Shock. Relationship injury. Now what?
Left alone with double the pain…or accompanied in the fire, through the process of rupture and repair?
In 2016, I was sitting in a circle at a training, feeling safe and connected to the group.
Out of the blue, an off-color joke was made. The room erupted in laughter, but I was frozen.
Shocked.
I spoke up for my parts: “I wouldn’t feel comfortable if that was said to me." Four years later, I understand that the comment was made in the space I occupied, and it was enough that it felt unsafe for me; I didn’t have to make a distinction between it being made to someone else or to me, because my parts took it in and that’s what matters.
The hardest thing about this experience is that I was alone in it. The rest of the people in the room apparently didn’t have a problem with an off-color sexist joke being made in the training room. Although two other women privately told me they agreed with me, they weren’t able to speak up in the larger group to support me.
Being alone with something that doesn’t feel right, that’s shocking, that pulls the rug out from underneath — it doubles the pain of the original injury.
The aloneness of being shocked in a safe space is something I’ve experienced many times. Thinking back to this particular experience, I connect viscerally to how raw I felt, how excruciating the pain was for my parts, and how vulnerable I was, having trusted the group and opened myself to it.
Because I know how extremely painful it is to be alone in a shocking situation, one of my top priorities is to stay present if I ever do something that shocks or causes harm.
The coaching relationship is a sacred, safe space. My highest priority is to honor that safety. And yet — there are times I may say or do something that doesn’t feel quite right, whether it’s a small miss or a big one. My goal is to always be available to repair those misses, with no statute of limitations. It may be, “that question doesn’t resonate but what I’m noticing is…” and it’s a simple redirection. Or it may be that something felt off in the session, but it wasn’t clear at the time, and that clarity only came later. However it unfolds, I commit to being available to getting to the absolute bottom of it and making the repair that needs to be made. Even if it means seeing a place in myself that was a blind spot, I’m absolutely committed to doing the work on myself that it takes to repair any misses.
If there is a rupture in our coaching relationship, I dedicate myself to SHOW UP and not leave anyone ALONE with that rupture. I want to stand in the fire, and commit to a “no abandonment” policy after a rupture — because being abandoned after an injury doubles the pain. Knowing exactly how excoriating it is to be injured, and then alone with the injury, I want to do everything I can to stay, stay, stay with whatever impact arises.
That is my commitment, to honor the sacred nature of deep inner work, and to stay in the fire. It’s messy work, and sometimes there will be misses. Relationships, by definition, entail rupture and repair. By staying and walking through the miss to the repair, we learn that it’s possible to stay — stay with our own pain, stay with ourselves, stay with each other — and reach the other side, the repair. The reconnection. The re-attunement. All worthy things to learn.