Trauma-Informed Coaching

Last month, I shared an essay detailing two times I’ve wanted to end my life. Once in my teens, and then again in my forties. They were events born out of shame, that then became points of shame. I ended the piece concluding that I didn’t want to feel shame anymore. Moreover, I didn’t want to make anyone else feel shame either. However, my participation in a recent leadership coaching demonstration made it clear that it’s far easier for me to write than it is for me to do. 

The demo was/is a blur. I possess fragments of the conversation handed to me by a watching audience. What I remember on my own is the coach calling me brave. A warrior. Repeatedly. Or at least it felt like it. I don’t really know how many times the coach said it in those 45 minutes; their voice drowned out by 45 years of other people saying the same. 

It has rarely seemed like a compliment. Because when I’ve been called brave and a warrior, I’ve also been called selfish, cold, unfeeling, arrogant, judgmental, ruthless, heartless, bad, unloving, and un-loveable. I’ve been called a b*tch, a traitor, a Slytherin, and worse. Words that fill me with shame. And so every time she said ‘brave’, I heard ‘shame.’

Shame. Shame. Shame. Shame. Shame. Shame. Shame. Shame. Shame. Shame. Shame.

At one point I remember turning my face away from our audience, whispering to the coach that I didn’t want to cry. They said it was ok, but it wasn’t. What I really meant—but didn’t say—was I don’t want to do this. When the group debriefed the demonstration, it was evident that while my deep discomfort was widely observed, it was not widely understood—not even by me. 

Some participants continued to call me brave and expressed gratitude for the learning moment. Others were frustrated by what they saw as my unnecessary resistance or didn’t get why I was upset in the first place. A few were simply surprised; thinking everything had proceeded normally. A small number recognized the word brave for the trigger it was before I did.

I understand the confusion. Apparently, during the coaching session, I laughed, I cried, I shut-down, I opened-up. Those who afterwards thanked and called me brave, I gave smiles and hugs. Said I was glad and grateful too. The person who told me they didn’t see me as brave, but full of love and integrity, made me feel seen and heard in a way that all I could do was cry and wrap my arms around myself. 

I felt both validated and bad for the coach when some students expressed a loss of trust in them. I was angry at what I saw as their hubris. How could a “master coach” and “intuitive empath” fail to see I was in the middle of a breakdown, not a breakthrough? At the same time, I know from personal experience how easily people can miss things. The week before, I was so focused on getting a group to a resolution that I didn’t recognize until afterwards someone had completely shut down. They said yes, only so it would be over.

Truthfully, the person I was most angry with was myself. I thought I’d put both me and the coach in a bad position. My brilliant fix? Do it again. During the debrief, I said I’d let them continue to coach me, doubling down even when they privately offered to coach me pro-bono after class. All the while, silently asking myself what the f*ck I was doing?

The answer appeared on a break when a colleague compared the coaching session to watching someone being forced into a coat who kept saying ‘no, I don’t want a coat.’ I instantly recognized the sensation washing over me during the demonstration. It wasn’t being forced into a coat. It was trying to be undressed. On a couch at a party—other people around and watching—by a friend, someone I liked, but with whom I didn’t want to have sex. 

I recognized my hunched shoulders, my clenched fists, my turned head, my clipped responses. My attempts at batting away and shrugging off probes. My awkward jokes and embarrassed laughter meant to redirect what was happening without bringing too much attention to it or hurting someone’s feelings. My continuing to talk; my agreeing to meet up later. I recognized it all. And then a fresh wave of shame swept over me, because how could I even think to liken the two. 

I write to help me make sense of things and it has only been in the writing and rewriting of this essay that I appreciate that I wasn't thinking. I was in the middle of a trauma response. I’m not responsible for my trauma responses, but I know once recognized, I am responsible for bringing myself back to the present. It’s a lesson from a trauma-informed leadership class. The same class that inspired my previous epiphany about shame. 

Lessons. Epiphanies. Really, they’re choices. To be made again and again. Here and now, I choose empathy—for both the coach and me. My embarrassment, my upset, my pain, were real and legitimate—nothing to be ashamed of. And while it’s often said that ‘intent doesn’t matter—impact matters,’ it in fact does. 

People’s lives are unimaginable minefields, and there is a huge difference between inadvertently triggering someone and deliberately doing them harm. Lingering impact is in part a matter of interpretation of someone’s intent, and choosing to replace my anger with empathy makes me a better coach, and I hope it makes them better too.

This doesn’t mean I will be taking up their offer of a coaching exchange, although others there that day could and should. But again, that’s their choice. We were all on radically different emotional journeys that day, filtering the scene through our own personal lenses; our interpretations shaped by our experiences. By sharing both of mine, I hope it creates more understanding among us all.

Still, it’s nerve-wracking. I’m afraid the opposite will happen. That I will be misunderstood, whispered about and judged. But I know there can be no path to understanding for any of us without a willingness by some of us to visibly work through our contradictions and confusion. To reveal the person behind the professional. To attempt to let people in and to let things go.