Sometimes I coach people who feel stuck.
Like super stuck.
Like we all do sometimes.
Like the ways forward, backwards and side to side are blocked by something rigid and huge. When the landscape we’re looking at feels like the thickest of fogs. When the space behind us feels like an expanse of nothingness.
These moments are a lot to be with. But can be marginally improved by having another human stand with you in your stuck-ness.
I’ve been the coach and I’ve been coached in these moments. And I know the relief that comes when you are invited to explain your current reality. Not the real-life version. That can become a well-practiced story. But the emotional and psychological experience of feeling so stuck in a relationship or a dilemma that the way forward is simply obscured.
I have led, and been led, through many an imagined landscape – forests, mountains, impenetrable steel walls so high you can’t reach the top. I’ve had to think about the tools I need for the adventure ahead – what my protective clothing might look like, what power tool might help me create a hole in the wall I can peer through, what the ground feels like beneath my feet, what is the weather like in this place.
And while in no way do these imaginary explorations solve the dilemma, or resolve the relationship issue, they absolutely do shift the energy.
There is some kind of alchemy that happens when you speak it out loud to another human. Something akin to cracking a window in a stuffy room, and feeling the cool breeze come in.
The atmosphere shifts because it has to.
It has no choice.
By virtue of inviting someone else into your internal world, it simply has to change.
It cannot stay the same – and neither can you.
And if the person you’ve invited in is super curious about the space you’re in, then it gets really interesting!
The real beauty of these shared imaginative adventures is that there are no limits. They are being co-created in the moment.
Metaphors can be mixed, landscapes can shift, items can defy the laws of gravity.
In my own coaching sessions I have explored rooms where the walls feel like they are closing in on me and are sticky with burning tar. And as I spent time exploring this (frankly hideous) space with my coach, I started to notice the walls retreating – I started to realise that I was becoming different in this space, and the space was responding in kind.
It's wildly creative.
It takes some bravery (and trust) to enter in.
But boy oh boy, can it start some healing.