Episode #4 ~ It's Time For Trauma-informed Therapeutic Coaching with guest, Lion Goodman

In this episode, I speak with professional transformational coach, author, and subconscious pattern detective, Lion Goodman about his article "It's Time For Trauma-informed Therapeutic Coaching".

We talk about why he feels "it’s time for the coaching industry to confront its original error and shift to a more comprehensive model of whole-system change".

Watch the interview here.

You can read his article by clicking here.
Website: https://liongoodman.com/

Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):

Hi, I'm Gary Schleifer. And this is the meet the author series brought to you by choice the magazine and professional coaching, which we consider the ultimate resource for professional coaches is arena of professional coaching, or more than a magazine choices, a community for people who use coaching in their work or personal lives. We've been building our strong, passionate following in the coaching industry for more than 20 years. In fact, next year is our 20th anniversary. In today's episode, I talk with author, coach, author, speaker, and educator, Lyme Goodman about his article and choice magazine entitled it's time for trauma informed therapeutic coaching. A lion is a professional certified coach with the international coach Federation. As a mind is a professional transformational coach, author and subconscious pattern detective he's the author of the clear beliefs method, a therapeutic coaching process for healing core wounds and permanent clean permanently, I mean, permanently clearing limiting beliefs from the psyche. He has trained hundreds of coaches, therapists, and healers around the world. In this transformational tech methodology. He's the author of five books, including creating on purpose and how to clear your clients. Limiting beliefs. He's published more than a hundred articles on consciousness, beliefs, psychology, and inner development, and has written for of course, choice magazine. Uh, welcome lion. Thank you for joining me today.

Speaker 2 (01:26):

Thank you, Gary. Great to be here as always with you.

Speaker 1 (01:30):

Hey awesome. So I was reading through this article and I, I, I I'm just like blown away by almost a bullishness. The how dare you fly right into the face of this topic about therapy and coaching. So tell me how, how do you feel about that? What made you like, it's almost like you're taking the bull by the horns and saying, no, you guys,

Speaker 2 (01:58):

I am in fact taking a very big bull by the horns. And the bull is the tradition. The long tradition that coaching and coaches do not do therapy, but they're very clear distinction. Coaches don't do therapy and all the coaching schools reinforce this idea that we are not therapists. We don't deal with the past. We allow, we let psycho psychologists and psychotherapists deal with the past. We deal with the present and the future. That's what coaching is. That's how we distinguish it from therapy and Dow shalt not go there. It's a very clear written in stone instruction. And, uh, I'm going, and I'm questioning that. I'm saying maybe, maybe not. Yeah, it's a big bowl. Yeah. And I think there's a good reason for it as I put it put in the article, there's a really important reason. And the reason is as a coach for 20 years, um, what I've seen is that people get stuck and stopped and waylaid and quit. Not because of what's happening in the present or possibly in the future, but what happened in the past, the things that are stopping them, our old beliefs programs, traumas, the things that we tell ourselves inside ourselves, our narratives, our way of looking at the world, our interpretation of what's happening, all of those things are from the past. And so if we can't deal with the past, then we can't help people move forward.

Speaker 1 (03:37):

Yeah, no, I, I, I hear you. And I, I remember clearly in those days it was like, in fact, we did an issue in therapy versus we literally called it versus coaching as opposed to, you know, how to stare be informed coaching or anything like that. And, uh, you know, I, I really wanna know, how did you begin combining these therapeutic interventions with standard coaching methodologies? Like, how do we do this? Or how did you come about doing this?

Speaker 2 (04:05):

Shouldn't the thing is that I never went to a coaching school to begin my coaching. I just started coaching. So, and people did. Yeah. And, uh, so I never was taught, taught that. And so I had the advantage of never being taught that I had to make that distinction. And my coaching began based on my experience in business, my understanding of humanity, my own collective experience of helping other people and also helping myself. I went through 40 years of research and development on myself, finding what will help me move forward with my life. What's my purpose. What should I be doing? How can I do this better? How can it be a better person and took over a hundred workshops and trainings, including lots of therapy, lots of, you know, uh, professional workshops and training workshops. And what I found were the things that worked well for me also worked well for other people.

Speaker 2 (05:09):

And so I, I combined them all as part of my coaching is integrated from the very beginning of how do you get people past their stumbling blocks? How do you, how do I, how did I get past my own? You know, someone was there helping me clear the way so that wasn't in the way anymore. And it had, it didn't matter whether it was called therapy or, uh, or, or landmark asked or, you know, or whatever. It's like, th they all contributed. And there were certain things that worked consistently for me. Most of it didn't work by the way I w we have to state that it follows the old rule. 80% of everything is crap. So

Speaker 1 (05:53):

Not quite the way the rule goes, but we get your drift. That's the way I heard it

Speaker 2 (05:58):

Anyway. So, you know, 80% didn't work and, you know, some percentage did. And so I just kept looking for the common threads of what worked and what it led me to is every time I had a big change in my own consciousness of my own world reality, it was, there was a belief shift. There was a change in my beliefs. And so that got me interested in beliefs, where, what are they, where did they come from? How do they function? How can we change them? And that's what got me onto this particular path of, uh, training people, how to clear beliefs. And it turns out that traumas, our beliefs, our assumptions, our beliefs, our paradigms, our beliefs, our schema, is that we use to see the world, our beliefs, our perceptions are based on beliefs. So, so when you get to the belief layer, everything else changes.

Speaker 1 (06:48):

Yeah. Yeah, no kidding. I, you know, you've, you've touched on this already. Thank you so much for digging into this because it's, it really is a bull by the horns. I mean, just the word trauma informed therapeutic coaching as a title was like, you know, I'm surprised that we haven't had more outrage about it and at least more conversation, let's put it that way. And to your point, you know, coaches are taught to focus on the present and future leaving the past to psychologists and psychotherapists. So, I mean, I think you've kind of answered this, but why are you calling for coaches to be trained in developmental psychology and trained to work with what happened in the past?

Speaker 2 (07:27):

Because if we don't, then we are working with, uh, with one hand tied behind our back, right? So try doing paper, hanging on a wall with only one, it's a classic meme, right? So that's what we are as coaches, when we can't delve into the past and understand what's creating your present, then how could we possibly help a person create the future while we can? So the techniques that have developed in coaching are outside in techniques, well, just do this instead, counteraction. And by the way, that's also a lot in therapy is if you're thinking this will think that instead, if you're doing this, do that instead, get account, get an accountability, buddy. I'll be your accountability buddy. We'll plan better so that you know what to do, you know, each day of the week. And, and then what happens is no matter how much of that kind of coaching gets done, whether it comes from inside the person like coactive coaching, or you're giving advice, we're not supposed to do as coaches either, but we have these interventions, right.

Speaker 2 (08:37):

And the interventions are supposed to help the person move forward, but what, but then they stop, they come back the next week and they say, well, I didn't do my homework. I didn't do the practice you gave me. Or, you know, something got in the way, or I got distracted or I ran out of time and they have all these excuses or what stopped them. Right. And so then you apply more external interventions. Okay, well, this time we'll give you a reward. If you do the thing or, you know, it's like all these, all these interventions are there to get the person to move forward when what's holding them back as the leash from the past. But with them a harder it's like, it's like putting your foot on the brake and the accelerator at the same time.

Speaker 1 (09:19):

Yeah. Yeah, no kidding. Don't align. Do you feel that, that, that the conversation that we had about therapy and dealing with past issues and things like that has changed significantly over the 25 years, that that professional coaching has been around?

Speaker 2 (09:36):

Well, there's certainly, there's certainly a lot more information out there about trauma. I was listening to governor Monte. He was one of my heroes. I got to interview him once. And he's very clear that addictions and mental problems and social problems are all based on trauma, not just our own trauma from our childhood, not just, you don't have to be beat up to have developmental trauma. Maybe your mom just wasn't available much. Right. But we come to certain conclusions as children based on whether our needs are getting met or not. And those assumptions or conclusions are what we then run our lives on. So the fact that people are talking about trauma and intergenerational trauma, uh, and, and the, this is becoming a more common topic and we coaches cannot be left out of that conversation because we are working with people and people have an internal life as well as an external life.

Speaker 1 (10:35):

Yeah. Yeah. You know, it comes to mind, you know, you hear so much now, uh, the term rightfully PTSD or PTs S or whatever, like trauma has all, it's almost like there isn't anyone that hasn't been affected by trauma in one way or another. And so for a coach not to be trained in, you know, like, I mean, literally what, what if a client, a coach gets a client that they start, the client starts talking about trauma, you know, I'm not trained for that. Right. So that's a big fear of mine is what do I do? So, you know, what, what do we do until we take something like your training or learn more about it? What do we do as a coach? I mean, can't just abandoned the client in the conversation.

Speaker 2 (11:26):

True. Uh, so what would I do if I were that coach, or that didn't have any background in psychology, I would get really curious and ask good questions. Like, how is that affecting you today? What are you noticing? When do you get that kind of trigger? What, what triggers you, uh, even that kind of inquiry begins to up the person to look and examine themselves? I mean, my favorite thing that I made up to say is in an emergency apply awareness first.

Speaker 1 (12:04):

So

Speaker 2 (12:05):

The awareness itself is the first step in any intervention, right? So ask questions that, get the person to look inside themselves, to see how that is affecting them. And then you can, if you don't have any interventions to offer, you can just say, what do you think would help you, right. And get, get them to come up with their own solution. Now it may or may not be a wise solution cause not everybody has that kind of training or understanding, but at least it's a place to start. And then when the client's gone, go read and educate yourself about developmental psychology and trauma, because trauma is often thought of as, as shock trauma or, or incidental trauma. It's like, something happens to you, that's bad. And therefore, then that creates PTSD. But there's also developmental trauma, which is where you just didn't get your needs met as a child.

Speaker 2 (13:00):

And that is traumatic as well. It's like little small things over a long period of time. And then there's intergenerational trauma, the trauma that we inherit from our parents and our grandparents and all the way back and their social trauma, which is the fact that, you know, we consider matter more important than people. Uh, so there's trauma has to be seen as a very wide range of social issues that, that all impact who we believe we are, who we believe other people are, who we are, what we believe about the world. And, and that creates our reality or our experience of reality in the sense that it provides limitations on what's possible. So as coaches, we're trying to open new possibilities for people and have them become who they want and get what they want. And you can't do that if their world is limited by their, by their vision.

Speaker 1 (13:57):

Yeah. Yeah. You know, I, I'm sitting here and I'm thinking of way back in my coach training. They there, they had a term of that. They kind of alluded to, you might think your client has some past things to deal with. If they keep circling Dallas, apparently it circled Dallas a lot when you travel. But there was a, literally a term circling Dallas, which meant the client kept being in a cycle of those things. Like you're suggesting that, you know, because of their, they're not moving forward regardless of the interventions that we're working on. So just it,

Speaker 2 (14:33):

Well, what was the solution to that? What did they say? The solution was like, kick them, kick them in the butt or, or, or aiming them toward Kansas city. I mean,

Speaker 1 (14:42):

Well, aim was a good point, but it was too to clearly look and see if the coaching, you know, was the kind of benefiting from coaching or were there some issues that were beyond the realm of a coach and was the possibility of, of therapy. Right. So you're nodding, so you you've heard this before. Right. So, so I'm just, okay, so I get what you're saying and I get that. Do you feel, what, what do you think the coaching industry should be saying now? Like, let's say we were talking about, you know, lots more things have come up about, we've all learned more about trauma and things like that. And therapy. What would you, what would you say that this ICF for the coaching industry should say now about trauma?

Speaker 2 (15:29):

I think a different distinction needs to be made. So for example, uh, therapy is psychotherapists and psychologists are there to work with mental disorders and things that can't be handled with coaching. There are those things that are outside of our realm. I am not a psychologist, I'm not a psychotherapist. And so I'm not really dealing with the person's history in, in the technology that I've developed. What I found is that you don't need to deal with people's history. I don't, I don't listen to people's stories about the past. I dive right down through the story level, the meaning-making storytelling level of our, of our awareness. And I go right to the infrastructure of the psyche, which are, is the belief structure. And if you have a way of changing the belief, because we had our experiences, right, I got hurt, or I got it. Wasn't taken care of blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 2 (16:34):

I don't care about that. What I care about is the meaning that I made of it because that's, what's running my life. It's not the fact that I got hurt. It's the fact that I decided after I got hurt, that I should always hide. So I don't get hurt again. That's where the coaching intervention happens. It's not at the story level. And it's also not at the, at the mental disorder level. It's like if somebody's got borderline or, or any of the other disorders, I don't work with them. I am not qualified to work with them. I refer those people to psycho psychologist, but it's not, but I have lots of ability to work with the person's past, where they made that decision or came to that conclusion, which is a belief. And, and with the clear beliefs method, we actually shift that memory, uh, that occurred. And, uh, in psychology, there's a field called memory reconsolidation, which is what I believe we do what we're doing. We're working on getting that, uh, acknowledged. But, but it's similar. We're going into the, to the psyche where those decisions got made, where the beliefs lay in the subconscious mind and working right there. And these are coaching interventions. It's not training to be psychologists for psychotherapists.

Speaker 1 (17:51):

Yeah. You know what, and I don't know if it's luck or just good thing. You're not an expert in those fields. You're not a psychotherapist psychologist or any of that stuff, which adds a little bit of credibility. And, and, uh, definitely, I mean, I've seen you do your work too, so, um, but I'm, I'm just thank you for that distinction, because now I'm thinking, Oh, beliefs, we work with beliefs all the time, work with mindset, we work with all that sort of stuff. So, you know, I think the key phrase that what I'm taking from that is cutting through the stories that people are making up about it being, uh, you know, it's, it's like you're still, you know, being aware of, is there something like a disorder that needs to be referred or are we re merely dealing with something, a shift in beliefs that, that you're suggesting, right. And not just suggesting, have shown and proved to be the case of moving people forward.

Speaker 2 (18:47):

Right. All people have beliefs because it's the infrastructure of the human mind. In my opinion, just like neurons are the infrastructure of the brain. Beliefs are the infrastructure of the mind, and we all got them and we're all functioning human beings. We're working in the world. Our clients are functional people and w how can we, how can we help them become more functional, more able, more clear about what's possible and more able to create what they want.

Speaker 1 (19:18):

Yeah. Oh, no, that's great. Um, are you the only voice in this wilderness with your clear beliefs, coach training, are there other, such psychology informed and trauma informed programs?

Speaker 2 (19:31):

Um, there I've, I've investigated as many as I can. I'm sure there's others out there, but, um, NLP has a thing called timeline therapy. That's, that's their particular form. Um, there's an organization in England called therapeutic coaching. Uh there's uh, um, uh, there's rapid transformation therapy, which she, she calls it therapy, but it's, it's a similar kind of process and she teaches coaches. So there's, uh, there's coherence coaching, which came out of coherence therapy, this memory reconsolidation program. So there are a lot of people saying, well, coaches need to know this too. And, uh, and so we'll train coaches along with other, you know, other professionals. So there is a lot going on in this field. Uh, I am one of the voices in the wilderness and, um, and my hope is that we, uh, we all get together and can actually, you know, change the ship of state, you know, the, the move, the rudder, uh, be the, the trim tab that, um, Bucky fuller talked about the rudder behind the rudder that makes the rudder move to change ship of state of, of the ICF and the whole, whole view of coaching and say, no, w we, we deal with the past too.

Speaker 2 (20:45):

Uh, we, but in a different way, you know, we're going into, uh, the belief structure and changing beliefs, uh, without doing therapy.

Speaker 1 (20:55):

Yeah. I, you know, what you really, what you said earlier was great. We're, we're, it's the dis the distinction of what is meant by, or a better definition of what is meant by the past is when I think about when I'm coaching clients, I know this may not be identical, but it's not like I'm not talking about their past, you know, it's like, look, so for example, something comes up and I use, um, a Rick Carson's taming, your gremlin methodology. If something comes up and it's related to, let's say their parents or something like that, it's like, well, you know, is that a gremlin is an, a gremlin voice. And do we, you know, what does that gremlin say? And, you know, so we're discussing kind of associating it to another entity, but it's not like we're ignoring it, but I get what you're saying. Trauma is, you know, those are more dealing in the realm of what happened in stories, not necessarily a trauma. So I look forward to, you know, that we, as a profession, get a little bit clearer on what does trauma mean and how do we handle it? Have you been, had any conversations, IPF, have you been challenged by ICF? You're an accredited program with that?

Speaker 2 (22:06):

I am an accredited program and basically I had to translate what I do into their language. So, um, now with this conversation in my article, I might get contacted by them. Yeah, it's fine. Well, I'm looking forward to that phone call. That's the ICF calling the thought police?

Speaker 1 (22:26):

Well, you know, not just that, I mean, to ICS credit, they're continually looking and reinventing themselves. They went through all the core competencies. They're looking at the coach training, uh, markers. I believe they're looking at adding social justice into coach training. I was on that committee. So it's it. I, I, boy, I'd sit right there with you. If there was a panel discussion to be a part of that, not as an expert to just say, why not? You know, I'd be the why not guy. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (22:56):

Well, I, I invite all the other schools that are doing this, that, that have an interest in, in shifting the ICF. I invite them to come to me, we'll create a collaborative conversation and we'll approach the ICF and help make these distinctions different. I would love to do that. And I welcome that very much. I welcome help cause I can't do it myself

Speaker 1 (23:19):

Well. Yeah, exactly. And you're, you know, you, you're on a, on a great path. And I think that that's, you know, a very valuable piece that coaches need to have in their toolbox, um, as they work with clients and as traumas become, well, I hate to say it kind of the norm. It's like, you know, we had parents and we've had trauma, you know, that kind of thing. So, um, what else would you like our audience to take from this article, this wonderful issue of choice, which I forgot to show, what else would you want people to take from this?

Speaker 2 (23:54):

We've talked a lot about trauma and trauma informed was one of the big parts of the title, but also developmental psychology, understanding how the mind works, what it's based on, how it changes like this infrastructure is so important. If you don't know the infrastructure, if you haven't really looked at how we form our beliefs, our thoughts, our perceptions w whether you're taking, I mean, neuroscience is a great model for it, but we don't experience our neurons, right. We, we're not experiencing our brain networks, we're experiencing our experience. And so, so by, so neurology is great and it's great to have it be scientifically validated and say, well, this is the inter anterior singlet that's doing that. That's like, that's all nice to have, but it doesn't really respond to the psychological experience of being human. And so how we develop from the very beginning, from pre birth, from our prenatal experience, that's exp we're experiencing even then in the womb.

Speaker 2 (25:01):

So how does that inform us? How does that shape our lives? How does that shape our, our experience and our limitations? How does it limit us in our view of the world and our ability to interact with the world? This is the crucial question for coaching, because all of the limitations we come across are based in that developmental process. And so the more we know about that, the better coaches we will be in the better our interventions will be because we're retrying to excavate because of this behavioral issue or this lack issue or whatever the issue is. I have a problem with my health. I have a problem with finance. I have problem with my relationships. I, you know, I have a problem with my career. It's all based on the accumulated understandings we have about ourselves in the world. And so when we can go back there to the causal level, then, then the change is so much easier. I mean, I see people transforming in a single session where view they had of the world or their situation shifts. And they're suddenly seeing new possibilities. It's pretty extraordinary. And, uh, so that's why, what I want everybody to know is, you know, get to the cause, learn how to work with the cause. And you will be a better coach and you'll have much better results. And your reputation will soar because of those results, not because of the intervention tools that you use and apply from the outside in.

Speaker 1 (26:38):

Yeah. Great. I I'm blown away. I don't think you really rattle their cage enough. I think you've got it such a great, uh, conversation about what was out there. You've, you've already considered the conversations with ICF. Um, I hope people take you up on the conversation to make a change in the distinction around the past versus coaching and, uh, and to inform us on how to handle therapy. So I want to thank you very much for that.

Speaker 2 (27:12):

Thanks, Gary. It's a pleasure to be here and thanks for giving me a platform for my spouting off.

Speaker 1 (27:18):

Yeah. Hey, it's welcome. Other more controversial. We get to be the happier I'll be too. So you you're starting the ball. Rolling. Well, thank you so much for, uh, for this, uh, meet the author episode. What's the best way for people to reach your lion?

Speaker 2 (27:33):

My training website is clear beliefs.com. My email is lion@clearbeliefs.com L I O N. Those are the best ways to reach me.

Speaker 1 (27:43):

Awesome. Thank you. That's it. For this episode of meet the author, please sign up to our email list@choice-online.com to find previous episodes or subscribe to your favorite podcast app. So you don't miss any of our informative episodes. If you're interested in getting a free issue of choice magazine, head on over to choice-online.com and click the sign up now, button I'm Gary Schleifer, and enjoy the journey to mastery.