Cultivating authentic, powerful leadership
I am on a journey, inquiring deeply about my lived trauma and my inherited trauma. I want to better understand who I am and how I walk through the world. I want to be able to deeply connect with myself. I want to embody “enoughness.”
The armor around my core shame of “not enoughness” causes me to be more distant and less vulnerable. There is a lot of armor and effort spent to maintain dignity and credibility. It’s both scary and relieving to share this experience with you.
This journey of deep inquiry is what drew me to take an incredibly transformative 4-day course in June on Somatics, Trauma and Resilience held by the Strozzi Institute.
I made connections between 3 experiences in my life that I had thought were completely disparate. I recognize now that their interplay reflects my core shame of not being enough. I discovered that I have fought (and continue to fight) against myself, struggling to be seen and to gain approval.
The first experience occurred when I was about 4 years old. I wanted my scientist Dad to explain something scientific to me. He encouraged me to look it up myself. My adult self completely understands why my Dad chose to encourage me to look it up and explore the topic myself. Yet in the moment, as a nonlinear thinker in a linear thinking family, I felt unseen. I took away that I needed to be different, to show up differently, in order to gain approval. I needed to show up as a linear thinker.
Only recently have I realized that the origins of my imposter syndrome originate here too. From my fear of being found out, that I really am a nonlinear thinker.
The second connection occurred when I was just about to turn 10 years old. We were at my grandparents’ house in the receiving line for my grandfather’s wake. I was crying. My Dad told me to stop embarrassing the family (with my crying). I sucked in those emotions and suppressed my tears. To this day, the number and range of emotions I can fully experience has been limited.
The third dot I connected was something that happened just a few months later when I was 10 years old. My Dad’s entrepreneurial venture collapsed due to the embezzlement of funds by one his partners. They were 6 months from being fully self-sustaining. While his partner eventually served 17 years in prison for fraud, my father fell into a depression. I would too, if that happened to me. My father never quite shook it off and withdrew. Today at 91, he’s still trying to make up for it, and prove that he’s capable, that he’s enough. From my 10 year old’s perspective, by withdrawing he abdicated his responsibilities, and my Mom and sister needed support. I took on more responsibility because I felt someone needed to. Thus began a pattern of taking too much responsibility - whether that was about how someone else reacted, or even the outcomes a client experienced. I also recently read a book where the author described the dissonance between the verbal messages she and her sisters received from their mother, and the nonverbal message of her mother’s self-image, which the author picked up on, and followed. I wonder how much of my sense of “not enoughness” is inherited vs my own experience.
As I’ve deepened in my somatic work, I’ve learned that I cannot control nor be responsible for how someone else reacts. I’ve learned that when I take on the responsibility for a client’s outcomes, I actually take up some of the space in the coaching container that the client could use for their own discovery and exploration. Letting go of that allows me to hold a softer container that’s actually stronger.
These patterns show up not only as moods, emotions, and thought patterns, but also physically in the body. Somatics points towards building awareness of our shape - what we do and how we do it in response to external pressures.
I hold my “not enoughness” in my low back, sacrum and pelvic bowl. This shape and the associated patterns of turn away and/or appease have protected me for decades. Yet these factors have also held me rigidly up, unable to feel (and thus fully relax into) support like a bed, or a mat on the floor. The held tension in my low back causes discomfort in my hips and has prevented me from fully feeling and dropping into my pelvic bowl.
Standing up after receiving bodywork in the course (which included eyes, jaw, holding the back and front of the heart, and a hand on the belly) I felt the lower edges of my pelvic bowl for the first time in my life that I can remember! I could settle into my pelvis and be supported easefully. I felt that my pelvis was there to support me! My chest softened. My back relaxed and I felt more grounded.
While receiving bodywork we were invited to inquire with our body what was our fault in what happened, and what wasn’t our fault? We were also prompted to inquire with our body what could we forgive ourselves for around our core shame? The invitation to forgive myself opened the door for me to peer into the other side of my shame where I unexpectedly found joy.
As my body has softened, I find myself moving more easefully. I find others experience me differently. I notice more quickly and intensely when tension shows up in my body. How that contrasts with how I experience energy flows when I’m more relaxed. When I’m more relaxed, there is more spaciousness in my body. My hips, low back and sacrum feel soft and open. I am able to receive more. I feel more aliveness, which usually shows up for me as a streaming sensation through my hips and legs, and a relaxed open softness in my chest.
Your shame and your trauma shape you. They shape your experience of the world and how others experience you. In turn, these elements shape your leadership and how others experience your leadership.
“We are impacted by individual and systemic trauma, and are often reacting out of our survival strategies. The same is true for the communities, members, and organizations we work with. These reactions shape the culture, strategies, and visions of our [organizations]. Working with trauma somatically allows us to better understand how to generate change, and how to sustain it over time.“
Doing our own deep healing can dramatically strengthen our leadership and effectiveness.
Have you been wondering what’s holding back your leadership development? Are you wondering what survival strategies might be at play in how you show up, and how you let others in? Are you wondering how these elements might even be impacting your organizational culture?
If you answered YES to any of these questions, let’s chat. Use my scheduling link to find a time on my calendar: https://arrangr.com/thomasrosenbergletschat