How Can Coaching Help?

Many people have difficult relationships with food, exercise and their bodies. After years of disowning, disparaging, despising and dissociating from your body, you no longer know how to relate civilly. All this separation and distancing allows you to mistreat it. This drama often gets played out through disrupted eating, body loathing, extreme exercising, serial dieting, depriving, sacrificing, and generally ‘doing’ to excess. You tell yourself that once your body changes, you’ll reconcile with it. That’s backwards and doesn’t work. The reconciliation must come first. I know this because I’ve been there.

You have forgotten what it's like to truly feel good in your body - strong, confident, and safe. You may simply want to step on a scale, or look at yourself naked in a full-length mirror (gasp!) without it ruining your day. Or you may have bigger aspirations that include being forever free of the panic and desperation about your body that overshadow the rest of your life. If you could sustainably change your body by hating, punishing, and criticizing it, you would have done so long ago. However, it's nearly impossible to take care of something you don't value.

Maybe it's time for an approach that honors your body for the amazing creature it is. Not later, after your body has attained the goals you’ve set for it, but right now. Allowing yourself to be relaxed with food and at peace with your body will usher in more of the changes you desire, rather than try, try, trying harder. No more of that, please! Believe it or not, your body isn't the problem. Together, we can shift your relationship with your body, ditch the pervasive and crazy-making diet culture, and end your struggle with food, weight, and dieting.

Not sure if this describes you? The most telling sign is that you are outwardly successful (just ask a friend), but inwardly tormented. Or maybe you’re a self-help fanatic. You keep chasing achievements, accolades, and recognition as surrogates for deep satisfaction, joy, peace and love. This strategy is based on the misguided notion that your misery is related to not achieving enough. Trouble is, the effort required is monumental and the post-achievement satisfaction is fleeting, which sets up a vicious cycle. 

Most likely you exhibit some combination of perfectionism, people-pleasing, reflexively putting others first, relentless drive and discipline, trying too hard at most things, distrusting yourself, and instead, placing trust in external authority. These aren't inherently bad traits, but the degree to which they shape your life is revealing. If you feel imprisoned by the rules you've adopted regarding being good enough, lovable, and worthy of your desires, then it could be time to toss out the rules and repair self-trust. Maybe you don't need to achieve, control, perform, and micro-manage to get what you want. Maybe what you want is seeking you as fiercely as you are pursuing it.

It doesn’t matter whether you are training for your first 5K, are an amateur bike racer, you earn a living with your body as a professional athlete, or you are an aging athlete...the same pitfalls can present themselves in various guises at different levels of competition. These pitfalls can include paralyzing doubt, anticipatory dread, mental habits that erode confidence, crippling expectations, the compare-and-despair syndrome, perfectionism, injuries and setbacks that instill energy-draining fear in you, and obsessing over your weaknesses rather than focusing on your strengths, etc.

Maybe you’ve always wanted to compete, but talk yourself out of it because it seems so complicated and you’re not sure where to start or which aspects to prioritize. This is why so many shy away from competition - it feels overwhelming and intimidating. And it can be. But it can also be a wonderful way, with thoughtful preparation, to challenge yourself and break through your perceived limitations because race day can summon your very best in a way that solo training and Strava just cannot simulate. 

Many people think that to be successful at athletic endeavors, it requires single-minded focus as well as perfect execution. In other words, they make it the focus of their lives, train as much as possible for as long as possible before the event, execute their training plan perfectly, and kick everything else to the curb (sorry, kids!). If they falter or hit a rough patch due to other life commitments, they scrap it and start over. 

Well, life doesn’t really allow for that. And the good news is, that approach doesn’t guarantee success anyway, and can lead to injury and burnout. Effective training is much more nuanced, with both physical and mental preparation, and pieces that look suspiciously like obstacles, setbacks and mishaps. You want to train with mistakes! Perfectly executed training is a waste. Overcoming obstacles and adversity builds confidence. 

If you are your biggest obstacle to performing at your best and wish you could get out of your own way, listen up. It’s important to pay attention to:

• How much energy you put into your mental and emotional preparation 

• How you deal with the doubts and insecurities that arise 

• Whether you find enjoyment in the whole experience, or simply white-knuckle it, desperate for it to be over 

Much of this has to do with your thoughts and expectations, which are an often overlooked part of preparation. If you arrive at race day hollowed out, having tapped out your reserves managing the anticipatory anxiety, and have little left for the actual event, let’s work together to polish your approach. A few adjustments can have a huge payoff.

You may struggle with a chronic health condition, erratic mood disturbances, the fallout from 'extreme thinking,’ or some other pattern or situation that makes life feel overwhelmingly difficult. 'Extreme thinking' is characterized by:  

• thoughts dominated by fear, worry, doubt, negativity 

• thought distortions that dramatically shape-shift your perception of reality day-to-day

• destructive thought patterns that contribute to unpredictable mood gyrations that keep you off balance

Despite your best efforts, little about your situation has changed. You don't know how to live with it anymore – it takes enormous energy to manage the despair and frustration. And the whipsaw of hope and disappointment is intolerable. You feel alone in the struggle and desperately want rest and support. Maybe it's possible to put down the struggle without giving up on your desires.

Skills for better emotional regulation, thought hygiene, and nervous system care.

You crave respite from the 'stressed and busy' culture that is our universally accepted norm, yet remain deeply suspicious that respite is remotely possible. Being 'stressed and busy' is no small thing. Your nervous system senses this exquisitely. And if you have any history of being chronically and/or traumatically stressed, especially as a young child, the imprint of this is still there, compounding your current experience of stress. Stress is not what happens to you, but rather, how you respond internally. Quite simply, the more time spent in an activated stress response state means the less time spent in a restorative state and as this imbalance gets more pronounced, it undermines health and vitality. 

All you know is that life has felt hard and overwhelming for longer than you can remember. Mostly it feels like survival, and just barely. You yearn to feel more peace, satisfaction and enjoyment in your life. Sure, you can disconnect from the world for short periods, but the relief is fleeting. 

You’d prefer to know how to co-exist with stress, without it knocking you sideways. Here’s a little secret – it involves learning how to stay rooted in your physical body while relating to ALL your emotions, not just the ones that feel good. Yes, that means the ones that seem overpowering, like they might swallow you whole. 

Most of us didn’t learn this growing up, but it’s not too late to learn body-based emotional regulation that caters to the care and feeding of your nervous system. Focusing on your nervous system has a ripple effect, for it interacts with every other system in your body and it governs your stress response (with emotional, cognitive, and physiological components). Recalibrating your nervous system can lead to better sleep, digestion, relationships and health. Maybe it’s time to quit focusing on the external stressors, and instead focus on your internal response to them.