To know a place is to know it in the light and in the dark

A life coach can be a ray of hope for those still experiencing the darkness.

A few years ago, when I was working in a gym, I did a questionnaire with our clients and one of the questions was, would you go to a life coach if there was one available on site?
Mostly the answers were yes, however one person said, ONLY if the person had significant training in psychology or similar.

It remains as relevant today as it was then that I will never be convinced that all the training under the sun will ensure a great therapist, and equally so all the wisdom and lived experience does not necessarily bring about a safe practice for clients.

Somewhere in the middle is the key. I am almost constantly studying (something) and I have found that when I get too far up into my head and my logic, I lose something very important for my practice - the essence of me. I juggle a fine line between theory and experiential learning.

The very reason I started my life coaching business was to draw on what I had learnt in my dark days and to hopefully be a ray of hope for those still experiencing it. Living in the darkness of depression is hell on earth.

Like any duality, I was fortunate to find my way back and I got to experience the polar opposite of pockets of living in the light. It's not consistently there but I sure as hell seek it every single day.

Ten years ago I would never have thought it was possible, until it happened to me. Living in the light to me means experiencing mental freedom.
How did I do this? By giving up the control of my need to control!

There is a difference and one which I don't think can be logically explained. For me it was profound and deeply personal and spiritual.
There's something that happens when we surrender to our minds that are constantly seeking logic, often in illogical situations. Depression is a great example of where no amount of logic can transcend the unbearable feelings. To move through depression is a personal journey and one only we can take with ourselves.
My moving ' through' was about surrendering to my strong mind and going into my intrinsic desires. I had to go in deep!

It was a lot easier to go inwards than it was to constantly wake up every day to fight another battle in my own head! For those living in the dark or have known the dark, hang on to the hope that there is a way through.
It sounds like a spiritual cliché but it is in losing ourselves and who we 'think' we are, is the pathway to finding out who we are and freedom.

If I hadn't experienced my depression and darkness I think I may well be still stuck in my linear life which depended on many things for happiness, which really had everything to do with 'form' or the 'tangible' when, really, the answers lay in the 'formless' and the 'intangible'. I knew I had to go in deep and bring to the surface that 'stuff' that really mattered to me. I also should add that my freedom could not be found by looking at the possible/probable causes of my depression but rather what it was that I was seeking in spite of them.
I sought to 'understand' myself rather than to control my life.
I had to lift my awareness! Awareness NOT followed by action exacerbates depression as it increases the gap between what I believe is the very problem.

Depression, I believe, is an incongruency between a deeper subconscious knowing that isn't yet conscious.
If we recognise this then we also recognise the need to create new habits - it starts with our commitment to surrender and let go of what we think we already are.
We need to step into unknown territory, which doesn't involve leaving this earth, but rather to seek it here. Through the humbling and bowing down to the unknown do we find ourselves and how we interface with life can change beyond our wildest dreams. In my darkness I found a humbling to something that existed that was much bigger than me.

I am nothing in the expansiveness of life yet that expansiveness can move through me to live a life that is everything. And it is when I allow this to happen and I get my ego out of the way that I can experience mental freedom - and that is an ongoing work in progress. Whakawatea.

Carla's Coaching for Health.
www.carlascoachingforhealth.com