Shannon Polly addresses how coaches can help clients stuck in repetitive thought patterns, especially about relationships. She recommends somatic grounding before sessions, asking what story they're telling, and using Tara Brach's RAIN practice to validate emotions while shifting perspective through strengths-focused reframing.
I have a question with regard to coaching people, especially those who ruminate each session, they bring up essentially the material that we worked on the previous session. So they're still bringing the same thing continuously. Especially in relationships seem to be the most common, that they can't let go of whatever the challenge was in their breakup or their current relationship, they always bring it up. And I always try to start with positive somatic exercises before I do a coaching session and high fiving and getting them into the zone. But then they always drift into that space. So what's a great tool to offer them to see that it is maybe not in their best interest? Yeah, sometimes it depends on context. And I will say I do more leadership coaching than life coaching, but relationships are everywhere. So I would say that sometimes I will reflect back to them the story I'm hearing or have them say, what story are you telling? And Tara Brock, who is a great meditation teacher, says, it's real but not true. It's real but not true. So it feels real for them but not necessarily true. So she has a practice called rain recognize, acknowledge, investigate and nurture. So for a somatic practice, there's like a meditation and it ties into self compassion to say, it's really hard to have this relationship. That's difficult. And sometimes just someone listening and saying that is really difficult and letting them have a moment. But if you feel like they're getting stuck in the moment, then saying, what would you like to be different? What are you hoping for? Yeah, I kind of used that question, how would you like be different if you weren't holding on to this. Yeah, stuff like that. How is it serving them? Because clearly it's serving them in some way to hold onto it. They get to be right about something. Oh, I'm sure. Yeah. It often comes that they're wrong and they're right, they're bad. I'm good. And I like what you shared earlier about the questioning of, well, what do you appreciate about that relationship? Or doing the 360 spin that you're offering. So as you mention it, that's coming up as a tool that could be very useful at the right time. Of course, after validating their humanness, their common humanity, which is what we're about, is to say, yeah, okay, it is tough for people, many people. So your feelings are true. I mean, your feelings are real, but they're not necessarily the true story. Yeah. And acknowledging that everyone has strengths. So sometimes we'll do a strengths exercise of like, strengths of difficult people. You know what, what are the strengths in that person, and sometimes they're hard pressed to find a strength in the person. So that also could be an angle.
