WHY LIMITING BELIEFS FRUSTRATE ME AS A THERAPEUTIC CAREER COACH

If there’s one thing that frustraaaates me about a lot of ‘popular’ coaching, it’s the language and structures used around what keeps us feeling stuck.

You’ve probably heard of self sabotage, limiting beliefs, negative thinking…

As a therapeutic career coach, what I feel this language misses the mark on, is the emotional and developmental stuff that sits underneath - which is often shame, or something that sits in the neighbourhood of shame, like: frustration, apprehensiveness, self-doubt, feeling skeptical or unsafe.

Essentially, some sticky feelings that can feel quite vulnerable to talk about, or even more so, feel.

Every ‘limiting belief’ (or, as I prefer to call them, ‘protective beliefs’) has a function.

At some point, it’s made enough sense to be embraced and knitted in to how you see the world and do things.

When we use the above sort of language for these things, I notice that it can create or strengthen the roots of a meta cycle of shame and self berating, keeping us rooted in our current system or being and seeing.

It might sound like:

🪾 “Why can’t I just let it go and figure this out?”

🪾 “I just need to get out of my own way and stop sabotaging myself”

🪾 “I feel like I’m never going to be able to make this work when I’m a negative person and have bad habits.”

🪾 “I can’t do what I actually want because I might fail or be wrong or look incompetent or be disapproved of”.

Oof.

Those statements bring up a sadness for me; they’re a little painful, no?

Do we really want to continue in to our next chapter of work beating ourselves with the same ‘not quite good / right / competent enough’ stick?

Get your eyes reading anything by Brenee Brown and you’ll realise that shame perpetuates an underlying feeling that we are ‘wrong’ or ‘bad’.

It triggers our fight-or-flight response, which shuts down our clear-thinking brain.

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Not so useful for a career coaching conversation, hey?

Not so helpful for figuring out a career change, rebuilding after burnout or managing career stress, growing in to a new leadership identity, or managing uncertainty whilst creating a new business, either.

And that’s why I’m all about compassion-based career coaching.

Maybe that makes some of your toes curl (Cringe! I want ACTION, what’s compassion got to do with it?), but hear me out.

Compassion can invite shame in to the room when it’s been used to hiding.

It can give shame a hug and tell it “I get it” AND that we can do it, and you deserve to do it, differently. (Empathy PLUS change).

It understands you adopted this way of living, thinking, being for valid reasons that made sense at some point, or for a long time.

Perhaps those reasons were life experiences you went through and needed to protect yourself from.

Perhaps there were messages you received growing up about what was and wasn’t acceptable about you.

Perhaps there were environments or conditions you needed to adapt to in order to function or succeed in your career.

Compassion melts the underlying structures that keep you stuck, so that you can make space for new ones.

i.e. When you get on the journey of creating your OWN version of success, you’re not just changing up your work.

You’re also opening the door to creating a different way of doing and seeing things.

A different way of relating to yourself that lifts and lightens shame; which makes the future path of your work more courageous, more nourishing, more sustainable & satisfying.

And I can tell you, this stuff takes courage and a strong heart.

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