Three months after her second live coaching session with Sharon Pearson for #Perspectives podcast ‘Mother Load Part II’—and six months after her first session—Sydney corporate recruiter and life coach Sasha Dumaresq returns for a third session and follow-up episode. Rather than exploring strategies and frameworks around parenting, Sharon calls this third ‘Mother Load’ a “deep dive into the beingness of our humanity.” As Sharon says, the first two sessions were quite detailed around external things “whereas this one really went to what I believe is the heart of coaching, which is the inner journey where we coach to self. If you are a coach, you will see a lot of reframes in this coaching session … but what I think the heart of this session is really about that lit me up was what Sasha claimed back for herself or what was the gift that she was waiting to give herself.” CONNECT WITH SHARON Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SharonPearsonFanPage/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sharon.pearson.official/ Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sharonpearsontcicoach/ Website: https://www.sharonpearson.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/Sharon_Pearson_ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7zP_SmBHzsZG8lmInQBgHQ Resources: - Order Ultimate You Book: https://tci.rocks/order-ultimate-you · Upcoming Events at The Coaching Institute - www.thecoachinginstitute.com.au/trainings · Phone The Coaching Institute - 1800 094 927 · Feedback/Reviews/Suggest a topics be discussed - perspectives@sharonpearson.com Follow The Coaching Institute: Website: https://www.thecoachinginstitute.com.au/ Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/BecomeALifeCoach Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-coaching-institute/ Institute :https://www.instagram.com/thecoachinginstitute/
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—Sharon introduces Mother Load Part III and tells coaches, “When we're in the coaching session as coaches, the key is knowing how to be fully present beyond any judgment for the client. And I hope you see that in this coaching session, just giving so generously of your presence to them so they can fill the space with their truth.” Calls Sasha “so easy to coach because she literally claimed the truth in just seconds. It was beautiful to be a part of. And so I think you'll get a lot of joy out of this.” Says it’s for anybody “who would get value out of knowing how to reclaim humanity and stepping into being all of who we are as a human being.”
—What Sasha is “loving” about the sessions is how Sharon comes in “from a completely different angle” which has been the biggest shift. Wants to go a bit deeper and recover deletions, distortions and generalisations (DDGs) because she has been looking back at her daughter’s early childhood and the memories are “tarnished with me just being a terrible parent.” Has asked friends and family for evidence of how she was and keeps coming back to “I was a shouty mom. I was, you know, I didn't nurture her enough. And all of these self judgements are still coming in.”
—Sasha can now look at her daughter “without the constant lens of guilt. I'm able to look at this as her. This is her journey and she's not broken where I felt I’d broken her. And so that recovery of her has been wonderful from these sessions.” Is giving her more time and space to not be under pressure to make decisions: “I'm a lot more aware of how much she needs closeness with me.” They have both started singing lessons so now have an aligned interest.
—Daughter is more in flow when she’s creative and anxieties come up at night. “Trying to get her into bed at a reasonable hour is a challenge every single night. She hasn't figured out how to turn off.”
—Sharon reframes Sasha’s term of “maths deficit” to “maths sucks” and says the nine year old girl has “a great strength in knowing her strengths. I don't see it as deficit … I'm not a clinician. I do know what to do around reframing how we feel perceive and think about what others consider a problem.”
14.12: THE 10 PER CENT FACTOR
—Asked where she’d like to be at the end of the session, Sasha says “if we go down the DDGs, it would be that I can look back and experience her childhood in reality, rather than in the frame of I'm a terrible [mother.]
—Sharon says “there's some pretty good research showing just recently that your parenting amounts to maybe around 10 per cent of your daughter. There is no research supporting what you’ve been telling yourself.”
—Sasha had been thinking it was 100 per cent: “Wow. That’s a relief. So what's the other 90? Cause it's the nature nurture discussion. So it's more nature. Well, what have I been so worried about then? Seriously, 10 per cent. Oh my goodness.”
—Sharon says it’s genetics: “Your daughter was going to be who she is and she's going to be different to your other children and nothing you will do say or worry about will change that.”
—Sharon: “See to me the way you've been thinking about it, you just love her so much. You love your children so much. You want the best for them. You want to be your best for them. I only hear love in what you've been telling yourself. I hear love and compassion and care. That's how I'd be framing what you've said to yourself over these years.”
—Sasha says that is “so true” … “possibly I'm overcompensating for my own childhood, um, which wouldn't be wildly inaccurate.”
—Sharon: “Look how beautifully you approach it, the care you bring. I don't know that there's more that could be asked of you in this. I don't know if there's anything more beautiful about parenting than what you're demonstrating. Genetically we are going to be who we're going to be. What a gift. It's mind blowing. It's freeing.”
—Sasha says if 90 per cent of her girl is her, “my job in this is to purely and simply support her to be her. Well, if I known this nine and a half years ago, would have made my job a lot easier.”
—Sharon says the 10 per cent research should be at the top of the list if everybody had a parenting cheat sheet: So my view, and there's some research to support this is teach your kids, compassion, passion, openness, and warmth. And you’re good to go. Says Sasha is giving her daughter a role model: “Your kid’s going through some stuff she was going to go through. She'll come through it with compassion, passion, warmth, openness, and love. This is her experience. You can role model how to navigate the experience and how to be when she comes through it, but she's going to have it.”
—Sasha: “What a simplified purpose that I have is just to model those things and to allow her to have those things and to teach her how to do those things.”
23.92 THE COMPASSION QUESTION
—Asked by Sharon if she could demonstrate more compassion for herself, Sasha says she is “learning that in parenting. I think I've got fairly well licked elsewhere” and talks about her other two daughters.
—Sharon: “You don’t need compassion when they're going goings easy, darling. No, I'm calling you out. You feeling compassionate towards yourself about how you parent the kids that are easy to parent big whoop.”
—Both talk compassion and Sharon invites Sasha to read Neale Walsch’s The Little Soul Story with her daughter. Sharon: “Compassion is the antidote to fear. Compassion is the antidote to the guilt. So literally this is designed for you to learn compassion. Raising kids that are easy to raise is not you learning compassion. It's only when we're tested around the attribute that we get to know how to access the attributes. So there's a huge gift in that.”
—Before coaching Sasha used to wonder why she wasn’t more compassionate: “I've recognized that it's because I didn't have compassion for myself.”
—Sharon: “Just create a scenario where your daughter's doing her and go to that and realize the service you do to her when you go to compassion, doesn’t even have to be an expressed compassion. It can just be. Holy F in your head, I am being tested to the max right now. This would be that time that I said, I need to feel compassion for me and just go to that space cognitively until you feel it.”
—Sasha: “I'm drawing a blank slightly on that. When she's doing her in a way in which I'm finding it challenging, I have the internal dialogue of, Oh my God, we're here again.’ She feels frustrated and impatient: “Why is this every night? Why doesn't she realize that the more that she asks of me and the more that she pushes the more impatient I become?’ That is kind of the judgment that comes. And I've said that to her.” She feels dread: “There's a rejection of her neediness as well. I find that I've given as much as I can give … but she doesn't know when enough is enough. And I think that's what I'd love for her to learn. So when all of that's going on, um, to go back to what you were saying, I then have compassion for myself for the feelings that I've had around the situation. Yeah. Okay. Got it. Yeah. Perfect. Okay.”
—Sharon says Sasha is “doing so much to be a great mum” and
“then she's still not blah. And kids, you know, if they're going to have us learn anything, they're going to have us learn I've got to be patient with myself a little and be patient with you. So just feeling all that is normal and to not allow or yourself to feel that or deny that is to deny you. And that can't be compassion.”
—Sharon says Sasha is “rejecting” herself quite early in the process and Sasha agrees there’s “definitely” an element of ‘what else do I need to do here?’
—Sharon says at that moment Sasha needs to feel compassion for herself: “I feel like crying. I feel like yelling. I feel like drinking. I feel like yelling and blaming my husband. I feel like doing a whole bunch of things that aren't that functional. Me tapping into all of me right now seems fricking impossible. That's it, that's when compassion's needed … because it's the only thing that will guide you.”
—They discuss humanity and that “we are love.” Sharon asks where Sasha’s humanity is for herself.
—Sasha: “Great question. You’ve nailed it in the sense that I'm trying so hard that because I'm not seeing the direct result. I then go, ‘Oh well that means that I'm not doing it right, because I'm not getting the right result’, which is a rejection of my humanity, because I'm never going to be able to control all of that. And I'm never going to be able to have all the answers to her or to me. And I think that's what I've been chasing is if I just find out that next thing, maybe that yes, it will make everything fine and dandy.”
35.65: THE PATTERN PLAYING OUT
—Sharon notes a lot of people think if they fix one thing (lose a kilo, have another $1000 in the bank) all will be fixed but the solution is compassion.
—Sasha agrees she’s trying to find the magic bullet “and I don't believe in the magic bullet” and there’s no compassion in the scenario for anyone.
—Sharon: “I guess the invitation is the inside job, rather than looking like you're doing everything on the outside. I don't think there's anything left on the outside that you can attempt.”
—Sasha: “The irony of this conversation is mind blowing because I happily explain this to my clients and happily guide them into the internal journey. And, you know, I guess, I guess that's lovely evidence that I'm not perfect. It's actually excellent.”
—Sharon “loves” that Sasha just saw herself with humanity: “And if we bring it back to your daughter and you wanting to be there for her and help her navigate this, if you can demonstrate passion and compassion and warmth and openness and love. And all of those states or traits are only required when they're being tested, but you can go to them.”
—Sasha says her “warmth and compassion” take a dive when things aren’t great. Says the 10 per cent revelation has helped her clarify that “in some ways that I'm only 10 per cent” of who she is becoming. of her overall early childhood experience. Talks her DDGs again, in the late evening or early morning hours: “I feel like it's almost that last piece of beating upedness that I I've tended to enjoy doing for some bizarre reason. I'd like to look back on that time in a more positive way.”
—Sharon: “For what purpose?”
—Sasha: “Reality. I’d like to recognize where I was and recognize that I was doing the best.”
42.86 “I’M GOING TO PUSH YOU A LITTLE BIT”
—Sharon: “I’m wondering if we can bring the same compassion frame to this. I sense I'm hearing you on something else?”
—Sasha needs to sit on it a minute as something comes up. “Right. I'm trying to fix that so that it doesn't have to be there anymore, so that it's cleared. So it's done. Where I'm not taking that compassion is it's linked to, I've broken her. It's that I have compassion for my experience, but not necessarily for my actions, I guess, or my lack of actions.”
—Sharon: “Not your actions, it’s the fear that the actions have caused harm. No matter how much you try to not on you. Now, I'm going to push you a little bit. You might've sucked through that whole period. There's every possibility it was sucky parenting. It was the best you could have done at the time with what you knew and what you were capable of. And now, you know better. And I think I'm going to go this way. My spatial anchoring is reversed. So you're this beautiful person that's resolving your past. You weren't all of who you consider yourself to be. And that you're asking me to eradicate cognitive dissonance. Nup. Have it. Realize you're human. If you're only going to be compassionate when you're bringing your A game and you're on and you switched on, that's not compassion. When you’re a blithering mess on the floor, out of breath … be compassionate for that woman and recognize the gap and embrace that gap. That's the journey. So I will not take away any of your imperfections. I will not coach you to soften them. I will not reframe them. Let's deal with the compassion gap rather than getting rid of the gap.”
—Sasha: “I love that so much because the dissonance I thought was what we had to close. But the dissonance is just a journey, isn't it? And then I bring the compassion to the part where I haven't been, or haven't been able to, or have been choosing not to whatever it is and that dissonance is okay. Because that also demonstrates my growth and it demonstrates how far I've come in this. Thank you. That's a massive gift, a massive gift in allowing the suckiness to be there. Yeah, because I've been wanting to get away, moving away from wanting to get away from that because it's not who I perceive myself to be.”
—Sasha “can already see the massive potential in actually keeping the dissonance rather than trying to close it. Cause that's not based in reality, actually closing that is me rejecting that experience of all of us and me rejecting myself.”
—Sharon: “I want you to know I'm into you knowing that you can suck. I don't have this benchmark where you've got to have it all together for me to be into you.”
—Sasha: “That would be awful. And that's precisely what I've been doing to me.”
50.88: LAYERING WITH COMPASSION
—Sharon invites Sasha to go back to a time when she suspects she sucked and “layer it with compassion or however you want to interact with compassion of the person you were becoming and are becoming.”
—Sasha imagines a time: “You can see how out of control I felt inside and stood there as myself and gave myself a hug because she needed that so much. That's a beautiful … you’re right. That's exactly the antidote to the judgment of self.”
—Sharon: “The invitation moving forward … perhaps do that process for yourself and then just get on with your day. If you did one or two a day, you'd be done in a reasonable period of time. And then you'll just start figuring how to replace it with something else, because you're going to need to do something else. Once you've cleaned, embraced, loved each of those moments of you you’re goinjg to want to do some other stuff in your thoughts.”
—Sharon says it will become automatic for Sasha and “you startito future orientate yourself rather than this past orientation. It's only muscle memory. So as much as you feel, you need to address it, go forth. And then as the void appears as it will inevitably start filling it with the direction that you want to start moving yourself. Start pre-framing. I'm going to need to be compassionate in a week because pretty sure that's when I'm going to need it. “
—Sasha: “Yeah, that's so cool. I mean, gosh, I already know possibly bedtime tonight is the next tier of compassion.”
—Sharon: “And you're doing this for you now. The beauty of it is you're modeling and demonstrating for your children, which is great. But do it for you because, it's the oxygen mask analogy. It's filling up your cup.”
—Sasha says “exactly the path forward for me. The 10 per cent is mind blowing and then the rest is the compassion and giving that to myself and readying myself for filling the void with not only the compassion, but then also the idea of what the possibilities are in those darker moments. Oh gosh and just allowing myself a bit more grace for goodness sakes. Like that's a massive gift in itself.”
—Sharon: “So you see or saw perfectionism, I'm going to say where we started the session I see you being loving and caring and wanting the best for your family. if the pathway to you experiencing that is compassion, that's perfect.
—Sasha: “It's a very simple approach that I can shift very, very easily. It doesn't have a multitude of steps. One concept. I love how you met my need. Thank you. And I think that's the constant question. How can I bring more compassion to this? Thank you. Self first, then to the situation.”