Once in a while, I am going to share with you a real life case study. I published the first of this series back in February. If you missed it you can read it here.
Recently I’ve been helping someone who has had a 25+ years of a failure trail behind him. After asking few key questions about his childhood it became very obvious to me that he had a huge “subconscious” issue that made him “mess up”, so to speak, over and over, no matter what he did.
I’m not going to give you specific details about his situation, but I can tell you this. Every time he’s on the right track, every time he has everything one only needs to be able to succeed, he destroys it somehow, and the whole thing falls apart and goes nowhere.
What are the results of this? As a middle age man he is not where he wants to be. He is depressed, sad and overall miserable. He knows he could do better, but he feels stuck. Even he can see a pattern here, but he doesn’t know how to break it.
Does this sound like you?
I sincerely hope this is not your case, but the fact of the matter is that this sounds like a lot of people; doesn’t it?
By the way, he authorized me to take his example in order to write this post, while of course I won’t mention his name or any specific details pertaining to him.
How does a Coach Diagnose an Issue?
For a doctor to be able to diagnose you with any type of physical disease, he needs to run some tests. He would have to take some X-rays, blood test, may be a CAT scan, so forth and so on. The reason why a patient goes through such procedure is because the medical doctor needs to go to the source of the problem in order to understand what might be wrong. Then, once an issue is found at the source he will analyze it and come up with a diagnosis.
One thing is sure, a medical doctor will never be able to give you a complete and specific diagnose just by looking at you.
Well, it’s the same thing with a coach. In order be able to find out what’s wrong “exactly” we need to go to the source. And while we don’t draw blood or do literal X-rays there are specific questions that we can ask in order to make a diagnosis.
I guess I could call them my X-ray questions. They never fail and give me a good idea of where the problem may lie. Once I found the source of the problem, I can make a “diagnosis”, and go from there to start helping the person. I guess you could say that a life coach is an emotional healer.
While a blog post can never replace a one on one coaching session in this post I wanted to give away some basic steps that I went through with this client that might be able to help you.
Going Back in Time
Just like your physical health can be affected either in a positive or negative way by your diet from the time you were a child until now, your subconscious mind has been affected a long time ago until now. As a matter of fact, it all started when you were just a toddler (especially between the ages of 0 and 6).
That’s why when it comes to coaching there is no diagnosis possible for me without asking question about the childhood of the person I’m trying to help. While this might be difficult for the patient at times, you need to be honest about your parents and the surrounding in which you grew up. Being honest doesn’t means that you don’t love your parents, but you need to tell the truth to yourself first and then to your coach, in order to move forward.
Remember that even if you had the most loving parents, there were not perfect and they made mistakes, especially back in the days when people were still rather ignorant about a lot of things related to how we affect the psyche of our children.
For example, I was reading Harleena Singh’s post last week where she had a video talking about the negative effects of hitting a child. They were saying that hitting a child can cause damage in the brain. Of course they weren’t talking about physical damage as if someone hit you on the head, but emotional damages.
Yet, how many people have been spanked and slapped or hit with a belt? Yes, that’s right. A whole lot of people.
Bottom line, very innocent and seemingly non-important acts from your parents can carry on all throughout your adult life and make you act a certain way, whether you’re aware of it or not.
For the most part, parents didn’t even need to do anything more than just say something enough times for it to be embedded in your subconscious mind forever. Yet, again, sometimes just by observing your parents without them even saying anything at all, you were still conditioning and programming your subconscious mind.
Yes, everything your parents ever did or say directly to you or indirectly, has had an effect on you. This is why a good coach will always go back to the roots. To the beginning of YOU in order to be able to make a good diagnose of the problem.
True Life Example of How our Subconscious Mind is Conditioned
If you had met my mother, for example, you might have been able to observe that she didn’t value her own time, and was ready to give it away for free to anyone asking for it. This used to drive me crazy even at a young age, and I was as annoyed by mother giving away her free time as I was of people taking advantage of her.
However, back then, I had no understanding of the “WHY” she was doing this, no more than I knew that it came from the way she was raised.
Once I did though, it was a relief to be able to finally explain why her subconscious mind made her give her time for free. In order word, work for free for others. It was a learned pattern from long before my mother became my mom, and I was the only person that she’d ever knew that was able to find the root of that problem for hers.
Today, however, you don’t have to go through a life time without understanding your behavior and patterns, because there is help out there, and more and more people are reaching out!
Seeing the Picture
By asking few pertinent questions to my client I were able to pin-point the source of his problems with failures. It was something quite evident to me, but believe it or not, he never thought of it that way.
I’ll tell you briefly that his issue was abandonment, and you could see it clearly all throughout the things that he did all his life. He basically replicate that abandonment issue over and over to himself.
He thanked me to have helped me see something that was right under his nose, but that he couldn’t see on his own.
I explained to him that it’s like when looking at a painting when you stand too close to it.
When you stand too close to a painting you are not able to see the whole picture very well.
Only when you step back can you really appreciate the real picture.
It’s basically the same thing when I listen to people telling me their stories. Since they are pretty much into the picture they can’t see it.
But because I am coming from the outside, away from that picture, I can see things much more clearly.
As a closing advice, for you, the readers of this blog, I would say this, step OUT of your own picture and analyze it from a distance. What do you see? What don’t you let me know on the comment area.
Hi Sylviane,
Wow! Thanks for the kind mention, and am glad you liked the video as you did mention it in your comments too. 🙂
I love your series on these real life case studies as everyone of us can relate to them. Yes indeed, everything does come down to your childhood years and how you were raised – the roots as they say, and parenting skills matter a great deal there. So, I would say parents play a major part in the way they mold their kids.
I agree, we really can’t blame our parents for the way we were raised and need to be thankful always. I guess they did their best and whatever they learnt, which was limited during their time, they passed down to us.
Even about hitting – it’s a complete NO, and no matter how hard we try to convey this point to other parents, some of them don’t realize the negative effect it has on their kids. Their feelings, emotions, their inner-self and subconscious – all of it is hurt, which being small, they aren’t able to tell that time but it shows up in many other forms when they grow up.
It’s nice that you could help out this person and he was able to see the larger picture that all of us often tend to miss out on. And you are right, we ourselves cannot pinpoint what problems and issues we might be having – you need another person to see the larger picture and do the needful.
Thanks for sharing this with us. Have a nice week ahead 🙂
Harleena Singh invites you to read..How to Get Kids to Listen to You
Hi Harleena, and sorry for this late reply.
Well, you said it all in your comment here, and there’s not much I can add.
I know that you’re totally get the point about how important our parents are in our lives. It’s a good thing that many of the old beliefs are going away, slowly, but surely. At least in the most educated part of this world.
Thanks you for coming, and your excellent feedbacks.
I sure hope your client Sylviane is learning a great deal from what you’ve been sharing with him. I also know for a fact that you can change your thoughts and learn to be the person you know you were meant to be.
I had a friend like that as well bless his heart. He never kept a job for long, he never had a girlfriend because he never had anything good to say about anything. If you were to ask him how he is he’s going to go into a long drawn out series of things going on in his life. Who wants to be around a person like that.
It all stemmed from his childhood because I’d known him since he was 14. I didn’t blame him really because he was treated horribly by his Dad but he was taking that into his adult life and he really was an awesome guy. He eventually broke the pattern, met a wonderful girl, they got married and he’s been married and happy now for 15 years. See, it can happen to anyone.
Thanks for sharing this and your explanation of how we all need to just step back and observe the bigger picture. Heck, that’s what you’re for girl. To help explain to us what that picture entails.
~Adrienne
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Hi Adrienne,
This is a great story. I am so glad that your friend broke that terrible pattern that was bringing him down. I’m sure he got the proper help to do so, because this is usually very hard to get over on our own.
There are the parents that made mistakes because they didn’t know any better, but there are the real jerks that don’t deserve to have kids for sure. Long after they are gone their children still suffer because of them. That’s why so many people need help.
Thanks for your input, Adrienne.
Hi Sylviane,
You have really put your heart, soul and knowledge into your coaching. I agree! We do need to go back to find out what is causing the repeated behavior. In his case, it was abandonment. Now you can know what direction and what techniques you need to teach him to overcome his obstacle. Good Going!
I did read Harleena’s post on hitting a child too and that can cause so many problems when that child grows. The thought of it makes me cringe!
You also mention your mom, and I think we came from the same kind of parent that way. My mom was a people pleaser also. But I won’t get into that one right now. I fully understand how you can see the causation of her behavior now. I do too with my mom.
When you used the analogy of the painting, I smiled to myself because I tell my clients a similar thing. Are you sure we are not related? lol.
I fully enjoyed this post and it is great to see that your client is growing.
Donna
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Hi Donna,
Well, since we both have some Italian in us, we are related 🙂 I have a black American friend who calls me a Roman ,as a joke, but he’s also serious. He says, you Romans were one of the most violent people LOL. He’s very literate in history, so he always says that he knows my history better than me.
Yes, it makes sense that because of our coaching background we can now see where our mother’s issues came from. No doubt.
When people hit their children, think about it! It’s not acceptable to hit anyone on the planet, but it’s OK to hit your children, on a face, with a belt or worse??? Come on people! It’s time that people wake up and see what they’re doing. It’s terrible. I’m so glad we as human beings are growing to be much more civilized with time.
Thank you for your great input, as always.
Hi Syliviane,
What a lovely post. I really like your real case studies as we all can relate to them.
We all relate to your client in so many ways. I am very glad to learn lots of things in your blog about the subconscious mind and how it was programmed from the childhood and how we can find the root of the problem and find the solution. Believe me Sylviane I never knew this stuff until I visited your blog and I think another 2 blogs that address these stuff. For sure, we can’t blame our parents as they never knew the effect of what they were ingraining in our subconscious mind. They didn’t know back then.
I am so happy for your client that he found you and you could help him see the bigger picture and pinpoint his problem. You are amazing Sylviane. I think he will be grateful to you for the rest of his life.
Thanks Sylviane for such a great share as always.
Be Blessed,
Neamat
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Hi Neamat,
That’s why visiting blogs on the web is so great isn’t it? I’ve learned many things from blogs and other online articles that I had no idea about, and it’s when I started to work online that I discovered the personal development niche.
Even though I had read 3 books on personal development between the late 80’s and early 90’s it then went dormant until early 2006.
I am really honored if I helped you some in your discovery of this fantastic tool which is personal development where we can learn so much about ourselves. It’s an ongoing learning 🙂 and I couldn’t live without it now.
Thank for coming.
This reminds of how they train circus elephants story. The training when they’re babys. The trainings put a stake in the ground and hook the baby elephants to a metal chain so it doesn’t get away. So the baby would struggle daily trying to get away until it gives up hope and conditions itself that it’s impossible.
By the time it’s an adult, the trainings will instead tie a rope around the leg of the elephant. Although it has all the capabilities to break the rope and free itself, it has already conditioned itself that it would be impossible from when it was a baby elephant. So yes I can definitely understand why you have to look at an aerial view of your life and start back when you were young. If you don’t know the source of your problem, then how are you going to fix it?
Thanks for sharing Sylviane!
Hi Sherman,
Yes, I am very familiar to that elephant’s true story and I’ve used it before to explain how we are conditioned by what we were told or what was done to us as children. We are really not any better than that elephant, unfortunately, because as Dr. Robert Lipton says, most people live their life while barely conscious of themselves.
That’s why I think that life coaches are so needed.
Thanks for coming by.
I had an um….interesting upbringing at times, and like you noted, it did have a profound effect on me.
When I owned my stuff and decided to be free of it success found me with ease. All part of reprogramming.
Thanks for sharing!
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Hi Ryan,
I like that. Once you’re free yourself of all the “crap” that surrounds you, so to speak, success comes. The tough part though, for most people, is the how.
Thanks for coming by and for sharing.
Hi Sylviane
What a great post. I can relate to everything you have mentioned.
The strategy I use for my clients is “questions”. A Life Coach can learn a lot from the client’s answers. As coaches, we have to get down to the root of things. When I studied Maslow and Carl Jung, they both were convinced that all the negatives and postives start at a very young age.
But there is help for those that are searching for change.
Thank you for a excellent post.
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Slyviane,
I have seen lots of people who have a fear of success and actually sabotage themselves whenever they start to succeed. I think that sometimes I do that also. I agree that it all comes out of our past. Until we address our past it will continue to hurt us.
I have really tried to deal with my past and am trying not to let my past damage my present.
I love how you explain this. It is so clear and understandable. You really do have a way with words.
Thanks.
Dee Ann
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Hi Syvianne,
I like the way you use questions and you diagnostics. You’ve made a very strong point that most of what’s going on now is related to what happened to us as children. I know so many people who suffer today because of it.
I recently participated in a health fair and the lady in the booth next to me was a remote healer. I was curious and as the day went on I talked to her about what she was doing.
She studied with a Dr. (chiropractor) who developed a system for this healing . He developed a specific series of questions. Depending on how you answer the question directs the healer to a certain area of your life.
She did a mini reading for me and within a few minutes you knew I was a very defensive person because I had to always defend myself against my father who could be very physically violent. Just knowing this information is a relief because it helps me understand things better.
My neighbor also had a healing from this woman. She is now free of some of the phobias she’s been living with and for her it stemmed from her mother’s remarriage. Her mother abandoned her…leaving her to be raised with her grandmother.
So good work to you for helping people figure what’s bugging them and getting in the way of life, love and joy!
Tonya
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What a fantastic post! And so true.
We often don’t realize that everything we have ever experienced – before we were able to comprehend our reality – has shaped who we are and how we see the world. Once I realized that life responds not to what we want, but to what we believe, things made sense.
Every choice we make is a reaction until we become aware and observe.
I’ll DEFINITELY be a regular visitor here.
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I call that the self-sabotage effect too.
It might sound funny, but as a Chiropractor, I hear ALL kinds of things….I should have been given psych training too – or maybe it’s just expected to happen like this on the job!
Anyway, I hear that kind of story over and again – not just from one client either!
Glad to hear you are truly able to help folks stuck in these patterns.
Cheers!
JEC