Trauma Informed Coaching with Emmy Marie
The Jordan Lang Podcast: Episode 04
Content Warning: discussion of abuse and trauma
Welcome to episode 4 of the Jordan Lang Podcast! We are continuing season 1’s theme of emotional and mental wellness with today’s episode which is a conversation on Trauma Informed Coaching with Emmy Marie.
Emmy is a certified trauma-informed life coach who specializes in helping clients create thriving lives and relationships after trauma. As an abuse survivor herself, Emmy understands the devastation trauma can have on our lives, and is committed to helping as many people as possible access their power and heal from trauma. She supports clients in her 1:1 coaching program, as well as through courses and speaking engagements. She is based in Oregon, USA, but sees clients virtually all over the world!
Introduction
Before I had my conversation with Emmy, my view of Trauma-Informed Coaching was limited. I had a general idea, but I really wanted to learn more about the benefits of this specific area of focus as well as who it was for.
We know there are all sorts of trauma, but the most well known seem to be the BIG traumas such as physical/sexual abuse, rape, death of a loved one…
We don’t often realize that small things each day could be traumatic to us each day, building and building and building until one day, we find ourselves so overwhelmed that we’re unable to face what’s in front of us.
I’m excited to share my conversation with Emmy on Trauma Informed Coaching and further highlight the importance of inner healing.
Q: What is trauma?
Emmy shares that there’s currently a lot of conversation that’s happening around this topic, and that it wasn’t really well-known or talked about until the late 20th century. That being said, everyone has their own definition.
“It’s the impact of any life event or circumstances that leads to our nervous systems become overwhelmed to the point of not being able to cope or come back to a feeling of safety within the body.” — Emmy Marie
She goes on to give some examples of trauma: a car accident, witness or experiencing violence; an ongoing experience (that you may not think of as being traumatic). Trauma is something from your past which has overwhelmed your ability to feel safe, such as abuse, oppression, toxic religion, family dynamics that don’t let you feel safe or be your true self…all of that can lead to trauma.
The reality is, you can have two siblings who live in the same family — one might develop trauma and one might not. This is dependent on resources (getting help), how they process what happened, genetic makeup/personality, etc.
Emmy says that she personally believes if someone resonates with the things she posts or if someone has something that's limiting their ability to thrive, it’s worth looking into trauma or healing from the past even if you don’t “qualify”.
For me, since following Emmy, I’ve had more of a realization of how involved trauma can be; a lot of times we think of the BIG trauma things, but there are little traumas we can experience every single day and if we're not aware of it and the effects we have, it can make those long term impacts and effect us.
She shares that there can be a misconception on Instagram, that “not everyone is traumatized”. It’s that there are so many people who HAVE been traumatized and don’t acknowledge and so it runs through patterns and doing the same things over and over. So she says that she’d rather err on the side of there being MORE awareness rather than no one talking about it at all.
Long gone are the times of not speaking out. I personally think we’re all normalizing “it’s okay to not be okay,” and I feel like our generation and the ones upcoming are really embracing it!
Q: What is trauma informed coaching?
Emmy says that this is basically a form of life coaching that is trauma informed. It’s different from therapy in that you’re going in there with the intention of coping or processing trauma (symptoms, treating an illness, etc.) Trauma Informed Coaching is more when someone isn’t in a current crisis, but can’t reach their goals and you keep hitting the same roadblocks. She’s a trauma survivor herself and has that personal experience in addition of coaching training, where she’s able to blend the two together. Emmy shares that coaching is future oriented, so if the past is influencing you every single day, setting goals and failing to meet the goals might happen a lot because you’re not address the root issue.
Her personal approach is to combine education with coaching/supportive sessions. She has 1:1 clients who have a 12 week course they go through, and then meet every other week for 90 min zoom call. They also have access to her via slack/text-based support every Monday - Friday, which is different from therapy in that way. She has the capacity to do that and can be there for support throughout the week. With Trauma Informed Coaching, someone is in this with you and is there for you, and it’s possible for your life to improve.
I personally feel like one of the benefits too with people working with Emmy, is the experience with her and how she’s been able to feel and really understand what they may be going through. She can truly empathize and be able to offer them that hope and suggest things they can do each and everyday.
Emmy agrees.
Lived experience, I’ve come to realize, is valuable. — Emmy Marie
She shares how if you’re running a business, you want to hire someone to help you who has a successful business themselves. So it makes sense if you want to work on your healing process, to work with someone who has been through similar things as you have. Trauma is incredibly unique and isn’t experienced by everyone and can lead to a lot of loneliness.
When people say, “you’ve just got to move on,” literally that’s so hard and sometimes you just can’t. We put it back on ourselves. She says that’s where she comes in and to say, “there’s nothing wrong with you and here are ways to help you move through it.”
Q: What are the benefits? Short term + long term.
Emmy shares some of the benefits of Trauma Informed Coaching:
Short term - there’s an immediate relief of “okay, I’m not crazy, broken, irreparably damaged. Other people have been through this. Someone is listening to me and not judging me.” With the education piece, she shares lots of information on nervous system and how trauma works in our bodies, which can provide a lot of clarity and understanding that is very relieving. It doesn’t fix the problem but in the short term gives a lot of clarity.
Long term - ultimately the goal is not to “cure” your trauma. She says that she’s 8 years out of abusive relationship and just recently got triggered by something. She’s constructed life in a way that’s supportive and she practices self care, emotional nurturing and tending rather than pretending everything’s fine and I’m normal.
“The goal of my work is to help my clients understand that who they are is okay and that there are ways to go about getting whatever you want in life. If you have goals and they’re important to you - even if you have trauma symptoms, limiting beliefs or mindset issues - it is possible to make life work for you if you stop trying to put yourself in a box that you don’t fit in.
— Emmy Marie
Within her coaching program, she works to help set people up for success in the long term. Clients work with her for three months with the option to extend their time if needed. Emmy says that the Idea is their life is set up to be supportive of their healing process in the long term.
I think this mindset and the way things are set up has to be great for those who come to work with Emmy! In the short term, there’s this acknowledgement that what they’re experiencing is real and there’s nothing wrong with them.
For me personally, I have depression. So a lot of times when I’m in the midst of a depressive episode, acknowledging that what I’m experiencing is real is incredibly supportive. A lot of times that’s what we need is that reassurance and then having that helping hand to guide us through so that next time it won’t be as long or as hard.
Emmy agrees and shares that it’s hard to put an amount of the value of being in a safe relationship of some kind with a coaching relationship. Trauma is typically interpersonal in some way especially with abuse. Someone was terrifying or something was so shaming that it’s caused you to have a nervous system that’s been activated.
So having someone to hold space for you to be a person and to have feelings instead of trying to push you, sharing “you’re safe here,” it’s so important. So much of healing trauma is just experiencing safety in relationships. So that’s another benefit to any healing modality.
Q: Who is it for?
Emmy says that she typically tends to work with a lot of people who have been in abusive relationships or trauma causing issues or those who hare having trouble meeting their career/life/personal goals, but there’s some block in the way. It could also be those who have something from the past that keeps creeping in. She shares that often it’s people who relate with her posts on Instagram which focus on things such as: shame, struggling with trust, boundaries, navigating triggers.
Trauma Informed Coaching isn’t specifically for any type of person necessarily, but rather if you get the feel that there’s something from your past that’s limiting your potential and it’s frustrating or you tend to blame yourself all the time. Which, Emmy shares, are the people she typically works with.
This type of support is for people who ARE NOT in a crisis situation.
**Important to note: Trauma Informed Coaches are not here to diagnose. The are here to provide support to folks when they’re outside of crisis mode.
Q: What are some signs someone may need to seek support?
Emmy jumps right in, sharing that one of the biggest things is shame. She says that it can be easily inherited from trauma, directly enforced on you from a system or system. Shame is a tactic to keep people under control, and can also can be used as a coping mechanism to explain a situation that you don’t feel you can escape. It can happen a lot in childhood trauma and can lead to you blaming yourself because it’s not possible to fight or flee.
Shame can appear as inner statements like:
I’m not good enough.
I’m not worthy of success (or getting goals met, relationship, etc.)
Something's wrong with me.
Any and all phrases or beliefs like this running through your head.
“You don’t have to live like that. It's hard to unpack those beliefs when you don’t understand where they’re coming from and how to let them go and develop self-compassion. — Emmy Marie
You may not feel supported by people in your life or seen and understood. It could be the most well-intentioned people too.
Emmy says that for her, she felt like she was always pretending to be okay when she wasn’t because she didn’t know how to feel safe. She didn’t feel safe letting anyone in or being vulnerable. So she pretended all was normal when really she was struggling. She needed someone to see her and says she couldn’t do that with the people in her life at that time.
This is why it’s good to hire someone. In doing so, it absolves a lot of guilt that you feel letting go of that baggage. When you hire someone it’s an appropriate scenario: you’re giving her money as your coach and she’s giving space and support to talk about whatever you need to talk about.
Another sign you may need support is that you don’t feel like you have anyone on your side or someone seeing you. Emmy says that generally a lot of people she works with have done “the work” as best they can - they’ve read a lot of books, done mindset and manifestation work, or they’ve tried to set goals and carte habits and really just feel like they can’t do it and they’re stuck.
There’s so much merit in all of that, but it’s hard to do by yourself. The reason we hire people when we want to learn things or develop something, it’s just hard to do things on your own when you feel like you don’t have that support in the process.
I really feel like these are pretty clear straightforward type of things that Emmy has shared! It works really well too in setting goals repeating the cycles.
Q: Do you feel like there’s a relationship between trauma and business?
I know for me, there definitely was, but I was curious to know if there was a pattern Emmy sees within the industry…
Emmy shares that she’s had the unique opportunity in becoming an entrepreneur this year which she never fathomed. She has learned a lot along the way. A lot of the trauma work on herself had already been done to where she could be a trauma informed coach; she shares that she was ready to be a coach but that was different than being an entrepreneur and running her own business.
A lot came up for her around impostor syndrome. She never felt like she’d be good enough and that she had to prove her value. In reality, Emmy learned that not everyone’s going to get the work that she does and that’s okay. Yet it makes sense to struggle with this because if trauma is telling you that it’s not safe to be seen, of course you’re not going to want to put yourself out there in that way.
Other things such as advocating for yourself, speaking up for yourself, having boundaries…all of those things are relevant to business of any kind.
“It’s been a journey, but now I feel like I’ve come out on the other side in a way. Generally, I feel confident. I do still get nervous and have triggers come up, but I’ve developed a way of applying my own trauma healing work to the things that come up around business, especially feeling the “fear and doing it anyway,” asking for support, having boundaries around how long I’m going to be on my phone or doing the work, or how perfect it’s going to be. — Emmy Marie
Emmy says that a huge area that comes up is around perfection and procrastination. Being “perfect” is totally trauma related because if you want to be safe, you need to be perfect. Perfection never happens, so it’s this endless quest unless you give it up. Again, having support and doing the inner work is incredibly valuable in your ability to succeed.
Personally, I can relate with that so much in so many different pieces. The more work I do, the more I realize that I do have this underlying trauma. [Which I feel like that could be a whole episode…what I’ve unpacked in the last year ALONE.] This is why I’m so grateful for the work Emmy is doing because here I am at age 35 going, “Okay…I need support.” And I know so many people doing the inner work as adults.
She replies to this how there’s the whole thing too “time heals everything.” Not trauma though. It doesn’t. Time combined with self-compassion, processing, feeling your feelings, getting them out. Yes time’s going to HELP. However, because trauma is the impact of something that was essentially a life threat - even if it wasn’t - your nervous system felt it was in danger.
Your body’s goal is to stay alive and will protect itself and defend itself. Your body is responding properly to trauma that hasn’t been dealt with; it’s never too late to deal with it. — Emmy Marie
Q: If you could give one piece of advice to someone who’s listening right now who may be struggling, what would it be?
Emmy closes out this final question sharing FOUR beautiful pieces of advice for us to take away with us:
You’re not alone. No matter what you’re going through it’s unique and it’s yours and your the only one who will know what that feels like in your body, BUT you’re not alone. It’s incredible to be in community and realize there’s hope and people who understand you.
There’s nothing wrong with you, no matter what you’re experiencing. It’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with who you are; it’s just your body or brain trying to keep you safe in some sort of destructive way.
All that I teach - it’s all a practice. Want to develop self-compassion and tomorrow you fall back into shame? It’s okay! It’s a practice. This takes time. Take a baby step. The trauma journey is lifelong and will always have obstacles, but there will be a gradual up-leveling. Whatever lights you up and makes you happy, the hardship you may be facing now or the pain in the process. It’s all leading to your purpose or where you’re meant to be.
You are worthy of everything you want. Don’t hold yourself back; you’re not broken. There are ways of making life work for you instead of making yourself into someone who works for life.
To conclude this episode…
A huge THANK YOU to Emmy for this conversation on Trauma Informed Coaching!
I hope that you enjoyed listening/watching/reading. If you have any questions or feedback, I would love to connect with you! Feel free to share a comment below, send me an email, or rate + review The Jordan Lang Podcast on iTunes.
Thank you for tuning in. Thank you for your love and support. I’m grateful for each of you listening and being here.
Sending you lots of love, xo
