them.
- Coaching is not a game of “gotcha.” Nor is it an epic rap battle. I’m gonna just leave that one as it is.
There’s way too many facilitators out there who have taken on the program that being loudly “right” about someone to a point of shaming them in front of a room full of the facilitator’s acolytes is an effective coaching approach.
This is a legit cult tactic and yall look like you’re about to hand out dixie cups and some suspicious looking punch. I don’t know how yall started thinking you could make people buy from you by making them feel bad but this is shitty and it needs to stop.
Don’t just slap a “trauma informed” label on your coaching because it’s trendy and then keep doing this crap. It is biologically, canonically unhelpful.
And it’s a large part of why the unregulated coaching industry is getting the bad rap that it is right now.
