By Dr. Coach Dafne Alayon
First, a little background: I am a licensed Clinical Psychologist. I have been practicing for 10 years with a particular focus on two separate (but very related) populations: mommy-baby attachment needs, and adults with big big feelings. When I first began as a psychologist, most of my work was with individuals with longstanding histories of challenging interpersonal-affective patterns and ways of relating. Pretty soon into this work it occurred to me that all the adults I was working with were once babies with families and childhoods. I began wondering about the things that happened when they were small to contribute to the heartache they felt as grown-ups. It felt imprudent to help someone as an adult without having the skills to understand the journey that brought them to their adulthood. After all, we really are the product of all our prior moments. Because of this, I chose to do my postdoctoral work in Beatrice Beebe’s laboratory. She is a world-renowned mommy-baby communication researcher. She taught me all about how our own hurts, traumas, and even loving, secure interactions, translate to the ways we experience and respond to our babies. In her laboratory, I learned that we aren’t just affected by our environment (parents, home life, feeding schedule, sleep routine, etc.), but we also play a role in shaping the environment that we, in turn, respond to. It is in this interplay between what we give and how we respond to what we get back, this co-construction (as Dr. Beebe calls it), that we come to understand what is acceptable, not acceptable, tolerable, and intolerable in life.
Now to tie history into the present: My husband, Manny, is a coach. We speak often about the challenges and triumphs that his clients experience during their work together. Throughout the years, discussing our perspectives on what clients are showing him or what they might need has become one of the most rewarding and meaningful parts of our relationship. It has been an opportunity to combine his expertise about what the body can do, with my expertise in how the mind (and the heart) work. Just as it is imprudent to treat the adult without knowledge of how they developed, it is shortsighted to treat someone’s body as if they leave their brain outside the building when they come to the gym for exercise. Don’t we all really know what healthy movement looks like? And most of the time, it’s clear to us when we eat something that probably isn’t the best choice. But it’s all the other variables that impact how we are living that often need to be brought to our awareness. For example, for one person, it might be crucial to explore what patterns they fall into during times of stress or limited resources. It may be that for a variety of reasons, she learned to ignore her own needs when her environment became stressful in order to maintain a sense of connection with important people in her life growing up. Without an awareness of this pattern, it can feel like things just happen to her when life is stressful, including making poor lifestyle choices that limit her from reaching goals. For someone else, it may be that he never had the experience of eating meals at consistent times and the sensation of dependable routine is foreign, leading to chaotic lifestyle choices. How about the role that our relationships play in the pursuit of our own self-actualization? Often, choosing to make lasting lifestyle choices for the sake of our own health and happiness, challenges established dynamics and expectations with those in our relationship circles. Especially when those closest to us aren’t on the same health journey, and can’t empathize with the importance of our new choices. So, if for some reason you aren’t able to be 100% compliant with your coach’s prescription, that doesn’t mean you aren’t trying hard or that you’re not doing what you’re supposed to be doing. It means there’s a stuck point you are encountering that needs to be checked-out. It’s a place for someone like your process coach to sit with you and explore, to make sense of, so that you can implement relevant tools or strategies to address whatever that sticky spot is for you. That way you can continue moving on your journey with new actionable steps that are directly related to the material that concerns you. It was from these conversations about the intersection between the lifestyle changes we are prescribed and the reasons why it is hard to follow through with them that process coaching was conceived.
Process coaching is not psychotherapy, although my specific skills as a psychologist are what make it a more complete and sensitive health coaching program. Personal historical or current material will naturally emerge as a function of working on physical health through process coaching. But, once the aha! moment happens in process coaching, if the material needs to be explored more deeply, we would discuss what would be the best way for you to process what’s come up more fully. This might include being connected with a therapist. In doing this, we are able to discover and work with all the important knowledge that emerges, while continuing to implement concrete steps that will help you move the needle every single week. Sometimes the aha! moment is all you need to keep going on the path towards your dream state. Other times, that moment calls for additional time and exploration. Either way, process coaching helps bring the important variables to light so that real change can happen, and stay!
Process coaching could be helpful for you if you have experienced anything like the following:
- You have taken weight loss drugs but still don’t feel good, still don’t have a good relationship with food, or don’t feel like you’ve achieved the level of comfort in your health routines that you’d like
- You have tried many diets but none of them have seemed to work for you
- You’re stressed and life feels chaotic and it feels hard to make a health plan for yourself
- You have undergone a major life change (birth, loss, aging, health challenge) and it has perturbed your general feeling of health and wellbeing and you are ready to feel better again but need support
- You have health challenges and it doesn’t feel like any of the medical professionals have been able to address you as a whole (process coaching can help to be a liaison between health professionals while addressing fundamental health needs)
- You want more for yourself, you want to find confidence, you want to feel good, and need support in finding what that looks like for you
Process coaching is designed to help you elucidate exactly what your needs and obstacles are, to reach your goals. So, you might find that your issues are resolved in only one session. You might also find that your particular challenges and goals require more long-term work which can go for months or longer. Don’t feel like because this work delves deeper than most that it commits you to a long and arduous or tedious process. It is meant to become whatever you need it to be! The shape it takes will be dictated by what we discover you need most. If any of this blog has resonated with you, feel free to send me a DM or schedule a free discovery call through the gym’s website.
