Too big, too much, too me
What happens when you think you are just too much for other people (including your therapist or coach)? How do you even begin to know what you need to work on, just that you have to do something different? This is a story from my own experience of trying to squeeze my issues into socially acceptable shapes, even when I’m the one seeking help.
I’m on week five of a training course I need to do to retain my accredited coach certification (ICF ACC). The trainer is warm and approachable, the other participants are open and curious, it feels like a safe space to learn things. So why have I just spent the past hour or so going back over a Zoom recording of the session looking at myself and cringing?
The particular bit I am freeze-framing was a practice coaching session where I was the client. I scrutinised myself for every big emotion, every time I said too much, every time I was, well, just too me. I wasn’t even being evaluated, I didn’t have to perform, I wasn’t the person doing the coaching and looking for feedback. But the tricky thing about being AuDHD is that every time I open my mouth I do feel as though I’m being judged. Despite years of work on self-compassion and becoming more authentic, there’s a constant need to be a version of myself that is more acceptable to others. I just don’t fit into the small socially sanctioned spaces that are available to me.
We were meant to choose a manageable topic that could be material for a 15 minute coaching session. My problem is that nothing in my life feels manageable, and much like avoiding small talk at parties, I dive straight into the heart of things, usually with a lot of emotion. I also think as a speak, and tend to narrate all the different tabs that are popping open in my mind, and I have no idea where I am going or what I am trying to get out of the session. So when the coach says ‘what do you want to get out of the next 15 minutes?’ and ‘how will you know if you’ve got there?’ the ground opens up underneath me and I find myself being sucked into a vortex of ‘just say the right thing’ only to find tears welling up and bigger things tumbling out of my mouth in some kind of existential orgy of chronic over-sharing. If I said ‘I want to bring an existential orgy of chronic over-sharing’ I know the coach would run for the hills. As it, is I just about hold myself in and say something more socially acceptable like ‘I want to feel less stuck’.
Afterwards, I feel wretched, I think they all hate me, and here I am rewinding every interaction, looking for signs of approval on Zoom.
When I look back at the recording with a different lens, one of compassion, I see myself trying to help the coach, saying things like ‘it’s really helpful to say this out loud’ and apologising for bringing too much, at one point saying ‘perhaps I’m just not very coachable’ and trying desperately to scale things back. I know I’m bringing too much. I can sense their panic. This isn’t what a training session is supposed to look like. They are trying to put me through the standard process, ask some pre-scripted questions, tick the right boxes, to get me to a point of transformation. It’s not the poor coach’s fault that I don’t fit into their model. All the while I’m thinking, this is bigger than me, more tabs are opening up, I’m overwhelmed by my own complexity, I’m experiencing some sort of meta-level fly on the wall feeling where I can see myself saying things I know the coach will like such as ‘I will journal on it’ and simultaneously knowing that I have absolutely no intention of journalling, then getting distracted by the Zoom tiles opening up in front of me like little portals into each person’s private universe.
Perhaps you’ve felt something similar in previous therapy or coaching. A sense of ‘what am I meant to be doing here?’ or ‘have I shared too much?’ or conversely ‘maybe my issues are just not important enough?’ All of these are common concerns that come up for neurodivergent clients.
This post isn’t intended to put you off therapy or coaching. It can be enormously helpful to have someone be with you in your complexity and help you make sense of it. What it is intended to do is shine a light on the kind of conversation you really want to be having.
So, if we look at my discomfort during this coaching session from a different angle, what would have helped me to get to real insight rather than performing a version of myself as a client?
It would help me:
to know that nothing is too big, weird, complex, contradictory, shameful, tiny, pathetic, existential, niche, random to bring;
to land in my body as well as travel to all the different places my busy mind can take me;
to believe that my therapist/coach ‘gets it’ even though they are not me, because they also experience being too much sometimes;
to hear them share some of their genuine feelings and experiences so I feel less alone in my own feelings and experiences;
to suggest a way to think about things so that I have something to hang my thoughts on for a while;
to work with metaphors and imagery if concrete action steps seem impossible;
to not feel a pressure to transform, or to say what I think my therapist/coach wants to hear.
Because I know these things would help me, they are also the kind of things I offer to clients I work with. But I never assume anything. I would always ask what might help you to be present, to feel comfortable, to stop saying what you think I want to hear and start saying what needs to be heard.
What would help you to do that? This can be really personal. It might help you to move during a session. It might help you to turn your camera off so you feel less observed. It might help you to know what to expect and to follow a structure. Or it might help if the session feels more spontaneous and free flowing. It might help to be interrupted if you go off on a tangent. Or it might help not to be interrupted so you can fully download what’s going on for you. There is no ‘one size fits all’ approach here.
I know how it feels to be in standard therapy or coaching with a well meaning practitioner but struggle to relax enough to get what I need from the session. Some of this is about building a relationship, which takes time. Some of this is about me feeling safe enough to unmask. Some of this is about knowing I am talking to someone who understands because they have lived experience of neurodiversity.
So, when I say that I work in a neuroaffirming way, I’m not doing this as a tick box exercise in diversity and inclusion. I’m doing this out of a deep respect for your differences. I’m not here to fix or change you. I don’t label constant movement as anxiety. I don’t interpret lack of eye contact as shame. I don’t perceive your need to tell me all the backstory as irrelevant. I don’t assume your silence is because you are avoiding the subject. I do tell you what I think when you ask me. I do share examples from my own experience if I sense that it might be helpful to hear that you are not alone. I’m human, messy and real.
Coming to therapy or coaching requires a great deal of bravery and vulnerability. So it makes sense that I need to be brave and vulnerable too. As a client I have often felt too big, too much, too me. As a therapist and coach I want you to know that I am here alongside you in those feelings, you haven’t shared too much and your issues are important enough to bring.
