Background:
Client has a long history of low self-esteem resulting in self-sabotage in whatever she pursued, including meaningful relationships where she could fully open up. Currently, she is struggling with her weight and feels that no one takes her seriously. This has led to a fear of speaking in front of people, meeting new friends, and stepping out to simply live life to its fullest.

Client approached me based on my background for empowering others and was seeking coaching to overcome the above, and work primarily on empowering herself.

Case:
Upon meeting with the client, she was rather timid and very reluctant to open up a true dialogue. Her synopsis was that she had always been this way and didn’t feel that there was much hope in ever changing.

Several sessions were spent building rapport and working through foundational aspects of my coaching model; including discussions on the Wheel of Life and what she saw as her perfect life full of balance and harmony.

After working through the reluctance of my client wanting to truly take an active role in the change process, I talked her into allowing me to work with her on the “Circle of Excellence” as we discussed her emotional states and how she could gain emotional mastery by understanding that we “do” emotions instead of “having” emotions. We discussed in length the triad of emotions; physiology, language and focus/beliefs and were looking to get a better understanding of where her obstacles were coming from.

Typically, this would occur much earlier in our relationship, but things had to be treaded on lightly to begin with this client for fear of her not returning to coaching and being scared away.

While going through the “Circle of Excellence” with the client she began, for the first time to feel empowered, yet also truly understood the gap between where she was currently, and where she truly wanted to be. She also wanted this feeling of what was possible all the time.

The following sessions were spent discussing the art of reframing along with perceptual perspectives.

Client was warming up to me and really looking forward to our sessions together. After much reluctance, she agreed to be fully open to me both in discussion and taking part for she felt there was hope in her overcoming this barrier in her life.

I waited for a week when she came in enthusiastic and open to anything to hit the core of where her issues were coming from. I revamped the Circle of Excellence to focus on three primary emotions and she chose confidence, worthiness and love. As we began the exercise, I had her imagine a big blue balloon (used meta modeling for her specifications) and as she entered each state, we filled her circle of excellence with that empowering emotion until there was no room left other than the balloon to hold the remaining emotional discharge. As we did this, her balloon became larger and larger until completely blown up with confidence, worthiness and love.

I then brought her out of state while still holding on to the balloon. I then took her on a time-line experience to go back to the first time she felt unworthy and inadequate. The client is a 35-year-old female and after several minutes, we ended up back in first grade where I thought my client was going to have a panic attack.

I quickly had her rely on the balloon to take her up and off of the time-line so that she could observe yet disassociate from the experience. As she was floating, she described an incident in which her teacher completely ridiculed her and told her she was a complete idiot and would never amount to anything.

As she saw herself crying after the incident, I had her float down and speak to her younger self as an adult and explain what just happened and that everything would be ok. With the experience of an adult she was able to explain to her younger self that people say cruel things, which are not always true. During the conversation she was advised to give the balloon to her younger self as a gift and noticed, “the more the younger self looked at the balloon, the more she was filled with the power that the balloon held.” To the child, the balloon remained enormous and wonderful yet the adult giving the present noticed it getting smaller and smaller as the child became more and more empowered with the power inside.

As the balloon reached a size slightly larger than normal, I had the adult ask for the balloon from the child with a promise that she would return it. I then had the adult float above the time-line back to the future noticing changes taking place where she had had the confidence, worthiness and love that she wanted all along. The client arrived back at the present crying with tears of joy as she proclaimed, “it was just a lie what the teacher had said.”

To help it stick, I had her go back in her time-line to the incident and this time had her meet up with her younger self just before the incident. I then had her speak to her younger self about tough times that may come and she gave the balloon as a gift of protection from these events. As the event began to take place, I had the adult change her sub modalities of the incident so as she witnessed the event again, she saw her younger self dealing with it better due to the protective balloon and the older self was then making the image and the teacher smaller, grayscale, soft spoken, unsure of his words, colors were bleak, added a lot of extra sound to the background of kids running and playing around the class and in the hall.

Returned client to the present and based on this session and a few others to reinforce what we worked on, her current life model is that no one can intimidate her without her consent and nothing in life has any meaning other than the meaning we give it.

Client is doing wonderful and her perspective on life has changed dramatically. Her relationships have reached an all time high, and I know, because this client happens to be my wife!