Why coaching may not have worked for you... on emotional sensitivity and success...
(The road to happiness and personal success: a virtuous circle of self-awareness, healing, and setting your mindset up for success.)
People who are very sensitive tend to be very vulnerable to adversity, and unhelpful personal relationships. Even more so than other people.
We are all affected by life events, particularly those that happened to us in infancy and early childhood, but this is particularly true for highly sensitive people. If you think you may be too sensitive for this world and any coaching has failed you so far, then read on.
So you made the wrong decisions, or let someone or something hurt you in the past. What can you do about it?
The first step in the process is to be aware of what events or relationships may be negatively affecting you.
I once saw a TV comedy show where a psychiatrist said to her client “...it’s always the parents”.
Unfortunately, this is true for most of us, simply because our parents or the people who took care of us in infancy and early childhood were around us most of the time, and therefore had the biggest influence on us. Environment affects our childhood development, and our parents constituted a large part of it, the next one probably being the school environment.
Usually, the biggest traumas are death in the family, especially in infancy and very early childhood, divorce, an absent or unengaged parent, abuse (both physical and emotional), bullying, moving homes (so often omitted as a main reason for trauma).
Before you go blaming your parents for all of your shortcomings, take a step back and understand that they were similarly affected by the environment they grew up in. They are only human after all, so your responsibility in this world isn’t to change them but to be happy with yourself and to raise your own children in the best possible way - to be physically and emotionally healthy, strong, independent, confident, and loving adults. And the only way to do that is to be all of those things yourself.
So forgive whoever and whatever you’re willing to blame, and move to step two which is healing your emotional traumas.
This can be done in a myriad of ways. However, in my view, some types of therapy, such as hypnotherapy, emotional freedom technique, timeline therapy, and EMDR work better and faster than traditional therapy, in a matter of hours or days rather than months or years.
These approaches tap into your unconscious mind and access the parts of your system where emotions are stored. They can access not just the memory but the emotion attached to it. Then they transform these memories from negative to neutral. Finally, only the memory (the facts), and the learning we can take from it remain. The emotional pain that had been attached to it, and that had been causing us sadness, anger, or guilt, is released from the system. It is the essence of all of these approaches, although each of them uses slightly different words, and different techniques and processes.
So while traditional psychotherapy and all of its derivatives focus on talking about the problem in the hope that something may "click" and that one day you will make a decision that will change your life for the better, these approaches go right into the core of the issue and resolve it through healing.
Whatever your chosen method of healing, however, if you’re committed to becoming the person you desire to be, then this is a crucial step for you, especially if you are a sensitive person.
I believe people failing to heal from the negative emotions of past events are the reason why so many brilliant mindset and success coaching techniques fail to work. Especially true for people with a big heart, great intentions, and wild dreams. “I tried coaching but it just doesn’t work”, I’ve heard this more than once before. Then the person goes on to reveal they have traumas from their upbringing, often related to not feeling emotionally independent from their parents as well not believing in their own abilities, and the freedom to follow their heart rather than whatever people or their own logical left brain expects them to do.
Negative emotions ought to be healed before any effective success and mindset coaching, relationship coaching or whatever other coaching takes place. Otherwise, it will take up too much of your energy to try and control them, because your unconscious brain where emotions are stored will always try to protect your from getting hurt again, and therefore, will always try to take over (and often succeed). It’s just the way we are wired.
Then you can move on to step three, success mindset and learning to take care of your own emotional health, i.e. preventing future emotional damages to your system. Of course, you don’t need to wait to heal all of your childhood traumas before you begin to think positively, be confident and assertive, practice mindfulness etc.
Instead, it will probably be a virtuous circle of training your mind, healing, and understanding what needs to be resolved for you to move forward. If mindset coaching or self-help techniques have failed you, then you might want to look into your emotions first. Mindset techniques will only work as long as your emotional brain is not screaming for attention and reminding you why you are not good enough, or why you cannot be what you have set out to be.