Coach your own inner world
One way to deal with difficult feelings and inner conflict is to see your own inner world as a team which you are the coach of. By identifying who your players are and how they relate within your team, you learn to understand yourself better and it helps to make choices that are right for you.
Team rules
Within your team, there are some principles that are important to remember:
- Every teammate has the same goal: the best for you and the team.
- Teammates may have different views on what is best for the team.
- Every teammate is equally important and has the same potential to contribute something to the team.
- You are ultimately responsible. Teammates may give input, but as a coach, you decide the strategy every time.
- You cannot expel anyone from the team.
Teammates
Decide for yourself what your team looks like and give them their own names. For example: fear, uncertainty, calm, the critical voice, the angel, the shadow, the slacker. Some teammates are similar, like disappointment and regret or sadness and anger. Other teammates are diametrically opposed in their views, such as fear and courage or self-compassion and self-criticism.
Teammates also have different personalities or experiences. For instance, you have loud screamers, silent forces and shy types, some feel misunderstood, are angry or no longer want to participate, others are still very young, underdeveloped or performing below their capabilities. You know best who is who. You can make a list of teammates playing and sitting on the bench, or you can get creative and draw them!
Feedback
As a coach, you have the important task of keeping the team functioning, performing and developing. And for this, 1 thing is crucial: feedback.
- You listen to teammates who want to contribute something and assess whether the feedback is justified. Note that you cannot always keep everyone happy. You give feedback to individual teammates.
- You give feedback to individual teammates. For example, if they draw too much attention or their attitude in the team harms others.
- You give feedback to the team as a group. For example, if there is too little cooperation or why you switch strategies once.
- You gather feedback by tracking out different strategies. If things go wrong at once, this is actually valuable for the team’s interest.
- You provide space for teammates to provide each other with feedback. For example, if ‘Self-compassion’ can learn something from ‘Perfectionism’.
- You pay attention to feedback that is not constructive. For example, if ‘Abandonment Anxiety’ tells ‘Anger’ to keep intervening explosively.
Simulate conversation
Now that the teammates and your role and tasks are clear, you can get started by having conversations with your team. A good starting point is to find out which teammates get too much or too little attention and why. Or you can investigate which teammates are still underdeveloped, why that is and what they need. Then you give these teammates a voice and engage with them. This could look like this, for example:
Rest: Do you know what it’s like to be ignored all the time? At some point I’ll cut it out and just shut up.
You (Coach): Showing other teammates that hard work pays off. I like listening to them because they give results.
Rest: But I can also contribute something to the team? And have you realised that the team is starting to get tired?
Fear: But soon things will go completely wrong!!!
Rest: Just try it once, it’s not that bad! You don’t always have to follow my idea, but sometimes I can really contribute something.
