The Coherence Sesssion Experience
An overview of what you can expect in our sessions, and a feel for the process of transformational change.
The Coherence Coaching Process
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We begin by identifying the behavior or pattern you would like to shift. This is the first step, and it is really important for us to get really clear on what it is you’d like to address and why. I will want to understand: what are you experiencing, and when does this occur? I will ask you to bring to mind a specific time in recent memory when this came up.
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We will spend some time in this experience. This will feel like a deep dive. In order to connect to the mental model that is unconsciously driving your pattern or behavior we have to first find it, and we will not find it in your thinking mind. We have to connect with it in your felt experience.
Imagine we are in the same room with your mental model, but it is completely dark. We can’t see anything. There’s lots of things in this dark room, and we are stumbling through together. Your mental model is in here somewhere, but it never learned how to speak with words. It cannot call out to us to find it. The only way to find it is through your felt sense. I’m inside the room with you, always by your side, guiding you as you do.
Our focus in Coherence Coaching is to discover the mental model driving the pattern or behavior you are looking to shift, and then gently guide you through unlearning it.
This outline will give you a general idea of what this experience could be like in sessions. It is important to note is that this is not necessarily a linear process. There is no set timeframe for each step. Steps may need to be repeated multiple times. We will spend as much time as it takes for the unlearning to occur.
We will know that our work is successful and can be concluded when the pattern or behavior we are targeting no longer occurs, without any effort on your part.
We find your mental model and we bring it out of the dark room. For the first time, we can see it in the light. It is now in your conscious awareness. It now has a voice.
Remember that your mental model is an implicit emotional learning, formed at a particular time and place in your life during an experience of strong emotions. Your mental model has been in that dark room ever since, believing that the old experience, time, or place are all current, real, and true. It has been operating on that assumption this entire time, and it has been working hard. This is the first time it has been brought to light, and it feels a little disorienting.
We spend as much time as we need here connecting with the newfound voice of your now conscious mental model, and hearing what it has to say.
The coherence of what it is doing based on what it knows to be true is impressive. All its work makes perfect sense based on its learned experience.
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A note on timing
What I described this far can take several sessions. Mental models are not easy to find. Each of our patterns or behaviors is tied to an incredibly specific emotional learning, or mental model. Remember, these learnings are acquired by our brain implicitly under strong emotions. They are unique to each individual’s internal experience, regardless if the outward experience is unique to them or not. No two mental models are exactly the same.
This is why two people can go through the same external experience but develop two completely different mental models, driving either the same outward behavior, or a completely different behavior. This is also why two people presenting with the same outward behavior can have two completely different mental models behind it.
In-between sessions
After each session I will email you a brief statement summarizing what we uncovered. I will ask you to read this statement once a day (as long as it feels ok) so that you can stay in touch with what we learned so far.
Our mental models can only operate based on what they know to be true. Our work now consists of making your newfound mental model feel and understand what’s true here and now.
I guide this in a way so that you experience it both viscerally and cognitively, simultaneously. We need both the felt sense and the thinking mind on board for memory reconsolidation to happen.
We hold two experiences side by side: the old experience of reality on which your mental model is operating; and your very different current experience of reality. When we do this, the brain naturally starts sensing a mismatch. Both of these sides cannot be true at the same time.
Once we get to this point the breakthrough can happen within moments. It can feel like something big finally clicking in your brain, and a huge feeling of relief being released from your body. It’s this unmistaken, felt knowing: all the work your mental model is doing in the dark room is simply not needed. Suddenly, it no longer makes any sense. It feels completely irrelevant. It may even feel absurd. It is a knowing of absolute certainty: there is no urge, need, or motivation to ever go back and do it.
It feels as if a powerful force that was unseen and unheard suddenly no longer holds any power over you. Its existence has completely dissolved.
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This is the feeling of liberating, permanent, transformational change.
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