How Can Co-Active Coaching Facilitate Forgiveness And Compassion For Ourselves And Others?
Behind every person’s social mask* is concealed a form of suffering accompanied by a deeply engrained need. When we can identify this hidden pain and consequently uncover our vital needs, it soon becomes very clear how we can forgive and have compassion for ourselves and others.
My own self exploration and experience in coaching clients has taught me that our masks disguise a deeply hidden emotion of huge importance that is not being acknowledged, yet we dangerously steer away from our emotions without realising they’re trying to tell us something.
My guess is that we shy away from our emotions for various reasons, perhaps for fear of exposing our vulnerabilities and not living up to the expectations we have created for ourselves, preferring to present to the world a persona that in our minds is perceived as socially accepted. Other reasons may include spiritual laziness, attachments, stuck in “being the victim” mode, slaves to our saboteur voices or simply not being aware.
We have almost become conditioned to believe the stories our masks have created and may find ourselves sleep walking on a journey we think we have under control.
This denial of our true emotions can create a lack of awareness and suffering. If we do not carefully listen to our emotions, we will not know and honour what we need. Our core needs will not be fulfilled. They will literally live in our hearts, bodies and soul and blindly affect the way we behave, the way we treat others and the choices we make. They will become so deeply engrained, that accessing or identifying them is very difficult and requires work.
So how can we find and define our needs, how do we know if they are currently sitting in our hearts and driving our behaviour and life choices?
When we can no longer live with our emotional disturbances, some of us choose to stop and begin to soul search. We start to look more intently within and ask questions. Through Mindfulness we can name our sufferings and naturally then will our needs begin to surface.
What is so beautiful about this process is that once we truly identify these core needs, once we understand exactly what’s driving our emotions, we can make more sense of and rationalise situations that have a hold on us. We can see, learn, let go and move on. Forgiveness & compassion are ergo a natural progression. It becomes easier to forgive and be compassionate with ourselves and others.
In addition to this we can begin to feel more comfortable with our true selves and allow our masks to come down! As Carl Jung states, we can ‘develop a more realistic, flexible persona that helps them navigate in society but does not collide with nor hide their true self‘*
How can Co-Active Coaching help with this process?
A Co-Active life coach can assist their client in taking them to a resonant place they would otherwise never have imagined exists within them. I find it difficult to visualise how anyone could reach this resonant place without the help of a skilled, trained coach. This is why I believe we could all do with a good coach to help us work through our daily conflicts and emotions that arise.
A good coach will help us uncover some of the most surprising engrained gems sitting in our hearts, minds and bodies. It can be such an amazing experience that can provide such a pivotal learning and support in helping us continue on our journey, whether that be to flourish in our work, social and/or spiritual lives.
If there is an area of your life where you feel you want to explore and dig deeper or simply would like to share your thoughts on this post, please ‘Be In Touch’ I would love to hear from you.
I’m also offering free of charge sample sessions if you would like to explore whether coaching can help you.
To read more about Carl Jung’s Persona (social mask) click here. *
Namaste
B
* Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persona_(psychology)
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