Category: Recovery Coaching

[This is another in a series of posts about my interactions with recovery coaching clients. I want to share what happens during a recovery coaching engagement, the discussions that take place, what usually comes up for the client and how, as a recovery coach, I respond.]

In my previous post I spoke about healing a relationship. I had asked my client to write with a focus on four topics in order to begin healing his relationship with his live-in girlfriend. Those topics were:

1. You are my love
2. This is my action plan
3. I can embrace humility
4. Spirituality

In reality, this assignment did not take one week; it took nearly four.

Topics 1 and 2 were completed within the first week. It was the topic of “embracing humility” that proved difficult for him.

In discussing his feelings about “humility,” he stumbled twice on the word, using instead the word “humiliate.” Obviously, this caught my attention. I have shared that when I first came into the program I found the concept of being humble confusing. So confusing, that I had to look up the two words (humiliate and humble) in the dictionary. This is what I found, as did my client:

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines “humiliate” as “to reduce to a lower position in one’s own eyes or another’s eyes.”

And “humble” is defined as: “not thinking of yourself as better than other people, given or said in a way that shows you do not think you are better than other people, showing that you do not think of yourself as better than other people”

Humiliating experiences are, for the most part, imposed upon us without our consent. In the rooms, we sometimes hear the term “one-up or one-over.” I tend to associate humiliating experiences with memories that conjure up an image of someone more powerful standing over me, usually shaking a finger. On the other hand, experiences which I perceive as humbling often seem to have a beneficent, didactic quality to them. The two terms are so close, so similar, and yet just so different in how I react to them.

Today, I can experience both humbling and humiliating circumstances while gently laughing at myself. My reaction to negative or corrective feedback may take the form of “gosh, I should have checked my figures in that chart twice, before handing it over to my manager!” rather than “gosh, I am such a stupid person!” I tend to use language like “I am human . . .” rather than “I will never be good at this . . . .” And instead of responding by beating myself up, I can laugh, shake my head, reach out to my Higher Power and say, “Okay, take this feeling from me. Show me a better way.”

My client agreed that humility and humiliate, were for him, the same word. He joked and called it a learning difficulty! So we created two columns. The heading for one was Humiliate and the other was Humility. Using a baseball analogy, he listed some scenarios.

I asked him how this felt, to instill this hope in his young baseball players. He smiled. He felt it. He felt humility. He felt the experience of joy and safety there, the challenge and comfort. His experience defied words.

In longing, in thirsting to live a life in recovery, there is an absolute guarantee that we will, at times, be complete fuck-ups, and the equal certainty that this does not in any way diminish our infinite worth. Humility is embracing the idea of kicking your ego to the curb, while remaining unflinching in the knowledge that you are possessed of infinite beauty, value, and worth.

[This is another in a series of posts about my interactions with recovery coaching clients. I want to share what happens during a recovery coaching engagement, the discussions that take place, what usually comes up for the client and how, as a recovery coach, I respond.]

Everyone working through recovery has lost, or severed a close tie or relationship. Some of these ties are critical, perhaps a mother or father, maybe a close friend, neighbor or colleague. My coaching client, having realized 90 days of clean time, says his relationship with his live-in girlfriend has been severely impacted by his latest relapse. He knows the relationship has changed. He feels she is distant and that she does not trust him. He wants the “old” relationship back.

Although my client attends 12-step meetings regularly, and has a sponsor, he is only now working on step one. The task of beginning to “repair” his relationship very much involves steps eight and nine but, of course, he has some distance to travel before reaching that point in his program. [Step 8: Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all. Step 9: Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others]. Yet, as a coach, I cannot let the learning opportunity slip away. So I embrace his concerns and create a homework assignment. I ask him to pull out pen and paper, and then write down four topics:

1. You are my love
2. This is my action plan
3. I can embrace humility
4. Spirituality

I ask him to write approximately ten sentences on each of these topics. I go so far as to offer suggestions for each:

1. Profess his love for his girlfriend, embrace his inner Romeo. Tell her what he loves about her, applaud her positive traits, and affirm that he cannot live without her love. Go overboard, write fifteen sentences.

2. Create a plan of action, as we always hear recovery is a program of action. I invite him to embrace this credo by listing three things he is going to “do” for his love. One might be the writing of this letter, another, providing her something for which she’s wished or asked for. So during the next week he has to pay close attention to her smallest comment, her wishes, desires and requests, all the while taking notes, and taking action. It follows that the last thing might be the presentation of the letter he’s written and talking with her about it. Ask if she has any suggestions. I remind him that the definition of suggestion is subtle command!

3. If he truly wants to mend the relationship he will need to lay down his pride and ego. He’s got to do whatever it takes. I invite him to list what he has done wrong and apologize for it. This topic, as well as the others, need not focus only on the ramifications of his addiction. This step surely involves talking about the behavior that’s deeply impacted both of them. His behavior. And if he senses some stubbornness on her part, I suggest “embracing his hidden humility and seeing what it opens up for him.”

4. Finally, spirituality. This homework assignment will not work, unless my client asks for his Higher Power’s involvement. Every time he thinks about this homework assignment he has to ask his HP for help. If he finds this task difficult or near impossible, a prayer will help break through the barriers to accomplishing this task.

I will let you know the results in my next post.

[This is another in a series of posts about my interactions with recovery coaching clients. I want to share what happens during a recovery coaching engagement, the discussions that take place, what usually comes up for the client and how as a recovery coach I respond.]

“Men are from Mars and women are from Venus” is indeed an apt way to describe the differences between men and women. As a coach, I have watched that boundary slowly erode. In my previous post about my client with 45 days of clean time, I related how our last meeting was spent with him venting. I liken that session to a bunch of girlfriends sitting around the dinner table bitching about their spouses. Eventually, after all the venting dissipates, solutions arise. Or in the worst case, a lot of negative thoughts are brought into the open, to dry up in the light of day. And at least by venting, those issues tend not to torment one by coming out sideways at an inappropriate time. In much the same way, that session with my client likely opened up a new conversation on having a purpose (a purpose other than where to cop the next dime bag).

In the follow-up session my client began discussing a plaque hanging on his wall. It was one of those made of walnut and brass that you get at a trophy shop, with a bas-relief of a kid swinging a baseball bat. The plaque was given in recognition of his father’s 35 years as a supporter of Little League Baseball. Coincidentally, the inscription carried that day’s date, albeit for the year 2000. He mentioned his father was always his Little League coach. His dad coached his three older brothers, as well. As a teenager, my client later joined a traveling team, winning international competitions, while visiting Canada and Mexico. He said his father was the best coach, ever. (I smiled).

I looked for a common thread in my client’s successes. Who was involved? His Dad. Why was he happy? He had support, belonged to a team and he was winning. His emotions? He was elated, he felt recognized and on top of the world. He thrived as a teenager because of his involvement in baseball. When I asked him, “if you could choose to start all over again, what would you want in your next life?”

He said he would want to be a coach. Not a recovery coach, not an executive coach, but a baseball coach.

Making the most of this information, I observed aloud that when he was his happiest, most alive and thriving self, when he felt like he belonged and was recognized, he didn’t drink or drug. That he got what he needed externally. Well, he lit up like LED headlamps on a BMW! He went on to say that Spring is coming, and he was going to volunteer as a coach with Little League Baseball in his town. Moving immediately into action, he picked up the phone and dialed a friend of his father’s still active in Little League, asking for his advice and information on which teams needed coaches.

Finding purpose and giving our gifts is not about making money. It is about being happy, and sharing those gifts. 12-step programs advise that “service keeps you clean and sober,” and in my client’s case, service on the local baseball diamond is a start in the right direction.

As coaches, we can’t make our clients do anything they’re not willing to do, but we can create circumstances, environments, or conversations with the intention of inspiring our clients to feel they can achieve that which makes them happy.

I can hardly wait to see to which Little League team my client has been assigned.