Summary
In this live coaching session, Joe works with a woman who struggles with allowing herself to be seen and sharing her personal story. She runs groups about addiction and wants to share her perspectives, but finds it registers as a major threat. Joe helps her discover that the discomfort isn’t the problem — trying to overcome the discomfort is what takes her out of her body and away from her truth.
As the session unfolds, Joe guides her to speak from the discomfort rather than trying to manage it. When she finally lets her authentic frustration through — expressing anger at unhelpful addiction advice she received — a palpable shift occurs. Joe identifies layers beneath the surface: suppressed anger from childhood, beneath that sadness, and beneath that joy. All were layers of herself that weren’t allowed.
The breakthrough comes when she realizes that in situations where she was telling her story and feeling uncomfortable, her actual truth was that she didn’t want to be telling her story at all. The real story isn’t the content — it’s whether she’s listening to herself in the moment. Speaking truth isn’t about vulnerability performances; it happens in each present moment by asking “what’s my truth right now?”
Key Concepts
- Speaking from discomfort rather than past it
- Truth is a felt experience, not a performance
- Suppressed layers beneath the presenting issue
- Not speaking your truth is self-harm
Key Quotes
“What if being uncomfortable is the best way to share your story?”
“Speak from the discomfort rather than from the desire to overcome it.”
“Beneath the anger that wasn’t allowed is a sadness that wasn’t allowed. There’s a joy that wasn’t allowed. It’s just layers of you that weren’t allowed.”
“You got taught how to be your own oppressor. And you’re learning how to break free by telling your truth.”
“The truth isn’t the words you say. The truth is, are you allowing yourself to feel it all in the words you’re saying?”
“My truth was that I didn’t want to be telling my story… And that is actually the story.”
Transcript
In this coaching session that happened during one of our live Q&As, we meet a woman who’s really struggling with allowing herself to be seen and to share her story. And when we work, we find out what’s actually underneath it. And it’s not what you’d think. I’m like kind of nervous. Um, so, uh, something that I’m looking to get more comfortable with is, um, like sharing my story and sharing personal information with people. Um, I have been doing it a bit and lately I’ve noticed that it like registers as a really big threat in my mind. How how much more comfortable do you want to become? Um, completely comfortable. Okay. And how comfortable are you currently? Um, from zero to 100%. I would say I’m at like 25% and I would want to be at uh I would consider 75% to be totally comfortable. Okay, great. So, you’re literally raising your hand in front of some 200 people to do a what is clearly going to be a deep coaching session. I mean, you could prevent it from being a deep coaching session, but I don’t think you would raise your hand unless you wanted a deep coaching session that is being filmed and is going to be distributed to far more than these 200 people and that’s 25%. Well, I’m I’m definitely not comfortable at the moment. So, Ah, okay. So, to be specific, it’s not that you don’t do it, it’s that you’re not comfortable doing it. Exactly. Yeah, I have been doing it quite a bit. Oh, great. So, what makes you need to be comfortable? Um, what if what if being uncomfortable is the best way to share your story? That seems um like it makes sense. Yeah, let’s try it out. Um, give me like a one paragraph story about yourself. That’s uh he’s got like a 50% charge. You’re sharing it to me, but you’re also sharing it to everybody. Okay. So I um I have been running groups where um I’m talking about addiction and sharing some of my like perspectives and ways of thinking about it with um anyone who shows up. Um and I have personal experience with people who um Great. So what what’s happening in your system right now? Are you trying to overcome the discomfort? Are you fully in the discomfort? Are you comfortable and discomfort’s not happening? What of those three things is going on? I feel kind of like like sort of out of body experience. Cool. And is that is that is that what happens when you’re uncomfortable or when you’re trying to be comfortable? I think when I’m trying to be comfortable. Okay. So try to be Yeah. See what it’s like to like instead there’s this discomfort feeling in you. I want you to like sit in that discomfort. Walk right into the middle of it and then speak from there. like try to speak from not even try speak from the discomfort rather than from the desire to overcome it. Um, so I am uncomfortable describing um my own experiences with addiction. And um so when I get speaking about what um I want to share, I’ve noticed that I won’t say what I actually want to say about it. What do you want to say about it? Stay in the discomfort. Oh man. Um, what I want to say about it is I think that there’s a lot of really stupid, unhelpful things that people recommend and prescribe and um I’m kind of pissed off about the fact that I was influenced by those things. Yeah. Wow. All of a sudden something just shifted. Everybody could feel that shift. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um notice notice something. So just you’ve you’ve suffered the addiction. Is that correct? Yeah. Yeah. Great. So notice that there’s a parallel happening. What did you have to do to actually get you through the addiction? What did I do after after all you all the bad advice you played with blah blah blah blah blah. What was the actual movement that was like that brought you here today? I refused to do anything that was harmful to me. Great. So that’s what’s happening now. Okay. Holding back your truth is harmful for you. It literally it looked like you opened the tap and you came out when you started saying I think there’s stupid things that people tell you to blah blah blah blah blah. Like it was like boom, you were you were with us. All of a sudden I was with you. I wasn’t with your mask. I wasn’t with the trying. I wasn’t with the trying not to try. You’re just right there. You stopped doing harmful things to you in addiction. I assume like you popped out like the same way. Yeah. Yeah, I I did. Um and it wasn’t taken well by many people around me. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. Takes a village to make an addict. Yeah. That one hit you. You stopped letting that hit you. What? What? What? It takes a village to make an addict. Yeah, that made me kind of angry. Huh. So that’s the other thing I’m noticing is the thing that’s your truth that you often don’t speak has some has some anger in it. When you felt angry, you stopped it right now. When you like when you did pop out, you were just like I think there’s some stupid things. There’s there’s an anger there. Yeah, right. That probably was suppressed as a kid. That probably helped the addiction occur. Even right now, I see that it’s being held when you were waiting in line like in the you had this kind of like you, you’re not going to pick me like this is stupid whole thing going on. Is that what it looked like? Yeah. Kind of despondent a little despondent teenager. That was kind of what it looked like. Huh. Interesting. Yeah. And then I talked about my wife and you smiled like something lit up in you. I was like, “Oh, there’s something underneath the despondent teenager. Let’s go find out what it is.” Huh. Yeah. Oh, there. What? What? What just happened? Huh? What? What? You were smiling. What just happened? What’s happening is the anger is turning into sadness really fast. Yeah. But I don’t think that it’s sadness. It’s all of it. Beneath the anger that wasn’t allowed is a sadness that wasn’t allowed. There’s a joy that wasn’t allowed. It’s just layers of you that weren’t allowed. Right. Yeah. That you are currently not allowing even like in this moment. You you got taught how to be your own oppressor. And you’re learning how to break free by telling your truth. Yes. Yeah. So, what’s your truth in this moment? What’s your truth of this moment? I don’t care about the addiction or anything. Like, what’s your truth in this moment? Um, I am um I’m enjoying this conversation. It’s a challenging conversation but it’s uh very um invigorating. Yeah. So even in that that was beautiful because you actually allowed the truth out for a minute and then there was like then the control like you started with the control it came out then a little bit more control like this is this is the game of telling your truth. It doesn’t happen in front of a group of people talking about addiction. It happens right now and it’s all of you. The truth isn’t the words you say. The truth is, are you allowing yourself to feel it all in the in the words you’re saying? So, what’s your truth in this moment? Allowing yourself to feel all of it. Yeah. There. Yeah. I feel um like very uh like sweaty, like hot. Yeah. Yeah. That that’s common. Just by the way, that’s common in your in your in your where you are right now in this conversation. That’s a very common thing. When this work starts happening, there’s a lot of heat comes out. Do you mean by that that it’s a phase that No, it means like whenever you’re like confronting a part of yourself that is looking to like slough off or get healed, whatever the words are you want to use. And in this kind of way, there’s a lot of heat that happens when I’m working with people one-on-one. I’ll see them sweat. I’ll see them like it’s part of the part of the process. Interesting. Yeah, I’ve experienced that before. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so what’s your truth in this moment? Every time I ask it’s getting here you are. No, no, you’re not the despondent teenager. You’re this. Um my my truth is gratitude. I’m really grateful for um this experience and other things that I’ve that I’ve learned. Awesome. And so the other thing that I’m learning here in you is like when you’re when you’re in the the when I say what’s your truth in this moment, something opens up. But then when you start talking, there’s some sort of like control self-consciousness that occurs. What makes it different when you’re talking than when you’re just what’s What’s your truth in this moment? What makes it different when you start talking? I don’t I don’t know. Let’s let’s let’s do the experiment again. It’s it’s it’s changing just by you being aware of it. So, what’s your truth right now in this moment? Um, I’m confused. I’m recognizing something about the movement from being embodied. Yeah. Using nonverbal to verbal that there’s some juncture. So, go non-verbal for a minute and let the nonverbal talk. I know that’s weird to say, but like I’m going to say, what’s your truth right now in this moment? And don’t even think that you have to say anything. So, what’s your truth in this moment? So much power you are holding back. Holy shit. You must have been just like this willful, powerful little girl. Holy shit. I can’t imagine you. Did you play some sort of sport? No. I should have. Oh my god. You should have. Oh my god. You just did it, by the way. You just spoke from that place. All you said was, “I should have.” But it was all there. Yeah. It’s a lot of energy. It’s a lot of energy. Yeah. It feels really good when you let that that flow. Mhm. And every time you don’t, it is self harm. So that’s the trick is that as you go through the next like days, weeks, don’t worry about it in front of a camera. Don’t worry about it in a group. Worry about it in the moment. The moment with your mom or your dad or the moment with me or your friend at the what is it to speak your truth in this moment? So you’re not doing the self harm and all it requires is the same thing I’m doing which is just asking like what’s your truth in this moment? Yeah. Something just clicked. Yeah. What clicked? The situations where I was um telling my story and it being uncomfortable. My truth was that I didn’t want to be telling my story. Yeah, there you go. There you go. It’s like, oh, I’m supposed to be whatever vulnerable or whatever the Right. Right. Fascinating. What a teaching. Right. I don’t want to be telling my story right now. Yeah. And my story is that I am listening to myself not and I’m saying I don’t want to tell the story. And that is actually the story. Holy shit. Thank you. Pleasure.