Emotion mapping for easeful life transitions
How understanding how we deal with emotion can help us sustain change
You are reading ‘Like person, like coach’: explorations at the intersection of personal narrative and coaching practice, a monthly newsletter by Iacob Bacian.
Jean-Martin Charcot’s study on hysterical patients from ‘What is Hysteria?’ by the Wellcome Collection
Emotion is part of every day. It’s also part of every coaching conversation.
If you watch ‘Equilibrium’, the movie, you quickly realise that emotion permeates almost every interaction we have, whether we experience it as preference, beauty, feelings of love, hatred or more subtle manifestations such as boredom. Perhaps precisely because emotions are this omnipresent that often they blend into the background and we tune into them only when they catch our attention fully.
How we process emotion impacts how we experience, make, initiate, and sustain changes in our lives. I have seen this in my own journey with therapy and coaching and also in my work and training as a coach. It can cause us to give up too soon, take action too fast, and generally feel rubbish if we don’t have the necessary resources to support ourselves. We know that much, that initiating changes in our lives will not be a straightforward process. What we can do is draw up the maps and resources we can to make the journey as easeful and fun as possible.
Understanding our emotional anatomy is as relevant to someone coming to coaching as it is for the person coaching.
A few weeks back my coaching supervisor, Trish, asked me: ‘How do you shift your emotions after a difficult event?’ I had a hard time describing the steps I would go through to support myself. It went something like: I steep in fury, hide myself in a dark room, I sulk, I wait for those close to me to ask me what’s wrong. Basically, I need an initial moment to myself. Afterwards, I can come back to the world. Sharing it brings huge relief and support. I then take it to therapy which helps me go deeper into the subject and untangle the different threads of feeling, behavior and thought.
As an example, I recently had to revert my NHS name back to its old version, pre-transition, in order to get a Covid pass that matches my Romanian passport. This was a hard thing to do so from the beginning it was laden with heavy and complex emotions. I mapped out some of the emotions I felt at each stage of this process, how I recognised them (in hindsight), and how they showed up in my body and behavior:
💣 Anger
Clue: Passive aggressive tone of voice
Body: Tightness, holding breath in
Action: Slightly impatient with GP receptionist
🥇 Pride
Clue: Complaining and acting as a know-it-all
Body: Energetic, breathing faster, holding tension
Action: Sent a righteous text to my friend
😢 Sadness
Clue: Victimhood, focused on the system’s failings
Body: Chest is tight, in between holding emotion in and letting it out
Action: Letting myself feel sad in therapy
🍃 Calmness
Clue: Softer mind state, reflective, emotionally-present
Body: Relaxed, open, comfortable
Action: Wrote a tweet about my learning: ‘Not every step of the journey will be a win’
🎯 Motivation
Clue: Perspective - seeing setback as part of a bigger process, can see the way forward
Body: Grounded, calm, and rested
Action: Moving onto the next steps I can take on my transition journey
Resources and actions that helped me navigate my emotions:
Time alone initially to process event
Support from loved one, mirroring of emotions
Understanding the core of the issue/impact on myself and behavior in therapy
Sharing the learning with others, turning personal struggle into collective use
Taking the next step I can take towards my goal.
Creating an emotional navigation map:
Here are a few prompts to reflect on your emotional anatomy and plan for a sustainable transition into a new chapter, whether that’s a new job, ways of thinking, city or role.
What criteria matters to your map?
Everyone’s map will look wildly different. The building blocks for mine were: identifying my emotions, learning the clues for recognising they were there, noticing what actions they led to and making note of the resources I needed to navigate these emotions with the most ease possible.
How will you source the emotional data?
Depending on the criteria you choose to map, you will be looking out for different data sets. From self-reflection, to working with a buddy who can observe you, to journalling interactions throughout the day, to using tools such as therapy, meditation and coaching, you can build a rich picture of who you are emotionally across time.
What will you need to unlearn in the process?
Remaining collected in the face of adversity may be considered the rational option in certain cultures and will additionally be influenced by our perceived gender and what it allows us to publicly and privately experience. What do you believe about how you should be feeling during times of change or difficult moments?
To capture your reflections draw out your map using this template. You can fill this in privately or buddy up with someone whom you can reflect with together. Useful for reflecting on one particular event and also more broadly on working with emotion:
Where I’m taking this next:
In the process of writing this newsletter I have thought a lot about the bits in a change process that are uncontrollable. Whether how soon the change will be completed, who will be there to cheer us on, unexpected events, resources we might need which might show up later than we need them, etc.
It brings me to reflecting on spirituality and surrender, both words laden with vagueness and complexity but words I connect to personally and which for now have planted a seed in my newsletter mind for April’s issue. For now, here is a poem:
Santiago
By David Whyte
‘The road seen, then not seen, the hillside hiding
then revealing the way you should take, the road
dropping away from you as if leaving you to walk
on thin air, then catching you, holding you up,
when you thought you would fall, and the way
forward always in the end the way that you followed,
the way that carried you into your future, that brought
you to this place, no matter that it sometimes took
your promise from you, no matter that it had to break
your heart along the way.’
How you can work with me:
One-to-one coaching conversations (Book on Calendly)
I’m always looking for new coaching opportunities and connections. Get in touch if you are looking for a coach or would like to connect.
Find more information about my work on the website
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Iacob Bacian
iacobrbacian@gmail.com
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