Arrival at Primary Emotion
Coaching involves helping clients understand the meaning of their bodily emotions. As soon as people become aware of what they are feeling, they need to either
a) follow their emotions and act on them, or
b) judge that their emotions are Indicating that something inside them is in turmoil.
The dilemma is when to replace emotions and when to replace them. Some emotions tell people that their inner world is Sad. If so, they need to pay attention to what is wrong and figure out how to fix it.
In healthy individuals, as soon as emotion arises, awareness of what is felt also occurs.
Emotion and awareness work together to help people discern appropriate behavior. Integrating emotion and logic in this way is truly at the heart of everyday life. Coaching involves teaching people to gain this skill if they don’t have it, or helping them develop it if they already have it.
The first milestone in the steps of the coaching process set out in the previous section is to help assess whether the emotion people are currently feeling is their Core sense of self. Once they have a feeling, the coach and client must determine together whether they have achieved their goals or whether it is just a stopover to be soon left behind. What clues help to show whether a situation is real, one should stay with oneself?
Evaluating whether an emotion is a primary emotion
People regard an emotion as the Core because it is fresh and new. It arises at that moment in response to changing situations, whether internal or external. It is not an old stagnant feeling that lingers and does not move. It’s not just past anger at remembering being ignored at a promotion two years ago, followed by resignation, nor is it the feeling of grievance that comes from unresolved pain. Instead, it is a vital emotion that leaves the client often feeling very open and perhaps vulnerable. This may be the anger a client experiences when he/she feels that he/she is being taken advantage of, the sadness of losing a loved one to illness, or even the embarrassment or shame of having the blouse or trousers zipper open in public. In therapy, it is an unspecified emotion that is often the most basic.
If the client is feeling something, the client and the coach, or the process between them, must first answer the question: is this feeling a secondary emotion that obscures the more fundamental? For example, does this anger cover up the pain? Does this pain cover the anger: is shame or fear behind the anger; Is there pain lurking behind the emptiness; Are there even deeper tears in despair? Is this emotion a reaction to another, more basic emotion, is the client worried about their sadness, afraid of their anger, ashamed of their vulnerability, afraid of their fear, or upset about their hijab (Shame, boredom)?
To identify primary emotions, Coach should encourage a process of discovery and help the client move forward through the thickets of secondary emotions and thoughts to see if there is something more out there. When clients reach primary emotions, some sort of inner bell often rings and tells them, “yes, that’s it. That’s what I’m really feeling,’ he says. Without practice, it is difficult to discern one’s true feelings, so both the coach and the client really need to converge. Having another listening and concentrating Aries as a co-explorer helps the client pay attention to this search for primary emotions. It also helps the coach know something about the client’s emotional background in general. For example, it is helpful when the Coach knows that the client’s complaints often indicate a combination of unexpressed sadness and anger, and that expressing each emotion separately helps the client distinguish the emotion.
Emotion coaching clients p( 109-110)
Lesli S. Geenberg
