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Bill Goodyear - Newsletter, January 2010
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Page 1 of 6 The Uncomfortable TruthWe have been doing some serious thinking over the break: we have developed our ideas about how coach training can support families to move forward, about how group coaching can work and about the real nature of Asperger's Syndrome and how it can seem to be a solid-state, stuck experience and how there must be some movement potential in a person with this condition.Our focus is that families are healthier if people speak The Uncomfortable Truth. Individuals can then stick with the outcomes while people come to terms with how they each feel and what they each see. They can contribute to the health of their family and its ability to move forward and support everyone in making the most of all their potential. Families who don't discuss Uncomfortable Truths are more likely to get stuck and quite likely to stick the 'problem' label on the Aspie. When this happens, deadlock occurs and repeating patterns are created that reinforce the problem thinking. Coaching can help the Uncomfortable Truth to be identified and spoken and for the impact of that to be felt in a healthy way, so that people are rocked off their stuck states and into something more positive and dynamic. We often find families where the Aspie is not encouraged and not allowed and not motivated, and is in fact held safe-and-stuck by a resentful and unhappy group feeling that this is safer than anything else. Lives are sacrificed in this stuckness. I don't want to say 'all it takes is to speak out…' because it is not easy. Speaking out is often not welcome, and of course very real risks are present. Disturbing a status quo is a risky and uncomfortable business but if it is not done, there is a real danger that the risks of sameness will triumph. If no possibility of new experiences exists, nothing will change. In our new coaching groups, we are looking at how support can be created by speaking the Uncomfortable Truth within the group and letting it lie there until the shock waves die down and acceptance occurs… so that people can work towards a new situation of greater intimacy and therefore possibility. This will, week upon week, create closer relationships based on a new level of honesty that will support people in getting their minds off their own problems and onto other people. In seeking ways to support each other they will move their own focus onto the possibility of change. |