"...wisdom and compassion can join hands in finding a Spirit that both transcends and includes this world, a Spirit eternally prior to this world and yet embracing this world and all its beings with infinite love and compassion, and care and concern, and the tenderest of mercies..." Ken Wilber,A Brief History of Everything.
A colleague asked me about self-managing feelings of compassion, fondness, and attraction with clients. Therapists refer to these phenomena as transference and counter-transference. I prefer a less clinical explanation of what happens in a profoundly compassionate coaching relationship. We simply experience love--at its best, what Ken Wilber described as infinite love--an important component of transpersonal change.
Spontaneous change can happen in unconditionally loving personal relationships. In effective coaching relationships, as well, the emotional connection is one of unconditional, caring support. This is especially true when your clients have powerful insights, access a deep sense of their true worth, or realize how radically they've changed as a result of working with you.
My first experience of this felt a bit like falling in love with a client, but much more encompassing, more transcendent. I was grateful it happened when coaching a man to whom I couldn't possibly be attracted--so I wasn't confused about the source, only curious about how or why it was happening. At the moment this profoundly warm feeling swept over me, I'd been pondering how to frame the feedback from others in a way that he could hear without defensiveness. At the same moment, I found out in our meeting, he'd been praying I'd be shown the words that would help him.
It is, indeed, a kind of love we share at times like these, but it's bigger than everyday love. Instead of being "in" love, we're being "within" love, both coach and client lucky enough to have been present to a special kind of healing.
When your client's gender is not your romantic preference, this isn't confusing or threatening to either coach or client. For example, a female client sent me this email after a very powerful coaching session: "Dear Mary, Thank you, thank you, thank you. I think it might not be too soon to say, I love you." She typically expressed her emotions openly, and we both understood she was feeling deeply loved and loving.
But I have been within love with clients who weren't so openly expressive. A happily married, tough-nosed male CEO of a consulting firm, after several months of coaching, would respond to a particularly unexpected insight by saying, I love you!" It was clear he meant this not a romantic utterance, but a way to share his excitement, a feeling bigger than personal love.
Sometimes, though, social conditioning and role expectations can kick in and clients may define their feelings of shared compassion and gratitude as "infatuation" or "falling in love." When that happens, remember that you're in a special position as companion on a difficult and life-changing journey. Create appropriate boundaries so they feel safe enough to stay open and explore new territory, at the same time redefining this joy they're feeling as infinite love, not personal love.
See also:
Transcend and include -- each moment transcends (or is external to) the previous moment, which becomes internal to (or enfolded in) the new moment. Ken Wilber
A LinkedIn group discussion itriggered many questions about how or if coaching might be based on a client's preference for the self-preservation instinct (home, food, security, family), the one-to-one instinct (personal energy, sexuality, close relationships, spiritual union), or the social instinct (social identity, participation in groups and community).
For those who want to know more about the instinctual subtypes, there's a good introduction at Peter O'Hanranhan's web site.
Some teachers have used the metaphor of a three-legged stool with one leg each for the self-preservation, one-to-one, and social instincts. This metaphor is not unique to the Enneagram community, nor is the notion that an ideal "stool" will be perfectly balanced. In academic medicine the three legs of the stool are teaching, patient care, and research. The Episcopal Church's stool has scripture, reason, and tradition as legs.
The Enneagram instincts stool is often described as having one leg shorter than the other two, that leg being the one we over-use -- the one where our personality's ego-structure plays out most of its habitual behavior, a way we fall "asleep" in daily life. Perfectionists whose primary instinctual drive is self-preservation, for example, would tend to focus on organizing their physical world, on doing things right, and as coaches we would explore the degree to which this is an over-zealous, unconscious, habit-driven focus.
Perfectionists might also assume that the legs of the stool should be exactly the same length. But that's not a helpful coaching assumption. A coaching client with a one-to-one focus might have identified and released some key patterns in his one-to-one interactions as well as in his self-preservation focus. His social instinct might still be less developed than the other two, but there's nothing necessarily wrong with that, no need to ensure that his connection with community is exactly even with self-preservation and one-to-one relationships.
The coaching questions are always and only, "How do I help clients become more conscious?" "What are their habitual patterns?" "How do these patterns operate?" "As clients step aside, without judgment, and gain a broader perspective, how might they interrupt a pattern?"
If the client with a one-to-one focus comes for coaching to be more comfortable in groups, that's a coaching opportunity. And I asked Peter O'Hanrahan to show how that might work, coaching me as an Enneagram Nine with a primary one-to-one and secondary self-preservation focus. We were looking for a way to move the energy around, to extend it in a new way.
I described attending an LGBT-sponsored dance at my church. I wanted to support the group, but entered the room in my habitual, one-to-one way, looking for someone familiar, feeling discomfort surrounded by so many faces of acquaintances I didn't know very well. I did find two people I knew, sat and chatted at their table for about 30 minutes, then left for the sanctity of my home and a good book I looked forward to finishing. Nothing wrong there. But I wish to be more comfortable in social settings, to release the habitual response of feeling marginal in groups.
Peter asked me to consider situations where I do feel quite comfortable in a group, and I described my qigong classes. As I mentioned in another blog post, I'm a body-based type -- I learn kinesthetically and my discomfort in groups is physical. Peter said, "So what would be a way for you to stay grounded in your body while being around those people at the church party? Notice how your attention goes out to the people in that space, notice your anxiety, and bring your attention back into your body, being grounded in the way you are in qigong classes."
I have since been in groups where I had a chance to practice this grounding, felt surprisingly comfortable, and also noticed a spontaneous change -- I was quite chatty!
