S2.28: Thriving Teams: A Trauma-Informed Approach to Resilient Leadership with Julia Vaughan-Smith, Master Executive Coach & Supervisor

I prepared this for the Annual Transformative Coaching Summit. I was unable to do the session due to illness.  Please do email me with anything that comes to your mind as you read and think about this: [email protected].   Julia Vaughan Smith.
 
Here are just some of my reflections on this aspect of our practice.  I start by reflecting on Presence and then move to explore my thoughts about ‘Fake’ Presence and Absencing.  Trying to describe Presence in cognitive terms rather misses the point as it is all about Being - an internal state and experience. Having said that, I will do my best to articulate what I think it is.
 
Being Present
Presence and being present are key aspects within coaching and therapy. Our capacity to attune and connect to the client enables us to be with what is, to listen intently and feel a resonance with the other.  It is also what helps create a sense of safety, essential when working with personal change and growth.
 
The term Presence sometimes implies that the practice is straightforward , however, having practised as an Executive Coach, Psychotherapist and Supervisor for many years I can tell you it is not. It is something we need to learn how to do and have to work through those elements within us that stop us or take us into fake presence, absencing and  distancing.
 
‘Fake presence’ is a term I am using to refer to our capacity to appear to be present on the outside, while not being present on the inside. I am assuming that many of us have experienced this, I certainly have.  This is part of our protective armour against intimacy, having been vulnerable and hurt in the past, as children and maybe later in life.  It is part of our internalised trauma response and a form of absencing ourselves from connection.  Absence is the opposite of Presence.  It is a way of desensitising ourselves. ‘Fake presence’ and absencing are not consciously created but a response to the situation; we can become aware that this is what we are doing or remain unaware.
 
Our personal growth lies in recognising the difference between Presence and ‘fake presence’ and absencing. Working with our own trauma dynamics allows us to be as fully present as we can be more of the time.
 
Definitions:
Let’s start first with some definitions of the word Presence:

• Being present (as in a meeting)
• Being aware of the presence of an unseen entity
• Having a presence in a location (like a military unit)

 
It is also the name of an album by Led Zeppelin for any of you old enough to remember that highly successful group from the 1970s!
 
How I am using it in coaching and therapy is related to the first two of these but is more than just being present in the room with another; it is about being able to be in the present moment and feel the presence of the other through emotional attunement. That is, through Presence, we are able to resonate with the energy of the other.  It means we feel the other within ourselves while remaining aware of ourselves in the moment. As Thomas Hubl1 says ‘we can feel us feeling the other feeling us’. It is subtly different to empathy which is a cognitive or emotional state, where we can connect with the situation of another.
 
‘Presence is a heightened awareness of our momentary bodily sensations, feelings and thoughts, which can expand out into a presence for others, attuned to their feelings and thoughts” Connie Zweig2
 
Presence is about no past, no future, just now, this moment. Without the capacity to be fully present, we can’t have emotional attunement; without emotional attunement we don’t have safety, and without safety we can’t have transformative coaching.
 
If we are present, that is,  grounded in the here and now, without thoughts from the past or about the future, but just with what is – while also being able to observe ourselves – we have the capacity for deep listening, witnessing, a sense of inner spaceousness and connectivity with the other.  We can let go of ‘knowing’ and certainty, bringing ourselves fully into the encounter and opening up to the other.
 
Attunement to the other, requires that we can attune to ourselves and our inner experience within our body, emotions and mind. Meditation can teach this.
 
There is a link with the social engagement phase of Dr Stephen Porges’ polyvagal theory3, where we are calm, self-regulated (that is heartbeat and breathing slow and normal), curious, compassionate and open hearted to the other. Our facial muscles are relaxed and our eyes soft.  We convey safety to the other.
 
The term Presence came into use in organisational consulting fields in 2009 with the work of Dr Otto Scharmer  and Theory U4. Theory U is concerned with how we come to collective new ideas and solutions within systems. It is a process used within groups wishing to bring about systems change. He refers to Presencing a process of letting go of our ego, old patterns and certainties to connect with a deeper source of knowing. For this he states we need an Open Mind, Open Heart and Open Will. From this process, the future can emerge, not from an idea but from within.
 
There are similarities with how I am using Presence. We do need to let go of our ego needs and the need ‘to know’ or to have certainty, and we do need an open mind and an open heart. Roshi Joan Halifax5 talks of the need for leadership and compassion, to have a strong back, a soft front and an open heart.
 
Pause: take stock within yourself
Check in with yourself right now, how present in the moment do you feel? Is your mind running about the past or the future? Is your mind critiquing as I go along?
Check in with your body, is it grounded? What about your breathing, just take a moment to notice it. Without judgement, just notice. If you feel nothing in your body, that is okay.  Honour and respect whatever comes up as you sit with yourself.
 
Why is it important?
We know from childhood studies that the capacity of key care-givers, particularly the mother to attune to her child is key to their emotional development and to positive learning about themselves.
 
Our first mirror is our mother’s eyes, as stated by Dr Donald Winnicott6. If this, along with that of other care-givers is loving and attuned, we learn that it is safe to be in emotional connection with another, and from that we learn how to be in emotional contact with ourselves.
 
In coaching, counselling and therapy, we want to create a safe space, where the client can feel met, seen and can enter into fully as themselves. While this is difficult for some or many clients due to their trauma experience or neuro-diversity, it is our role to offer them our Presence.
 
Such a space can offer clients the chance to bring themselves into a calm state, from which they can better observe themselves, their behaviour and thinking patterns, do the best thinking they can and connect with their emotional experience. This all supports personal growth and learning.
 
We can only help clients to achieve their intentions if we can open ourselves to their presence, connect with them emotionally/phenomonologically as well as cognitively. That means being able to feel them within us, without merging with them or identifying with them or taking their emotions away with us.
 
To understand being present we need to understand fake presence, absencing and distancing
‘Fake presence’ is when we can appear to be physically present, maybe even our body is relaxed and breathing calm but we are not open to the other, our mind is in charge. Or we may feel numb in our body and emotions, within awareness or not.
 
To the other person, we may look as if we are present and available to them, and part of us might be, but other parts are not, they are closed off from the other- they are avoiding that connection. We distance ourselves, leaving a mask in place but stepping back so that we do not feel the other; clients will of course sense this but may not be able to describe what feels lacking. Absencing ourselves is another term for this withdrawal; it is the opposite of attunement.  We can absent ourselves without using ‘fake presence’, in that situation it is clear, from the quality of our attention and physicality that we are not connected with the other.
 
As children some of us developed the capacity to look as if we were listening and attending in class but weren’t. Obviously, any exam results challenged that, but in the moment we could fake it. Some people have developed that capacity to ‘send out’ a persona who engages with the outer world while the feeling person is kept safely hidden from the other.  You may have experienced this is some clients, that they appear engaged and on board with the coaching but you feel you are not really connecting with them, that there is something missing.
 
The reasons for faking presence and absencing are similar and all are due to the ‘there and then’ of our past experience operating in the ‘here and now’ of the relationship; or when we are very preoccupied with something outside the present encounter.
 
Many of us find it hard to let go of thoughts about the future, possibly the outcomes of coaching and how we will be viewed, and perhaps memories of the past. We may cling on to knowing and certainty, feeling vulnerable without that. Parts within us may be agitated with the coaching encounter or in relation to something outside of it.  Aspects of our psyche may not like the other, or warm to them or feel unsafe with them, and fearing repercussions we fake our Presence or absent ourselves.
 
We may seek a connection to meet our own unmet needs for love or belonging from the past and become entangled.  We may identify with the other believing that this is connecting with them but instead we have let go of our separateness and see us as ‘one’ with the client. From this position we can wrongly believe that we know what the client needs to do or how they should live. This is an entanglement.
 
Sometimes ‘faking presence’ and absencing can be a good protector and we need to honour our capacity to use it, it kept us safe as children and in some relationships since. In coaching it is helpful to know when we are doing that and why, so that we can open up the space within for greater Presence.
 
Faking presence and absencing can be out of our awareness, and usually is until we engage in personal reflection afterwards or as we catch ourselves being out of connection in a session or interaction. Our clients can ‘fake presence’ and absent and distant with us too, and some will be if they don’t feel safe or if they have had poor experiences with trust and intimacy.
 
Not everyone can have an attuned felt experience, those who are neurodiverse and those who carry internalised trauma may find it challenging. As a trauma response, we can close down the connection between body, emotions and mind, and leave only the mind relating. This is a protective mechanism from a time when it was intelligent to do that.
 
Why do we become avoidant or fake it? And what happens when we do?
Faking, avoidance/distancing/absencing and merger are all protective/defensive responses to an intimate emotional contact with another. The roots to this probably lie in childhood and may have been reinforced by certain relationships in adulthood. Trust in the other, feeling safe with the other is very difficult so we use these responses to protect ourselves. When we developed these protectors, they were our childhood heroes, they enabled us to survive relationships that we experienced as unsafe, and for that they need to be honoured and respected.
 
Dissociation is a more extreme form of distancing and is a symptom of being in the ‘freeze and fragment’ phase of a trauma dynamic. Here, the person is out of connection with themselves and with the other person, they have shut down and psychically withdrawn.  It is a coping mechanism within some who are traumatised or under considerable stress, activating earlier trauma.
 
Trying to ‘get rid of’ or engaging with self-criticism about these strategies is unhelpful and makes things worse. We need to engage with them, understand them, appreciate what they are trying to do and reflect on why we needed them.
 
If we meet them in clients, it is important to do the same. Respect that they are there and that, right now, the client doesn’t feel safe enough to be open-minded and open-hearted with us. They feel the need to protect themselves. As long as we can stay present and fully open to the client, they may gradually feel safer. They may not. These survival protective strategies are the ‘there and then’ entering the ‘here and now’; they are from the past and are deeply established habits.
 
If it is relevant to the client’s coaching intentions, we may choose to share our experience with a client whom we experience as distancing, without judgement, and share that we notice it seems difficult for the client to connect with us and wonder about that with them. We may not, it depends how we contract, and work, with clients.
 
How do we stay present when the other is in avoidance/not connecting?
A real challenge is how to stay in Presence when the other isn’t. It is much easier when the other can meet us from that place, but many can’t.  Younger parts of our psyche can be activated through the lack of connection from the other. It may activate earlier childhood experiences and we may switch into protective behaviour. This might involve talking too much, directing the session too much, telling ourselves we are failing as a coach, or just letting the client talk without connection. Our mind gets active and our hearts close up.
 
If you notice this happening, pay attention to your breathing, trying to calm yourself, and bring yourself back to a grounded position; become attuned to yourself. Focus on the client and your felt experience of them, become curious rather than judgemental, become connected rather than distanced, open up to a connection.
 
Never diagnose the other, as that is part of distancing
As with all discussions about relational behaviour it is important to recognise that some behaviour that is associated with a trauma response can alternatively be an element of neurodiversity. It is important that we never label a client as traumatised or make a diagnosis, we are not qualified to do that, and if we do. we are taking up an expert role where ‘knowing’ has become important. We have also turned the client into an object. In Presence, we meet the other as they are.
 
What have you learnt about how to develop your ability to be fully present? How can you tell you are Present?
Some of my reflections are:
I know when I am Present when:

• I am only aware of the client, myself and the space we are in.
• I feel the resonance with the client.
• My responses to the client seem to connect deeply with them.

 
How I have learnt to develop my ability to be fully Present:

• 25 years of practising and I still don’t always manage it.
• Forgiving myself when I haven’t managed it and reflect on what was going on for me.
• Being curious about times I recognise I was faking Presence and absencing, again without judgement of me or the client.
• Practising meditation as a regular commitment.
• Preparing myself for sessions, doing a short meditative exercise or sitting quietly letting go of anything I might be holding from the day so far.
• Maybe doing some free movement, before seeing a client, to free up my body and release energy that might be locked in some parts.
• Practising it in all settings, with friends and people I meet.
• Through supervision and shared reflective enquiry.

 
Summing up.
 I feel I have only scratched the surface. I hope, though, that it might stimulate some reflections and observations which are valuable for you and your clients.
 
 
References
1  Thomas Hubl https://thomashuebl.com/
2  Connie Zweig. ‘The Inner Work of Age’. Park Street Press. 2021
https://conniezweig.com/
3  https://www.stephenporges.com/
4 https://ottoscharmer.com/
5 Roshin Joan Halifax.’Standing at the Edge’. Flatiron Books. 2018
https://www.joanhalifax.org/
6 Dr Donald Winnicott, British Paediatrician and Psychoanalyst 1889 – 1971

I have been thinking a lot about this over the last year, stimulated by a programme I did led by Thomas Hübl1 and the Pocket Project2 on Trauma Informed Leadership and supported by working with other coaches in a small reflective enquiry group. A ‘White Paper’ and blogs by Meus.co.uk3 also fed into my exploration of what ‘trauma informed leadership’ is and what it has to do with coaching. 
 
I thought I would set out what my current understanding is, though it is still emerging as I am still learnibng. I currently see Trauma Informed Leadership, as for all trauma informed work, as having three ‘layers’:

1. Personal trauma: that comes from our own attachment and shock traumatising experiences and that has been passed down from our parents/grandparents (legacy burdens to use the Internal Family Systems4 term)
2. Systems trauma: that which is within the organisational system, from recent or historical events that haven’t been processed (also relates to family and community systems)
3. Collective trauma: that which is held in society attitudes and institutional policies from shared collective trauma such as slavery, colonialism, racism, war, ethnic cleansing, fascism, exclusion of certain groups/disappearing groups.

 
It is a big ask for any of us to hold all this in our conscious awareness and probably unrealistic to expect most leaders to. However, if we scale it down a bit, what it means for leaders is:

• That they pay attention to their own trauma dynamics, using reflective enquiry to explore their responses, behaviour patterns, how they are in different relationships and connect with their felt experience, or with their defensive parts2 . By so doing, to bring into conscious awareness that which is unconscious so that they have different choices open to them. In this way they are not passing on the impact of their trauma to others, they are less triggered by experience and they are able to make leadership interventions from their Healthy Self5 or from their Self or unburdened Parts2.
• From that basis, they can become aware of the symptoms of trauma in the team or organisation they are leading and put in place processes where experience can be safely processed and can take account of the possible impact of organisational changes or system change to minimise retraumatisation. This is where the Meus paper5 is so helpful. 
• They can also be open to the bigger picture and become aware of how policies and wider societal responses show the symptoms of trauma.  Some of these symptoms, as for systems trauma, include collective blindness, denial, victim blaming, transgressions of the rights and boundaries of others, othering/excluding groups, scapegoating particular groups of people or types of people, denying the rights of certain people, absencing ourselves from difficulties, hatred, fragmentation, broken communication, and objectification of others.  The challenge for us all, as we lead our lives, is to become aware of parts of us that carry these behaviours/attitudes as well. Hübl talks of us being born into the soup of collective trauma, and grow up within it, so take it as ‘normal’.

 
Ruppert6 has talked about how we live in a traumatising society and unconsciously continue to contribute to that continuing. Hübl’s book7 also looks at collective trauma and how it can be healed.  On the programme I did with Hübl and others, many of the questions asked were from those in very traumatising situations wanting solutions. Understandably. However, the responses were to look within oneself first, to do our own work of consciousness raising about our burdened Parts and defensive strategies; we have to start there.
 
I have also been on a few programmes with Roshi Joan Halifax8, in one she talked of moral suffering and identified four elements:

• Moral distress: experienced when confronted with a moral dilemma, as so many clinicians and carers were in Covid and still are.
• Moral Injury: pervasive in the military, when morally compromised by doing and seeing terrible things.
• Moral outrage: blaming others for bad things happening, which can lead to good actions but can become self-righteous.
• Moral Apathy: we ensure we do not become touched by the suffering of others or ourselves. We numb ourselves, are in denial, disengaged and absent.

 
I shared these with an NHS group of coaches I was talking with some weeks ago and the concept of moral distress really resonated with them. They were seeing high levels of burnout, anxiety, and distress within staff and finding clients needed a lot more space to download and process emotions. These are symptoms of a traumatised system where the organisational components are resonating badly with the personal systems, causing these symptoms.
 
Trauma informed leadership needs, I think, moral courage. Maybe we all do to live in a way that we are not contributing to the trauma around us. This from the American Association of Colleges of Nursing9:
 
Moral Courage is the ability to stand up for and practice that which one considers ethical, moral behaviour when faced with a dilemma, even if it means going against countervailing pressure to do otherwise. Those with moral courage resolve ‘to do the right thing’ even if it puts them at personal risk of losing employment, isolation from peers and other negative consequences.
 
Contained within this statement is the core of the issue – the risks that can result from standing up against traumatising policies and practices. Like many, I have coached whistle-blowers and heard how their lives and careers have been destroyed by those who didn’t want to hear the truth. Collective denial can be very punitive.
 
A trauma informed leader would listen differently to such a narrative, would be sensitive to the risk that was being taken, enquire into it with a fully open mind willing to have to face difficult and challenging circumstances.
 
What has this to do with coaching? If we are coaching leaders, it can be a field of reference we hold and if our clients wish to become more trauma informed and that is part of the contract then we can work with them to enhance the qualities needed to lead in that way.
We may also need our own moral courage, to speak up to our clients if we experience them talking or acting in ways that deny the trauma in the system or will add to that there. This is where our supervision is always so helpful, to work though in ourselves what is happening for us, and from that position respond in a trauma informed way.
 
While we are working our way through what all this means for us as individuals and coaches we all  need to continue to do our own reflective practice and widen our perspectives about the wider field of trauma.
 
1.https://thomashuebl.com/
2.https://pocketproject.org/
3.https://meus.co.uk/blog/2022/03/08/dealing-with-organisational-trauma
4.Dr Richard Schwartz ‘No Bad Parts’. Sounds True; 2021
5.https://meus.co.uk/public/data/chalk/file/e/8/Meus%20Whitepaper%20-%20Organisational%20Trauma.pdf
6.Franz Ruppert.  ‘Who am I in a traumatised and traumatising society’. Green Balloon Books;2018
7.Thomas Hübl. ‘Healing Collective Trauma’. Sounds True; 2020
8.https://www.joanhalifax.org/
9.https://www.aacnnursing.org/5b-tool-kit/themes/moral-courage

It’s encouraging to see more people talking about trauma informed coaching and developing certificated programmes. For a long time we seemed to be the only ones talking about it. I have developed my thinking about it over the last 4 years, informed by the many coaches I have talked with, listened to and been questioned by.
 
Here is my short version of where my thinking is at the moment.

• Since developmental (attachment/emotional/relational) trauma is so prevalent we all need to understand how trauma dynamics operate so we can develop as individuals, and as coaches and be more helpful to all our clients.
• Similarly shock trauma, for example rape, life changing accidents/incidents, racial attack, being a refugee,is also more widespread than many may like to think.
• Some coaches choose to work with individuals for whom their trauma is part of the work, for example working with addictions or those who have experienced domestic and/or sexual abuse or narcissistic/coercive injury. Those who work in these fields will need extra education and training in the specifics of such experience and what is required for trauma healing.

 
Being trauma informed covers this widening range of practice, as we can decide on basis of our interest and training where we want to place ourselves. We need to understand the lasting impact of developmental and shock trauma so that we can better be with and support our clients, including exploring whether working with a therapist may be helpful. The key factor for safe practice is that the depth of our understanding and extent of our skills has to match the needs of our clients. Where it doesn’t, we have the conversation with clients about what the best way forward for them might be.
 
What are essential components of trauma informed coaching? I offer my thoughts as a stimulus for you to develop your own list or to add to mine.
 
The maxim within coaching that ‘clients are resourceful’ holds no matter how traumatised they may present; our focus should stay with that so that we are not caught up in a deficit way of thinking and only focusing only on a trauma identity. We can help clients access and trust their healthy resources, bring unconscious patterns, or habits, of thinking and responding into conscious awareness where different choices can be explored. We can also offer clients tools to help their understanding and self-reflection.  We can witness clients’ stories of pain and distress. If working more specifically with trauma, and are trained to do so, we can facilitate small steps in trauma integration. Trauma is the result of relationships and can only be healed in relationship, and we can offer a relationship within which clients can do their best reflection and gain self-awareness, they can ‘meet themselves’ in our presence if the conditions and contract allow.
 
We all need to be experts in creating and holding a safe space for clients; we need to understand why safety is so important and develop a sensitivity to when a client (or we) do not feel safe.  We can do this by working on our capacity to be present, grounded, self-regulated and resourced (by that I mean not tired or stressed out, and having access to good friends, supervision and colleagues to hold us in our work). We need to understand how safety is created and broken.
 
We need to honour and work towards integration of our own trauma, with the help of an appropriate practitioner. This is essential in helping us become experts in creating a safe space as we are better able to manage our self-regulation, recognise when we are triggered by something and get the help we need to process that. To become more self-aware of our own patterns and habits, we need to develop compassionate inquiry; if we aren’t able to explore our responses to clients with compassion we will not step out of the old patterns. Trauma informed coaching is as much about the coach as it is the client, for me, even more so.
 
None of us are diagnosticians and shouldn’t get seduced into thinking we are.  We may form hypotheses, but we need to hold them lightly. Human experience is so varied we can’t make assumptions about how an experience in the past or present will affect an individual.
 
We need a range of ways to facilitate the client’s self-regulation, supporting clients who are agitated, this includes breathing exercises, grounding exercise, mindfulness practice. Understand the concept and practice of co-regulation.  If you are working in a more specialist way, you will need some additional interventions to support clients who are agitated and who find self-regulation difficult.
 
As with all coaching, the agenda is the client’s. We have no permission to push them into places of enquiry they don’t wish to enter. Respecting their autonomy and right to set the boundaries they need to set is essential. Trauma creates a range of defensive behaviour and thoughts that often appear to an outsider to be self-damaging, but we can only let go of such patterns if we feel safe in our environment and have access to our healthy resources that can choose change.  Clients can only go as far as they can go in the present moment. Our role is to respect that and encourage clients, if appropriate, to respect that in themselves too. We all need to treat our defences with respect and gratitude, as Richard Swartz says, ‘all parts are welcome’.
 
If we are saying to clients we work in a trauma informed way, we need to be able to describe what that means in practice and have that conversation as part of the contracting. We can always recontract but making a shift in coaching approach during a session can be unsettling to clients.
 
I talked at the beginning about respecting the boundaries of your competence where trauma and emotional distress is concerned. Crossing them often disrupts the safety experience of client.  When in doubt talk to a supervisor. Develop skillful and compassionate ways to talk about what you are able to work on with a client and what you aren’t without giving the impression you are abandoning the client or scared of what they bring. It is a gentle dialogue to help the client think through what is best for them.
 
Lastly but importantly, we all need good supervision to deepen our practice and offer the best to our clients.
 
Let me know what you think, what I have left out and you think should be in; also where you disagree with me.
 
Julia Vaughan Smith
August 2022
APECS Accredited Master Executive Coach and Coach Supervisor
M.A. Integrative and Humanistic Psychotherapy

Photo by Steve Johnson

Abuse, neglect, alcoholism – they’re all here. I took the questionnaire myself and my score was zero. This was not a surprise. I had loving parents who stayed together, I was an encouraged and cherished only child. I passed smoothly through the post WW2 education system, all of it free.  Yet I have only recently understood that trauma has touched me too. My parents’ lives had been blighted by war, poverty, unemployment – and in my father’s case by a very unhappy relationship with his mother. Our small house was overcrowded and my parents had no privacy. This was because my mother’s father came to live with us and soon there was also the orphaned son of a close friend.

Anger could not be expressed but it simmered away not far beneath the surface, enough to be perceptible and alarming to a child.

Anxiety about security as it manifested through lack of money and questionable health was ever present and there is no way it could have bypassed me. After my father died I discovered a journal for the winter of 1947 when he wrote, ‘We don’t have enough food. Mary and I are holding back to make sure the children are not going hungry’. My role was to achieve through education what had been denied to my parents, something that they took for granted as desirable. I undoubtedly came to believe that love depended on academic achievement. I never remember being hugged or kissed and for certain I would have been left to bawl in my pram when unhappy or upset, as that was the dominant theory of childrearing at the time.

These are extremely minor problems compared with having parents who abused, beat and neglected you, died, left – or who had chronic problems with depression, alcohol and drugs.

Yet, as Gabor Maté, and other writers and thinkers such as Bessel van der Kolk, explain, the body remembers even when we don’t. Our neuro-physiology keeps the score. In my own case I have learnt that I must manage that drive to over-achievement. When I don’t, stress will trigger migraines, or more recently mysterious eruptions of hives and eczema.

We need to beware as coaches of thinking that we are trauma-free, a wonderfully fortunate group of ‘Us’ who can gaze at ‘Them’, a traumatized population, with pity and wonder. Thank goodness that didn’t happen to us!  But the chances are that something like it did happen to us, even if only glancingly. Maybe there are some wonderfully lucky people who have entirely escaped, but somehow I doubt it.

As ever in coaching we start with ourselves. How far would our early experience be defining our own hot buttons? What form do these take? How might this have contributed to developing our own Survival Self? This is all part of why when coaching works it is because we are being a coach, the authentic person, not doing coaching.
​
Photo: Gabor Gastonyi, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

One of the resources within the mature integrated healthy self is the capacity to face the truth and take responsibility for ourselves and our behaviour. That is, not to look to others to take responsibility for us, or to deny the truth so we don’t take responsibility for our actions. Another capacity is to not take responsibility, or blame ourselves, for things we are not responsible for.

The Drama Triangle, developed by Professor Stephen Karpman in 1968, illustrates the interpersonal dynamics that can arise between two people. It has given so many people such a lot of insight over the years. I think I have taught it to all development groups I have been working with.

In trauma terms, all the adult roles here, that is victim, perpetrator and rescuer, are survival defences.  The victim is in survival victim-attitude.  This is not the same as the feelings of intense vulnerability, fear and rage from being perpetrated on which may be triggered by events in the here and now.  We can acknowledge we are a victim of persecution, which is facing the truth, but not identify with victim-hood which is a survival defence against that knowledge. For example, if we slump our body, saying it is all useless or we are useless, or when we tell ourselves we are stuck, we give away our power and autonomy.  In some ways this is to identify with the perpetrator who also took away our power and autonomy.

In Joan Halifax’s Standing at the Edge, she offers the idea of responsibility associated with these drama triangle rotes. She states:

• The victim (as in victim-attitude) takes no responsibility for their own power, but instead tries to get a rescuer to save them. However, they then reject all help.
• The rescuer takes responsibility, not for themselves, but for the identified victim. In so doing, the rescuer projects victim-hood onto the other person, and assumes they don’t have the resources to save themselves.
• The persecutor refuses to take responsibility for their actions, denying their contribution to suffering of others. They believe they are not to blame and may see themselves as the victim. They will seek out, and find, others to reinforce their blamelessness and continue to blame the actual victim.
• When either the victim-attitude or the rescuer flips to perpetrator, the other person becomes an actual victim of that persecution. The ‘game’ has been won, to the harm of the other.

I am currently writing about daughters, mothers and emotional trauma. The drama triangle is often a big feature of relationships held together by trauma. Daughters become ‘compulsive rescuers’; mothers are seen as ‘persecutors’ daughters feel they must appease or feel helpless to move away from; mothers can be in victim-attitude not taking responsibility for their life decisions; daughters may also become persecutors from their repressed hatred and rage.

Halifax offers guidance to which I have added about stepping out of the drama triangle dynamic, and returning to resourcing and connecting with the Healthy Self:

• Stay grounded, become aware of what triggers us. Breathe, connect with the body.
• Don’t take things personally. We give meaning to what people say and do, which may not be the meaning for them at all. We can decide how we want to take the communication.
• Don’t make assumptions. When in doubt ask questions for exploration.
• Maintain good boundaries, for example, don’t say yes when you mean no to taking on a task; don’t over-identify with someone else and become psychologically merged with them; don’t become a people pleaser so losing your own integrity
• Make and keep clear agreements; renegotiate them if necessary.
• Keep things in perspective. Beware of our own capacity for creating drama and escalating things in our mind, instead of taking action.

The message for me as an adult is to take responsibility for my part in any difficulty. I can ask myself the question ‘in what way am I part of this?’.  This is a useful for any event, whether an interpersonal one or not. It is also important when considering racism, misogyny, climate change and other systemic or societal themes.  We can become a bystander or take up a victim-attitude towards it, thinking there is nothing we can do. It is essential we reflect on this from our healthy self, or there will be self-blame, self-recrimination, denial or illusion. Our contribution might not have been perpetration, it might have been a numbness, apathy, avoidance. blindness or normalisation. Otto Scharmer  (https://www.ottoscharmer.com/) talks of three types of blind spots. Those I don’t see, what I see but can’t feel or connect with, what I see, sense or feel but can’t be bothered to act on.

For example, I noted for myself this week something about my engagement with the sexual violence perpetrated on women. I see myself as a feminist and someone aware of all the issues. As part of that sense of ‘being involved’ I completed an online questionnaire Dr Jessica Taylor (@DrJessTaylor and author of ‘Why Women are Blamed for Everything’) was doing on this topic.  I ended up shocked at the possibilities she suggested where sexual violence could be involved. I came face to face with my ignorance of the prevalence and realised I wasn’t really engaged. I just thought I was which isn’t the same at all. I completed it, thinking how fortunate I was to have been so untouched by such experience. Within a minute however, I realised that I had failed to acknowledge many of my experiences of  sexual harassment, and that I had metaphorically ‘waved them away’.  My question ‘in what way am I part of this’ was answered by my raising my awareness about my three levels of blindness.

Photo by ryota nagasaka on Unsplash

​AUTHOR: JULIA VAUGHAN SMITH

The reality for many is that they are facing a lot of pressure from outside, reduced staffing levels and enhanced demands on their time and skills. Alongside this home life may also have many more pressures and stressors. At the same time, the ways we have used to relax and unwind, have fun, connect with others, are diminished in frequency or are just not available.  There is no space for reflection.

As the pandemic and changing restrictions continue, these factors are having an unhealthy impact on emotional regulation for many.  Coaches may not have had clients before in the same levels of emotional dysregulation as they are meeting in this phase of the pandemic.  A new skill set is needed to be able to respond usefully to the presentation of these symptoms by clients.

The first step is to have breathing and other techniques that support emotional regulation and a move towards calmness, that you can offer to clients. None of us can think clearly when we are in high levels of stress, agitation and/or anxiety; so deeper enquiry or analysis or thinking through actions that might be beneficial will not work until there is a greater calmness in the client’s system (and of course in ours).

There are some great resources out there to support us. For example, I attended an excellent webinar by Dr Karen Triesman MBE a few months ago; it was a great reminder of ways in which we can support clients in this way. Her website generously offers a range of techniques and resources www.safehandsthinkingminds.co.uk . She works mainly with children and young people however,  I recommend you look at the breathing and calming exercises she gives and how you might use or adapt them to your coaching.  Be on the look-out for other useful exercises you might want to use.

We first learn how to regulate our emotional responses and stress responses in childhood from those who are caring for us.  They offer infants a sense of calm and reassurance in their faces, voice and touch. As infants we mirror them and our systems will calm down.  Where this doesn’t happen, we are vulnerable to losing control of our emotions, and becoming hyper-agitated, as older children and adults.

It is well known that people co-regulate; that is, when two or more people are together, they pick up the subtle signs of breathing and levels of calm or agitation, and mirror each other. In groups where there is a lot of agitation, people can reinforce that in each other. When one person is calm that can help the other person come closer to calm within themselves. if we can meet our clients in a state of calmness we are offering a mirroring experience for our clients. We can offer a breathing space for them, a chance to connect with themselves. If we are agitated ourselves that is not helping.

Once there is greater self-regulation, deeper breathing, a sense of groundedness and more calmness,  if the clients wish, we can then invite them to explore more what they might be able to  bring into their lives or change for themselves – however small that might be – that would enable them stay calmer more of the time.  This may require some habit changes and activities that they could bring into their lives to maintain greater calmness. Remember the importance of laughter too, are clients getting enough opportunities to have a good laugh? A good walk in nature? Attending to self-care? Celebrating small things?

Once emotional regulation is established, clients may want to consider what survival defences from developmental trauma maybe contributary factors, for example, a drive for perfectionism, or duty, rescuing others, or feeling their needs don’t matter. They might recognise they are caught in entanglements or are on a pathway to burnout (see blog November 2020).  The focus here is ‘what may be possible regarding changing their patterns of responding to the situation?’

We can also support clients think through how they may want to change the external circumstances. It might be that moving or leaving jobs feels difficult, but that can be explored as can other factors that may be possible in terms of changing the external conditions. Some employers may be demanding more than can be physically and emotionally given, and clients may face tough decisions.   Some clients may feel they are not giving enough, so blame themselves, rather than the employer; this may have a connection with their early history.  We can challenge that self-blame, if appropriate.

If clients are so deeply affected, and beyond being helped by our coaching, they may need therapeutic or medical intervention to help reduce their anxiety.  They may also need to take time off on sick leave. We can support them thinking how to take these actions.  Continuing without release is physically and emotionally damaging to them.

AUTHOR: JULIA VAUGHAN SMITH

The Healthy Self is a dynamic entity, holding the capacity for self-regulation, autonomy, and our connection with ourselves.  Its resources can be expanded through therapeutically facilitated integration of the cut-off trauma parts, and the consequent reduction of the survival self.
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However, throughout life we need to train ourselves to use the Healthy Self well, and to add to the resources it carries. This might involve abdominal breathing exercises, meditation, being out in nature, listening to music, having enough time to ‘be’ with ourselves and enjoy what that brings.  This is about how we structure time and activity.

The Healthy Self is about the present; the trauma parts are about the past, and the survival self is facing both the past and the future but isn’t in the present moment.
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Thoughts about how to develop healthy resources were stimulated by two events I participated in during August. One was a 5-day online retreat, the other was a one-day conference on ‘Facing Mortal Threat’.  I recognise that we all take something different from the same event, but the things I took away included:
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We also need the capacity to act, it isn’t just about calming our system. But it is acting from the Healthy Self. On the ‘facing mortal threat’ conference, and one of the speakers used a term I hadn’t heard before, ‘toxic feminine’, which as a feminist I took exception to. I think he was referring to a potential danger in only focusing on calming (which I assume he was associating with the feminine) when we also need to act to use our autonomous agency. This might be in relation to our life or in relation to what is happening in our society.  I took this on as an important resource within the Healthy Self.

Slowing down so the Healthy Self can breathe
The acceleration of life was also discussed; everything is speeding up. I think we need to slow things down for the Healthy Self to breathe. Not into a sort of slumber, but to step out of the acceleration that is all around us and into which we are drawn.  Covid-19 preventative measures have enabled this for some. Society is full of survival strategies to keep at bay the trauma feelings also present within us all.

Survival Thinking Patterns
During the retreat I also noticed how my thinking patterns were survival strategies. The planner, administrator, imaginator, and story teller were all busy when I was trying to sit and ‘be’. These thinking functions all have their value, but often they are about trying to control the future or reassure myself about the past; they are not about the now. And of course, part of my career was built on these thinking functions, leading large international projects or consultancy assignments.  It is not that in themselves they are survival strategies, it is the use they get put to.  They can crowd out the Healthy Self, shout it down almost. To develop my connection with my Healthy Self, enabling these to rest would be valuable.
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I encourage us all to explore whatever ‘virtues’ are relevant to us or whatever resourcing and deepening our Healthy Self fits best for us.  What you decide on will be different from my selections.  I think this helps us in our coaching, and whatever professional practice we are in.  It helps diminish the extent and potential damage of our survival strategies.

Julia Vaughan Smith

Racial perpetration leaves the same trauma response as other forms of trauma and is as easily triggered, especially as there is racism embedded in our societies. I am noticing many more people are talking about racial trauma, and that it is coming into a wider collective awareness outside those communities for whom it is a common experience.  Deliberate exclusion of any ‘group’ is perpetration and can feel life threatening especially for a child who may be bewildered about what is happening. TV images of perpetration and exclusion reinforce these personal experiences. Those affected have of course known and lived this.  It’s the rest of us who may not have looked closely enough or listened well enough.

It reminds me a bit of when sexual abuse of children first came into the collective consciousness as being damaging; the children affected had always known and suffered the damage of course but this wasn’t recognised. Those understanding the impact for the first time were shocked and perhaps felt guilty for going along with the societal blindness.  Sexual abuse sufferers were also afraid to speak out because of this denial held in society and its institutions, so they remained silent.  The same can be true for those affected by racial perpetration, they have kept silent in wider forums; how could they trust how it would be received?

The difference between sexual abuse and racial abuse is that with the former, while listening to personal stories I could often differentiate myself from the perpetrator, who was often male. We should remember though, that mothers and other women do sexually abuse children. With racial abuse, listening to the suffering in those that carry that trauma,  I am more like the perpetrators, being a white woman, and indeed carry a societally complicit responsibility regarding the perpetration.

As coaches we need to be able to hear clearly what is being said to us. We need to be able to make it a safe environment and to be open to all that may need to be shared by the client. This requires us to be aware of our own blindness, denial or discomfort and not to project them onto the client, whatever biography they share..
Thomas Huebl (https://thomashuebl.com) talks of three levels of trauma:
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• Our personal experience, early life, dysfunctional attachment, adverse childhood conditions, racial abuse
• That which is passed on from our ancestors; that is, transgenerational
• Collective or systemic trauma, that which is held in society as a result of perpetration on others for example, through war, genocide, slavery, and colonialism.

The recognition of transgenerational trauma means that we understand that ‘it didn’t start with us’ other than in very exceptional circumstances. Our grandparents’ trauma, and external conditions, affected how they parented our parents, and they in turn carried their trauma in their parenting of us. This trauma will have resulted from the wide range of possible causal factors, including, racial abuse.  These causal factors include how our parents, or those parenting us, relate to us, from conception onwards, within the external conditions they are experiencing. The child might take in aspects of hypervigilance and survival responses they experience in their parents.

There is some emerging epigenetic evidence in mice about how the DNA is changed by the trauma response in one generation.  If the trauma response is somehow encoded into the DNA, as is being suggested but as yet unproven, then we inherit that.  The genetic coding sets up a sensitivity to environmental conditions. If the conditions we experience replicate that, the trauma response will activate. The implication is that some have already been ‘primed’ to be sensitised to their environment.  This is still ours to do the work on, to understand our trauma response and that while it is linked directly to our own experience, it is also linked to one or both of our parents.

Collective Trauma is a relatively recent concept. We live in a traumatising and traumatised society.  That is, that society holds the perpetrations, the fragmentation of trauma, and the survival defences against the trauma parts embedded within societal ‘norms’ and institutions. We take these in as part of our societal conditioning and exposure. We are all affected by these dynamics. Racism including anti-semitism is part of this collective trauma and affects all of us in different ways, depending on which race we are; for example,  do we know these perpetrations directly or are we carrying denial, illusion and avoidance, or are we numb or frozen to it as part of our traumatised response?  How are our institutions complicit in this collective traumatisation? How are we?
Those who perpetrate on others also stimulate the trauma response within themselves. They too become more split, cut off, frozen, numb and utilise a range of survival strategies, the strongest of which are denial and justification, together with the perpetrator:victim dynamics. These are held in society structures and attitudes. There was a personal account on Twitter yesterday, by a barrister, who was repeatedly challenged by the court officials as she made her way to the court room she was to be in. She was talked to as if she was the defendant, the cleaner, and a relative of a defendant but all seemed to be blind to the fact she was a barrister because of her skin colour. This I am sure, is repeated in all kinds of settings, every day.

The thinking is that doing our own work is an essential part of contributing to the healing of collective trauma. This means owning our own perpetration on others, taking responsibility for our part in the continuing collective trauma, or trauma within individuals.  We are then more open to the reality of the world and the shared/unshared experience.  A good reflective question to ask ourselves is “in what ways am I part of this?” in relation to specific events.  We need to sit with the question and allow things to emerge, and meet them without self-attack, but to face up to our truth.

Perhaps the best way to deal with all this is as a person, not just as a coach. To be a more effective coach we need to invest in our own inner development, alongside any other education and training. If we do our own work we are more aware of our contribution to the continuation to collective or systemic trauma.
As coaches, we can be aware of this whole field of racial trauma in our work and continue to expand our awareness, through our education, reading and listening.  We need to be mindful of parts of us that are numb or frozen to particular issues, or are in denial or become dissociated should an issue arise.

Jules Vaughan Smith

The more I talk about trauma and coaching, and come across the myths or misunderstandings about it, the more I feel it is important to be clear about what trauma informed coaching is.
Trauma-informed coaching happens when the coach understands what trauma is, how it presents in the coaching room and how to respond. All this, within established coaching boundaries and contracts.
Trauma-informed coaching isn’t:

• Practising as a faux-therapist or entering the therapy domain
• Working with clients who would be better helped by a therapist
• Working only with those with visible signs of trauma, such as post-traumatic stress or addictions.

Why is it important? Because it enhances the impact of coaching and is a key component of CPD for experienced coaches.

Why does it do that? Trauma is widespread within the population and most of our clients will be traumatised to a greater or lesser extent. For some, it will not be affecting their life adversely at the time of coaching, for others it will be getting in the way of them making the changes they wish to bring about within their personal and career development. Most of us coaches will also be carrying trauma, for some of us that will seriously affect the impact of our coaching, for others it will affect the efficacy of our coaching with some clients, some of the time.

Trauma-informed coaches have a working understanding of trauma, not as deep as a therapist needs, but enough to define and describe what it is. They also understand the situations which produce the lasting neuro-physiological trauma response, from conception onwards. They are not limited by the 5 myths of trauma (see previous blog).

From this platform of awareness, they understand the need for safety, provided by clear contracting, the maintenance of boundaries and confidentiality. Clients need to feel safe to be able to explore their survival behaviours and personalities. Not all coaching settings allow this, and trauma-informed coaches will be sensitive to the context.

Such coaches will be able to listen out for the signs and symptoms that may be part of an internal trauma system, both in the client and in themselves.  They have creative approaches for accessing autobiographical information without any aim to be diagnosticians.  They are skilled at inviting the client to explore possible links between the ‘there and then’ and the ‘here and now’, and to reflect on what action in the present is healthy for their wellbeing. They also feel confident about when and how to raise the issue of trauma, and how it might be presenting in the client, while staying firmly in the coaching relationship and approach.

At times, traumatised clients may present in ways that cause coaches concern, for example with mental ill health or suicidal thoughts.  Trauma-informed coaches recognise they have a duty of care and take appropriate action, discussing that with their supervisor.

Coaches working in this way are very clear about the boundaries between therapy and coaching when in the presence of coaching. They are confident and experienced coaches who avoid getting drawn into areas that are not appropriate for coaching and they know what action to take.

Finally, trauma-informed coaches are self-reflective, recognising how their own trauma dynamics, from the ‘there and then’ come into play with some clients in the ‘here and now. They do their own therapeutic work if needed.

Most of the workshops that focus on trauma are run for therapists. If you are interested in finding out more about how to become trauma-informed, the feedback we have been given is that my book and our Masterclasses are good places to start. The book has an extensive bibliography, so you can build up your reading from there. We recommend working with a supervisor who is trauma-informed and interested in supporting you explore this area of your practice. Alternatively, find or create a small peer supervision group that want to come together and reflect on their practice using the trauma framework and ideas in the book. From that basis, you may find workshops aimed at therapists that will add to your understanding and from which you can adapt the ideas to a coaching framework. A small peer group can help this adaption too.

You can also experience the therapeutic application of the theory we cover by participating in a group event run by experienced practitioners (we can give you recommendations).  You can be part of these groups without disclosing much about yourself and without doing your own work but participating in the work of others. This helps bring the theory alive in terms of how the dynamics operate at a deeply unconscious level.

This is what some people have said about learning more about trauma-informed practice:
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“ It is a must for anyone wanting to take their coaching to another level”.
“ It has transformed my practice”.
“ Necessary for anyone who is serious about coaching”.
“The elephant in the room is so often the underlying trauma, which is causing the client’s stuckness”.
“This is the best CPD investment I have made for a long time”.
“It is rare to find something that so powerfully shifts one’s perspective on clients”.
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This paper explores the territory where notions of soul and spirituality meet theories of psychological trauma.

While neuroscience and neuropsychology can tell us some things about the effects of traumatising relationships on the brain, there is much more to be said. I will argue that we are only able to render traumatic experience meaningful through metaphor, imagery and bodily experience. I draw on McGilchrist as well as Hillman’s proposition that ” The Soul is less an object of knowledge but a way of knowing”. I consider, how does relational trauma break the soul? I will argue that a traumatised soul renders us to be lost wanderers in life. Amongst other things, I will look at how these questions play out in the multigenerational transmission of trauma. I will also make reference to the value of the constellations approach in accessing pre-verbal and bodily held memory, and to the healing integration process.
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