Who's in Your Driver's Seat?

Here’s the bummer. After 20 years, I still struggle with promoting my business. Earlier this week, I attended a networking event, and I really didn’t do an effective job of sharing about my new coaching program that I’m really excited about. Later in the day, I was pretending that things were OK and thinking to myself, “It’s OK. At least you tried.”
But the next day, it hit me. Hard. I started thinking things like, “Why do I even try?” and “I’m so tired of doing this. It’s too hard. I can’t get better.” I cried for a while and thought about texting a couple of people that I knew would sympathize with me.
Instead, I asked myself: “Who is in my driver’s seat?

It was DEFINITELY my Shadow. And luckily, because I’ve been working with my Shadow for many years, I recognized it more quickly. This time, it only took less than an hour for me to kick my Shadow out of there, instead of several hours or even days, like it used to!
Once I did that, I started thinking more rationally. I realized those thoughts were lies that would only keep me feeling small. I knew if I didn’t stop acting like they were real, there was no way I would be able to step into my potential.
I thought about my dream of resuming my international speaking career. Who could I reach out to that could help me get better? I contacted Toastmasters. It’s going to be REALLY uncomfortable for me, but I am SO TIRED of my old story, that I’m willing to move through the discomfort so that I can step into my full potential! And I may hire a public speaking coach, as well.
The next step was to continue working on healing my Shadow. I’ve known for a long time that this fear of public speaking started in the 2nd grade. I was always an introvert, and back in those days, if you were an introvert, there was something wrong with you. Public schools noted this about you, and they took special measures to try to turn you into an extrovert. So, there was that. (Read the book, “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking” by Susan Cain)
I remember crying and telling my 2nd grade teacher that I was “different.” She tried to re-assure me, but I felt very alien because my parents were my divorced and my dad wasn’t in the picture. Back then, divorce wasn’t commonplace, and in a town of 1500 people, everyone knew.

And then there was 4th grade. The teacher told us to give a speech to the classroom. It must have been the first time I’d been asked to do this. I don’t remember what my topic was, but I felt confident that I could do it without using note cards, as the teacher suggested. I stood up in front of the class. My mind went blank. While I stood up there in front of the class, the teacher said, “This is why you use note cards.” I don’t remember what else she said. I just remember a hot flush of shame, embarrassment, and humiliation that rose up in my body.
I didn’t have anyone I could talk to about this. My mom had to work to keep food on the table for 4 kids. She did the very best she could, but she drank a lot and emotional intelligence wasn’t her strong suit. Enter, the Shadow. This Part of me stepped into the driver’s seat because it didn’t EVER want me to go through that humiliation again. So, any time an opportunity to speak in public came up, I avoided it like the plague.
And that worked for me until I decided to go into business for myself. I began noticing that whenever I attended networking events, I actually felt a physical urge to run away—to get out of there as soon as possible. Once I started using the coaching modality called Internal Family Systems about a year ago, I realized that this urge to run was coming from a Part of me. I named that Part, “The Runner.”
One of the most effective ways I have found to work with different internal Parts is art therapy. So, to work on healing my Child Part from the 2nd and 4th grade, I looked for a photo of myself at that age.

Ironically enough, the photo I found was in my scrapbook, on a page all by itself. I remember when I was putting the scrapbook together, I planned to see if I could find other photos of me from elementary school. As I looked at that photo of me from 2nd grade, the emptiness of the page really mirrored the feeling of loneliness that I felt back then.
I grabbed my collage box and found a few images that spoke to me: a butterfly for transformation, a tree to stand for the solace I found in nature, a quote about finding confidence (which I need to recover,) and a photo of a stick figure of a pre-teen gawky girl with binoculars—wasn’t sure why I chose this. I arranged the images, including the photo of myself, in a way that made sense to me

As I looked at the image I made, it hit me that the gawky pre-teen girl in my collage was my Shadow, The Runner! She’s been there, trying to protect me all these years, scanning the horizon with her binoculars for signs of threat, and urging me to run anytime I’m asked to speak in public when I don’t have something written in front of me.

The next step was to do some journaling with the different Parts of me. I had a conversation between the Adult Me, the Elementary School Me, the Shadow/Runner, and my Self: a wise Part of me that is whole and undamaged. I wrote about the emotions I was feeling at the time, to thank the Runner for the protection, and to see the bigger picture of what was happening.
The final step will be to do some energetic work to clear the energy of this experience. I will probably create another mixed media image to help the Elementary School me unburden. I’ll use my Radiant Heart Clearing & Activation process to release the energetic imprint these experiences made on me. I plan to use my Finger Labyrinth often to release the energy related to these experiences, because there is so much of this that no longer serves me. And I will definitely check in with the Elementary School Me every day through journaling and meditation.

     This is an amazing process—the most effective I’ve found so far. You can do it on your own, but it’s even more powerful to do it with the support of a coach. If that sounds appealing, check out my new coaching program, Pathways to Potential on my website: BecomeYourOwnGuru.com in the coaching section. I would love to support you in the  process of having more control over who’s in YOUR Driver’s Seat!