Module 4
Coaching with the Root Causes of Self-Doubt
Root Causes of Self-Doubt
Introduction
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Self-belief Coaches:
The discussion forum is where you can ask questions, share your thoughts, learnings, confusion and breakthroughs about this Module.
2024 Timetable for Group Calls
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Group Call: Tuesday
7pm UK + Ireland | 4am Sydney | 6am + 1 day NZ
Study Group: Thursday
7pm UK + Ireland | 4am Sydney | 6am + 1 day NZ
Self-belief Coaches!
Part of the process of integrating learning is about reflecting on what has changed for you.
'What self-doubt stories are you noticing as you explore the Life Map, Belief Biography, and/or Mapping Your Protective Beliefs?'
'What may be possible for your clients as they uncover and explore their sensitivity to certain risks as well as the resulting Protective Beliefs? What questions or concerns might you have in using these tools with your clients?'
'How have you already started incorporating self-doubt into your client sessions? If you haven't, what aspects could you experiment with in a small, safe way?'
Please share your thoughts in the discussion!
This is a way of creating moment-in-time reflections that will help to anchor your learning. Your reflections may also be useful for your certification submission.
Sas, I have a question following our session yesterday. I was wondering about early childhood events that are pre-memory, and how we work with clients on this in relation to the life map and the uncovering of protective beliefs.
For example, on my life map I’ve recorded that I was in hospital aged 2 for a mystery illness where I stopped being able to walk. I know I was left alone for big chunks of time in hospital (the 70s were different times!) but I don’t remember it. I assume it was negative/scary. Everything I know about it is from the patchy details I’ve been given. I’ve made it mean certain things to me (that it set the foundations of my childhood muteness), but actually I really don’t what happened. So it means it’s guesswork. Given that the early years are very formative, what do you recommend when working with clients around potentially traumatic or difficult pre-memory situations, especially when working to uncover protective beliefs?
I don’t have anything to contribute but just wanted to say thank you for asking this very interesting question and for sharing your experience Ruth. I had wondered about birth experiences as I feel like they mentioned that on the epi-genetics podcast, which I guess would come under the same sort of pre-memory experiences? anyway thank you for sharing Ruth, really interested to hear Sas’s perspective
Yes – early developmental trauma is pre-verbal – it happens before spoken social language has developed. That means communication with a parent/caretaker isn’t possible, and the baby’s cognitive thoughts and understanding have not been formed. So as babies we ‘understand’ experiences through sensory and body processes of the limbic system – touch, feel, smell, movement, sound, and sight are the signals that inform the baby of fear, discomfort, hunger, soothing, safety, etc.
You are right that this is largely guesswork in terms of what might have happened.
My steer is to stay in the ‘here and now’ of the client’s reality and grow the client’s awareness of why there is difficulty. My approach to coaching these very early experiences is to guess!
We can imagine what it might have been like – for us as babies and for the adults around us. We can also add in expanded meanings with our own healthy adult perspective. We can also attribute protective beliefs to those past experiences – eg: you’ll probably find attachment related protective beliefs for clients who have pre-verbal trauma.
Making the connection between early experiences and what is alive for the client now, sits within the boundaries of coaching. It isn’t our job to determine if an experience was traumatising, or to attempt to process the original experience with the client.
If you have a client who does to explore this further they could seek out therapy, I have also recommended some clients read more about attachment, somatic practices and breathwork can also be incredibly helpful as these are also non-verbal and allow the body to take over.
Does this help Ruth? Feel free to ask more!
Hi all! Wanted to post a quick reminder about today’s Study Group! And also that the Zoom link is different – it will be at https://us02web.zoom.us/j/4392645620
Hope to see you there!
Sure. So my goal was I want to make more money in my coaching business with ease and regularity.
Actions.
Directly reaching out to people who may want to work together.
Creating content that feels bold, clear and that really speaks to my ideal clients.
What I do instead.
Scrolling on social media apps, and compare myself to others.
Fantasise about what it will be like when I’ve done the actions, and about a future more successful me.
Create stuff in my head and then obsess about the perfect way or time to actually do it.
Do admin work, and take on more freelance work instead.
Worry box.
Offending people with what I say.
Being rejected.
The actions will work, I’ll be successful and won’t be able to cope with that.Also, how will I prove myself if I’m not struggling?
Protective belief.
I have tobe struggling and to need other people in order to be loved and accepted.
It’s not safe for me to offend people because I need them to survive
It isn’t safe for me to be successful because then I’ll be alone and unloved
Hey Ellen – thanks for sharing. I just want to acknowledge your courage in looking at this – it’s always painful when you seem to be stopping yourself from something you really want.
Secondly, the aim of this exercise is to bring to the surface the reasons why you are stopping yourself. Uncovering the Protective Beliefs helps us to see this.
You have some real coherence here! It makes complete sense that if you are worried about offending people, being rejected, and/or being successful – then all of the behaviours in your col 2 are really effective ways to protect yourself from these outcomes. Does this make sense?
What I notice is that the worry about being rejected and the worry about being successful seem contradictory.
It’s likely they are coming from the same ‘general worry’ (if I’m rejected or successful, I won’t be able to cope). But each is likely to be driven by a different Protective Belief.
You’ve got three PBs here – do they all feel true?
It’s totally understandable if they all do feel true—this just tells me that your goal feels extra risky to you, and you have a really sophisticated Protective Self-doubt operating.
Can you choose one of these PBs and just get curious about this. Does the belief feel familiar? Do you remember when you first believed this? Where did it come from (a person, an experience, a relationship?).
Feel free to share as much as you wish here!
The idea here is that you uncover the protective belief so that you can identify the root cause of it – the more it makes sense to you, the less resistance you have to changing it.
Thanks Sas, this all makes sense.
The risk of being rejected is a really big one in my biography, I completely see where that comes from and I’ve done quite a bit of work on that in the past.
The risk of success is feeling like a bit of a newer discovery, and I think feels like the most powerful one. I can sort of see where this has come from, but it’s also a bit tangled up with other things. I’ll sit with it for a bit and see what comes up.
Sas, I have a question following our session yesterday. I was wondering about early childhood events that are pre-memory, and how we work with clients on this in relation to the life map and the uncovering of protective beliefs.
For example, on my life map I’ve recorded that I was in hospital aged 2 for a mystery illness where I stopped being able to walk. I know I was left alone for big chunks of time in hospital (the 70s were different times!) but I don’t remember it. I assume it was negative/scary. Everything I know about it is from the patchy details I’ve been given. I’ve made it mean certain things to me (that it set the foundations of my childhood muteness), but actually I really don’t what happened. So it means it’s guesswork. Given that the early years are very formative, what do you recommend when working with clients around potentially traumatic or difficult pre-memory situations, especially when working to uncover protective beliefs?
I don’t have anything to contribute but just wanted to say thank you for asking this very interesting question and for sharing your experience Ruth. I had wondered about birth experiences as I feel like they mentioned that on the epi-genetics podcast, which I guess would come under the same sort of pre-memory experiences? anyway thank you for sharing Ruth, really interested to hear Sas’s perspective
Yes – early developmental trauma is pre-verbal – it happens before spoken social language has developed. That means communication with a parent/caretaker isn’t possible, and the baby’s cognitive thoughts and understanding have not been formed. So as babies we ‘understand’ experiences through sensory and body processes of the limbic system – touch, feel, smell, movement, sound, and sight are the signals that inform the baby of fear, discomfort, hunger, soothing, safety, etc.
You are right that this is largely guesswork in terms of what might have happened.
My steer is to stay in the ‘here and now’ of the client’s reality and grow the client’s awareness of why there is difficulty. My approach to coaching these very early experiences is to guess!
We can imagine what it might have been like – for us as babies and for the adults around us. We can also add in expanded meanings with our own healthy adult perspective. We can also attribute protective beliefs to those past experiences – eg: you’ll probably find attachment related protective beliefs for clients who have pre-verbal trauma.
Making the connection between early experiences and what is alive for the client now, sits within the boundaries of coaching. It isn’t our job to determine if an experience was traumatising, or to attempt to process the original experience with the client.
If you have a client who does to explore this further they could seek out therapy, I have also recommended some clients read more about attachment, somatic practices and breathwork can also be incredibly helpful as these are also non-verbal and allow the body to take over.
Does this help Ruth? Feel free to ask more!
Hi all! Wanted to post a quick reminder about today’s Study Group! And also that the Zoom link is different – it will be at https://us02web.zoom.us/j/4392645620
Hope to see you there!
Hello! I’m just catching up on the replays of the calls I missed. When I went through the Protective Belief exercise it seemed my worry box and behaviours were relating to two different protective beliefs. Is that okay, or have I maybe not been specific enough with something?
Hey Ellen! Delighted to see you playing with this.
And that can sometimes happen when the beliefs feel a bit tangled up!
I’m so happy to help you unpick this.
Do you want to share what you have in your four columns and we can figure it out together?
Sure. So my goal was I want to make more money in my coaching business with ease and regularity.
Actions.
Directly reaching out to people who may want to work together.
Creating content that feels bold, clear and that really speaks to my ideal clients.
What I do instead.
Scrolling on social media apps, and compare myself to others.
Fantasise about what it will be like when I’ve done the actions, and about a future more successful me.
Create stuff in my head and then obsess about the perfect way or time to actually do it.
Do admin work, and take on more freelance work instead.
Worry box.
Offending people with what I say.
Being rejected.
The actions will work, I’ll be successful and won’t be able to cope with that.Also, how will I prove myself if I’m not struggling?
Protective belief.
I have tobe struggling and to need other people in order to be loved and accepted.
It’s not safe for me to offend people because I need them to survive
It isn’t safe for me to be successful because then I’ll be alone and unloved
Hey Ellen – thanks for sharing. I just want to acknowledge your courage in looking at this – it’s always painful when you seem to be stopping yourself from something you really want.
Secondly, the aim of this exercise is to bring to the surface the reasons why you are stopping yourself. Uncovering the Protective Beliefs helps us to see this.
You have some real coherence here! It makes complete sense that if you are worried about offending people, being rejected, and/or being successful – then all of the behaviours in your col 2 are really effective ways to protect yourself from these outcomes. Does this make sense?
What I notice is that the worry about being rejected and the worry about being successful seem contradictory.
It’s likely they are coming from the same ‘general worry’ (if I’m rejected or successful, I won’t be able to cope). But each is likely to be driven by a different Protective Belief.
You’ve got three PBs here – do they all feel true?
It’s totally understandable if they all do feel true—this just tells me that your goal feels extra risky to you, and you have a really sophisticated Protective Self-doubt operating.
Can you choose one of these PBs and just get curious about this. Does the belief feel familiar? Do you remember when you first believed this? Where did it come from (a person, an experience, a relationship?).
Feel free to share as much as you wish here!
The idea here is that you uncover the protective belief so that you can identify the root cause of it – the more it makes sense to you, the less resistance you have to changing it.
Thanks Sas, this all makes sense.
The risk of being rejected is a really big one in my biography, I completely see where that comes from and I’ve done quite a bit of work on that in the past.
The risk of success is feeling like a bit of a newer discovery, and I think feels like the most powerful one. I can sort of see where this has come from, but it’s also a bit tangled up with other things. I’ll sit with it for a bit and see what comes up.