How to BE with a Crumbling World

It was 1997, and I was sitting in a training room next to my co-leader. The workshop was called Process, the fourth in a series of five 3-day CTI trainings, offering a solid foundation of co-active coaching skills. 

Facing us, in a horseshoe arc, were two dozen students, eager to take the next step toward their dream of becoming a Life Coach. 

For the next couple of hours, we would invite the students to dig deeply into their own discomfort…    

I took a deep breath, and said a silent prayer for guidance. We were about to introduce an exercise that always creates tension. For the next couple of hours, we would invite the students to dig deeply into their own discomfort, to get in touch with their specific emotional triggers, or as we called it, “what they can’t BE with.”

Typically, there’s a wide range of stuff that comes up for people. As we went around the room, asking each student to share vulnerably, we heard statements such as “I can’t be with watching a parent hit or scream at a child,” or “I have no room for people who always blame, and refuse to take responsibility for anything.”

The students’ body language grows defensive, as we observe crossed arms, or refusing eye contact, as others admit, “I can’t stand the torturing of animals,” or “I can’t watch graphically violent movies, especially if women are stalked and powerless. I just have to leave the room.”

Simply voicing these examples creates a level of anxiety, with flight or fight response just below the surface. As you think about it for yourself, you may notice your breath getting shallow, your palms damp. Underneath the specific scenarios, we uncover various uncomfortable emotions, such as the hurt of rejection, humiliation, terror, rage, powerlessness, or despair.  

The purpose of the exercise is to identify those issues and emotions that trigger you to such an extent that you would have difficulty staying present for your client, if the issue should come up in a session.

In these moments, the knee jerk response of the unseasoned coach is often to divert the client away from these feelings. Our cultural conditioning teaches us to move attention away from unpleasant subjects and onto more “positive” ground.

When we honor emotions, by making room for them and feeling vulnerably, we reclaim the power to do something about the change we hope to see.

Yet with experience, the wise coach discovers that denying genuine emotion is not “positive.”  When we honor emotions, by making room for them and feeling vulnerably, we reclaim the power to do something about the change we hope to see.

The Process workshop is all about learning how to accompany our clients into these uncomfortable spaces, and bring empathetic presence in such a way that the client surrenders to his or her emotional experience, and makes an empowering discovery.  

I’ve been thinking about this exercise a lot lately, because right now our world feels like one big “What You Can’t Be With” exercise. 

For some, being with chaos, uncertainty, violence and civil unrest is very difficult. For others, being with the boredom and curtailed freedom of the pandemic is making them want to climb out of their skin. For many, prolonged income loss means eviction, or a significant threat to day-to-day survival. And for far too many, watching loved ones die from Covid, while being sequestered from their side, is unbearable.

These are just a few of the visible stressors of life in 2020.

Additionally, many of us are choosing to look within, facing uncomfortable beliefs, attitudes and emotions, as we step up to respond individually to the Black Lives Matter movement. Confronting the roots of privilege requires the willingness to not just admit the widespread injustice we’ve lived with, but to feel about it and act.

In so many ways, we are all being tested to tell a deeper truth of the lives we have crafted.

In so many ways, we are all being tested to tell a deeper truth of the lives we have crafted.

Put all of these, and more, together at once, and you can start to feel into the extreme discomfort of the moment. In the U.S., we are less than four months away from a presidential election. It feels like our country is on the verge of civil war. Going out to the grocery store may be a potentially life-threatening act. How much more can we hold?

As I think back to the Process workshop, just asking people to speak about the topics that caused them anxiety triggered a range of coping behaviors.  By the time we took the first break, some had to step outside for a walk or a cigarette. Others dug into their bags for food or chocolate, while others huddled in groups crying, and giving one another support.

We are now living a daily barrage of what you can’t be with. How can we cope?

One thing is clear: this is not a time to go to sleep. It is a time to expand our compassion, for ourselves and for others, and to stretch our capacity to sit in the midst of uncomfortable emotion, with no clear resolution in sight.

One thing is clear: this is not a time to go to sleep. It is a time to expand our compassion, for ourselves and for others, and to stretch our capacity to sit in the midst of uncomfortable emotion, with no clear resolution in sight.

In my next post, I will share some of the strategies I find useful when navigating the unknown. But before we jump into a list of things to do, let’s slow down, breathe, and simply BE, inviting deeper compassion. Compassion is a deeper octave of caring, born of sorrow. If we will let it, compassion has the potential to connect us in profound ways, leading to understanding and change.

The challenges we face together have the potential to foster courage and emotional depth. We can learn a lot about ourselves, and each other, if we will cultivate compassion and reach for understanding.

Perhaps building bridges of compassionate understanding is the most urgent calling of the moment.