Joel Monk: [00:00:19] Welcome back. This is the Coaches Rising podcast. Today I'm joined by Seth Allison, who is a coach and therapist deeply grounded in attachment theory, internal family systems and cognitive science. And we are going to be exploring just that today. What is the relationship between attachment theory and internal family systems? and cognitive science. And how can we apply this in our work as coaches it? How is it relevant in our work as coaches?

Joel Monk: A little more about Seth, as I've shared, he's a coach and a therapist. He works with individuals, couples, partners and teams identifying attachment patterns, helping improve communication and foster secure connections. [00:01:06] His work draws on inspiration from thought leaders, such as Carl Jung, John Bowlby, Susan Johnson, and Dick Schwartz. And I really enjoyed this conversation. I think it's such a sweet topic, attachment theory, and internal family systems. So I hope you enjoy as much as I did. Here's the podcast with Seth Allison. Seth, good to be with you.

Joel Monk: I am really thrilled, actually, just with our little check-in, our preamble. I can feel my whole body firing away from inspiration from the topics we're going to talk about how are you first of all?

Seth Allison: [00:01:44] Excellent. Thank you Joel. Yeah, I I feel I feel like that little check-in was like catalyzing some good conversation so yeah, I don't want to oversell it but I'm excited to talk to you too.

Joel Monk: [00:01:55] Yeah, I don't Put pressure on ourselves right [00:02:01] So, you're deeply immersed in attachment theory, internal family systems, you've been training coaches recently. You've got a lot of things to say about coaching and relational work we're going to tackle this today. Could you, the first question I wanted to ask you was, if you could just say a little bit how your work is a response to the times, you know, it needs no saying, these extraordinary How is your work a response to these times?

Seth Allison: [00:02:31] Yeah, well, great, thank you. I mean, a great question and a broad one to start with. I think the context, just a personal context is I've been a therapist practicing in the Chicago Land Area in the States for 25 years. So my background is that very clinical training in family therapy and psychodynamic psychotherapy emotion focused attachment based therapy, which is Sue Johnson's work for anyone that's familiar with it, and then I'd say IFS is kind of second half of my career has been really upfront. [00:03:08] So, and I know you guys have had lots of conversations about IFS, so I'm looking forward to piggybacking on those. In terms of the times we live in, okay, I think the word I'd But I think there are two things that stand out to me that friends and colleagues who kind of talked more about the NIAP, but the meaning crisis that we're in and the idea of a trust crisis.

Seth Allison: To speak really broadly, there's been a massive decay in the institutions that used to hold our sense of community, our sense of meaning or sense of spirituality. you know, as much as social media and the internet has intended to be connective, we know that it's actually at the opposite effect in a lot of ways. [00:04:00] I think there are sort of ubiquitous addictions that also keep us isolated right now, primarily technology, which would be a form of dopamine addiction. So my work, I would say my work has shifted in the last two years. and there are a lot of personal circumstances, but from being somebody who works with folks that are dealing with trauma, that are coming in because they have symptoms like depression or anxiety, to working with folks or coming in because they've been doing a lot of their personal work, maybe in therapy, maybe in meditation practices, maybe with a coach, but they feel stuck, they feel really stuck, and they need some technology, that I think in a lot of ways, we might call lower case S spiritual, that holds a kind of presence and helps them expand their consciousness, their awareness. And why did I say trust? The main complaint that comes to me is the isolation loneliness and the sense of not being able to come out.

Seth Allison: [00:05:02] What I find stands in the ways, there's often just a decade or sometimes not even a fundamental basic experience of what it is to feel secure and trusting in a relationship and how to use that and what to do with it. So I think a lot of my work is around helping people, you're going to have to help me with this, but I'll say stay in presence so they can stay in connection.

Joel Monk: [00:05:31] It's interesting, there's a couple of things you've said here that I want to just tie it together and then see where you take it. First of all, my own experience as a spiritual practitioner. although you know these days I kind of like like the word spiritual less and less because it's actually for me more about being more and more in life and being more and more of use and enjoying life but like what I noticed was you know this is classic what was driving my spiritual practice was actually [00:06:04] I couldn't articulate it in this way at the beginning, but I didn't feel safe. I didn't feel that level of trust in life. I often walked around with a kind of either you know, louder or quieter background sense of dread and like something was bad was going to happen. And you know, over the more recent years of my practice, that is lifted.

Joel Monk: And now I feel this sense of well-being. embodied well-being and intimacy with life. And that's what I really wanted, you know, but I was using transcendent practices to try and escape that feeling. So I want to share that, but also just something you said about lower-case spiritual practice, you know, to stay in presence. I didn't expect you to say that. Could you say, you know, you could just kind of riff on what I'm saying and I'm curious what you are doing when you say smaller-case spiritual kind of

Seth Allison: [00:07:04] I think we both trying to say something very similar. Now I wrote down some of your words because I like them a lot. You said basically spirituality connotes a separation from being in life. And I guess maybe I'd call that like large case. Upper case, that's the word. Upper case as think of, if we think of spirituality in the context of institutions, a lot of us might have that association somehow it's bifurcated from actually being present and living, that it, I mean that is not really traditionally what spirituality is. Spirituality is being present connected in the moment and experiencing a sense of safety and intimacy with the world.

Seth Allison: That would be, I think, the definition. Perhaps we've thought of that as psychological, maybe in our kind of Western materialist, We really get a wise spirituality as if it's something because a can't be measured doesn't really exist. [00:08:04] I share a strong belief and I think there's a lot of evidence if one looks closely that that's breaking down all over the place and that I'm forecasting that if we all survive, there will be a Renaissance of more authentic spirituality just because it's like it is obviously desperately needed and people are now. moving towards it. But we've had a period of disruption in decay. So, I mean, that's, I mean, look once I start riffing, Joel, you may have to interrupt me. But when you said, like, transcendent practices to escape, I thought, oh, yeah, he's talking about spiritual, like, overriding, or, you know, short-cutting, which, again, is not spirituality.

Seth Allison: That's a defense. That's avoidance. So, my work, I think because I come out of a tradition in attachment-based work.

Joel Monk: [00:08:53] Are you familiar with Sue Johnson? Have you ever heard of her?

Seth Allison: [00:08:56] Okay. As a emotion-focused therapy practitioner, what I've gotten to witness over the years, in fact, to me, it's like getting up to watch the sunrise. [00:09:05] It's one of the most beautiful things you can experience is couples are caught in a kind of whatever your classic cycle. They, Sue would say, you can play a thousand different songs with couples generally do the same you know, when I say to you, I can't believe you're doing that, what's wrong with you? What I really mean is I'm scared right now, care about you and want to be close and connect. And nobody gets that. So you get into this cycle of trigger.

Seth Allison: What I've had the privilege of doing is when you help people slow down and come more into their bodies, which is an art and a craft as a therapist to learn how to do that. At the very bottom of them, there's some really unambiguous, clear communication, generally fear. And when they can show it to their partner something amazing happens, their partner softens, their head kind of turns like what? [00:10:04] And they have a desire to come close and to comfort and to soothe, and to do what we do when we're bonded to somebody which is help regulate each other. What's amazing is you're watching two people do what people are actually supposed to do, which is what we're built to do, that bonding human relationships and getting our needs met with other people is not co-dependent. It's literally the engine of our survival as a species, and there isn't a close second place, too. So that's where I've started. That's what's formed by thinking of actually about spirituality,

Seth Allison: You could say spirituality is like trying to do that, but do that with the universe. Or an IFS, you're trying to do that, but you're trying to do it with self. What we call self, which we could have a separate podcast on how we break that down and define that. [00:11:03] But let me pause there, so there's a lot to digest. How's that all landing for you?

Joel Monk: [00:11:08] Just beautifully well, and you know, that's a beautiful idea, secure attachment with life itself, or with self, yeah.

Seth Allison: [00:11:18] Right. Right. Right. So that's what I mean by basic trust is that it doesn't have to mean basic trust in a person. If you're in a safe place, if you're in the middle of a war zone, that's not optimal at all. You know, really want to be in that state. You want your manager part and your protectors to be vigilant and to be doing what they do. But if we're talking about spirituality, yeah, I would use that as the optimal state to be in.

Seth Allison: Now, I have a bit of a hiccup with this, which is Dick Schwartz who [00:12:00] is a dear friend and a mentor and somebody that couldn't respect more has been in a 30 year war with attachment folks that self is your primary attachment figure and everything else's second. And attachment folks say bullshit, you know, who you're bonded to is primary and self is kind of this other thing, if it exists. My compromise is that when he says secondary, what he really means is one A and one B. and I think they feed back on each other. So if you're able to work on your security and relationship, that'll affect your whole trust system, and it'll translate into spirituality. If you can work on it in spirituality, and somehow that doesn't translate to your relationship, something's, something's off. Hopefully, hopefully they feed back.

Seth Allison: into each other in that they help you aware of experiencing yourself in the world, in relationship to the world, in relationship to other people, where your brain can optimally process all the data without overloading it with emotion one way or the other. [00:13:07] There you go.

Joel Monk: [00:13:10] I'm sure we're gonna get into some more of the details of practice, but as you share this, I'm thinking about which you know I've been thinking about this a lot recently as I felt for me it's been a deeper invitation into my own attachment practice.

Seth Allison: [00:13:30] Yeah. When you say that do you mean practicing with people?

Joel Monk: [00:13:36] Well yeah so exactly what you're sharing actually I mean both so I mean it both in terms of and this is kind of the question I have for you you know because you talk about Yeah, it's sort of been a move in terms of, you know, sitting by myself and being able to meet the parts of me that feel afraid and having some quite large breakthroughs, you know, which have helped me land even deeper in this kind of innate sense of world being, but also a deeper invitation into intimacy with others because it feels like, you know, that's a real gift of [00:14:19] think I don't think we're even close to recognizing what's possible when we collaborate on a deeper level. And when we attach on a deeper level. So like for example, I spoke to some Ukrainians who, you know, wow, I mean, first of all, that the disruption and intensity they're going through the hardship is extraordinary, but the level of innovation and sovereignty and community that's a risen because of the hardship, the adaptability, I was just blown away by it. So, so I guess I'm coming to this question for you of the importance of attachment in us accessing our deepest creative capacities and in leading through these time, and the gift of these times and that we're being invited into that work more

Seth Allison: [00:15:13] Yeah, so I feel like the conversation kind of dropping a level here and which is exciting. So we're playing, I feel like you're playing with, you know, we're kind of moving from ideas down into experience and back to ideas and I feel like that's the beauty of a conversation. That we have, you and I get to both experience something and we get to organize it at the same time. So two pathways, we're talking about two pathways to the same place, right? To a certain state of being that is optimal and that is optimally adaptive to the world. So that state of being processes reality really well. It detects bullshit and it can move away from it. [00:16:01] And it can be very flexible and adaptive when optimally supported and feeling safe.

Seth Allison: So how do you crannies manage that in the middle of the world? It's funny, I brought up the wars up earlier. Collaboration, connection, solidarity, I'm not alone. And then we are able to do things that we couldn't have actually conceived of before war had. And so your point, I'm not glorifying war or suffering in any way, but there's an undeniable reality that suffering is a very fertile place for change to happen rapidly, but found it bears out in my life in every one I work with. which just means transition so in Latin the word Lymen means threshold or doorway. So a better analogy in our times might be hallway that you enter periods of life where you're not where you were in the last room but you haven't arrived at the next room and everything that used to organize you is suddenly not there and you're just in this in between space. [00:17:03] And that's where actually if we're supported well, we can afford to let things drop

Seth Allison: without knowing what's coming next. That involves trust. And then what comes next can be processed in the new way and adapted to and responded to optimally, if we feel supported in the right way. That's attachment in a nutshell. So to illustrate, do you mind, I find that this is just a helpful analogy. So if you picture a baby in a crib, Do you have, I don't know if you have children, so I'll just ask to you. Do you have kids?

Seth Allison: Okay, so this will be very easy. So, let's say a two or three months old, a very young person and imagine they wake up hungry.

Joel Monk: [00:17:50] Right?

Seth Allison: [00:17:51] And you and I as adults, we have conceptualization of what hunger is and what's causing it and what solves it. So, when I ask people, what does hunger, what does the baby actually feel? [00:18:03] They might say hungry and they might say empty. or they might say, you know, kind of crampy. It's like, well, the infant has no idea what any of those words mean. So why don't we just go with pain? It feels discomfort and pain. And when it feels the sensation in its body, so there's a body literally giving it signal, that's hard-wired.

Seth Allison: What is the baby do with that's dad? They cry, right? So this is step two. So step one, feel it in the body. Step two. a baby finds a way to take a physical sensation and turn it into a signal to the outside world. Step three, hopefully dad's in the other room. Here's the cry.

Seth Allison: Get up, walks into the room, but I wanna pause there for a second. Imagine you wake up in that scenario and you go to your kids' room and it's locked and you can't get it. And you hear their crying starting to go up. [00:19:02] Tell me what happens in your body.

Joel Monk: [00:19:05] well, distress, contraction, distress.

Seth Allison: [00:19:09] How long before you break the door down?

Joel Monk: [00:19:12] No long. Yeah. Right.

Seth Allison: [00:19:14] If I really can't get into it, then. Yeah. So what we have there, we want to know at human bonding is your nervous system, registers their nervous system, and you will break a door if somebody didn't have that level of commitment in their body to their body. That's attachment theory. It's an evolutionary survival system. And it is interpersonal because that infant for years to come will not be able to solve that problem in their body alone. Step four, well, sorry, you go in the room, you pick the baby up, you read the situation well,

Seth Allison: [00:20:04] see them and what step four is what happens if you're lucky after that. Remember it's the middle of the night. They go back to sleep, hopefully. So step four is a human being will resume the development mentally appropriate behavior that's on their plate. So let me go over that one more time. If you want to understand attachment theory, feel it in the body, find a way to signal it, somebody gets it and they're there and they respond to it. It works and they calm down and they go about whatever else they need to do, right?

Seth Allison: That is a definition of secure attachment. Now people get confused. They think that secure attachment means you don't get upset. If that baby is raised in such a way that let's say 80 to 90% of the time, their body is responded to pretty well. How do they experience the world? [00:21:01] They walk through the world with a basic sense that when they feel stuff, they can show it and somebody will help. That's somebody who's secure. Is it making sense?

Seth Allison: Yeah, yeah. Can we talk about it in secure?

Joel Monk: [00:21:17] Yeah, yeah, I was gonna tee up like the question around the different, what happens when that's disrupted?

Seth Allison: [00:21:24] Yeah, so I'll give you another picture The picture is called the Strange Situation test, which is a very famous experiment that's repeated hundreds and hundreds of times. So the data's really consistent. And the kids a little older, so let's say toddler. And you come into a room with a parent that they've never been in before and their toys on the floor, but there's a stranger in the room, usually like a social worker. Friendly, helpful, not scary. And a child will in a new place cautiously begin to explore developmentally appropriate activity. [00:22:03] They might even begin to sit down and play with the toys, especially if the parents sit down and play with the toys.

Seth Allison: But the parents have been instructed to get up and leave the room randomly when they get the high sun. So they do that. 90% of the kids, let's say, these numbers may not be totally accurate or exact, but 90% of the kids go to the door. and they scream and they cry and they paw at the door and the social worker stranger cannot calm them down. They hold toys in their face. They're not interested in the toys. 30 seconds later, the parent comes back in the room. And what do you think the kids do when the parent comes back?

Joel Monk: [00:22:45] Well, imagine they calm down or they contact us, made, they calm down.

Seth Allison: [00:22:50] Right. So the first physical thing they do is they reach out. They reach out. for the parent. And the parent reaches back and picks them up or comes down and holds them. [00:23:02] So you're right, we have this attachment dynamic of I'm going to signal to you. I'm not okay. You're going to respond to me.

Seth Allison: And 80% of those kids begin to calm down and get seused by the parent. And then what do they do next? They resume and they go play with the toys. And what you have there is you have the secure attachment loop working. And those 10% don't calm down that that soothing cycle somehow isn't working for them. And so they actually turn the volume up on their parents. They get more upset as the parent tries to comfort them and then the parent gets overwhelmed and they get this negative feedback loop and the kid is never able to calm down enough or feel secure enough to go play with the toys.

Seth Allison: because the attachment isn't working for that. [00:24:00] We call that anxious attachment, right? There's another group of kids and these guys are different. When mom or dad leave, they never leave the floor. They don't go to the door. They stay on the ground and can you guess what they do?

Joel Monk: [00:24:17] Do quiet or, yeah, I don't know.

Seth Allison: [00:24:21] Yeah, they play with the toys. They find ways to keep focused on what's outside of their body, not what's inside of their body. So what's inside of their body is quite similar to all the other kids. They have attachment systems. If you're separated from the person that prepares for you and protects you, your attachment system goes off, these kids have found a way to dissociate from that disconnect they focus outside, and they don't read the signals. Mom comes back in, they'll look, they'll notice, but they won't run over. [00:25:04] They'll keep playing with the toys.

Seth Allison: We call that avoidant, right? There's a fourth one that is hard to watch where we call it ambivalent or disorganized attachment where there's these movements towards the parents but then some part of them puts a foot on the break and stops. and they often fall down, or they do silly behaviors, and these might be abusive situations where I need you, you're the person that protects me and your dangers. So going towards you and I'm breaking at the same. If you understand, those are the very limited set of options that kids have for dealing with when their systems light up. And then you kind of push that forward and you say adult attachment relationships have the same dynamics. They're no different. Only you're both trying to do this for each other, under stress.

Seth Allison: Well, if your strategy for a lot of your life was don't pay attention to the signals, that's gonna create some problems in your intimate relationships. [00:26:06] If your strategy was turn the volume up when you're scared, that's gonna create problems in your relationships. So the only other caveat I'll give then I would love to hear how this is landing for you is that, I do not believe that it's helpful to say, I'm an avoiding attachment person, or I'm an anxious attachment, or I'm a secure person. I find it more helpful to think, we have attachment nervous systems. We have systems within our body that are dedicated to monitoring and securing connection, protection and soothing. They're gonna be activated, and they're gonna be ways in which we respond to those feelings. and we may have some patterns, but a lot of people can kind of move through them so I call them strategies.

Seth Allison: I have an avoidance strategy that often comes into play. Where I go up above and I go into my head and I intellectualize with my part or I have an anxious strategy over here where when I get freaked out, I don't shut down. [00:27:01] I kind of chase them and I poke them and I try to get them to engage with me. And then what we're shooting for with a lot of folks who come in on either end is like, how do you express it in a way where your partner gets it and can respond to you and then it works. And doing that as it turns out, not just creates a sense of security in your relationships, it has this kind of cascade effect into spirituality into who you are in other relationships because it's like your body is now learning what it's like to feel safe and secure. Okay.

Joel Monk: [00:27:43] But that's very helpful for everyone listening to get a sense of how our attachment system plays out. And I'm guessing the answer's yes, but Would you see this deathful playing out, not just in therapy practice, but in leadership, you know, that people's attachment styles are playing out, being activated in, you know, in leadership, which is, you know, relating to people in the world, and it's complex and challenging.

Seth Allison: [00:28:14] And people's attachment things are playing out with their leaders, which is all the more challenging to be a leader with all that stuff being projected towards it. Yes. Right. So, if we were to talk about, I'm sorry for interrupting you, but just kind of going with that idea, what is, what is attachment based leadership look like? John Bowlby is the intellectual father of attachment theory back. He was a British psychoanalyst in the 50s, and he came up with kind of two terms that describe the function of an attachment figure. Just means, if your body starts throwing up signals, can you return to somebody and have them help regulate you? [00:29:05] Will they be your safe haven that helps call me down?

Seth Allison: Secure base is, I know that you're there and you're gonna be there for me. So I can push off and launch from you. Think of an insecure base if you try to jump from it, it falls over and you don't jump very far. A secure base is steady, solid, rooted, you know it's not moving. And what I, the phrase I love more than any other, especially in leadership is the person who's launching off of you can give it everything they got. They can take optimal risks if they know your steady and secure. How powerful is that if you're trying to run a company or an organization? If people experience you as a secure base,

Seth Allison: that then allows them to work and take optimal risks. Not too risky, but they can dedicate all of their energy towards stealing whatever it is on their plate that they need to do their developmental task. [00:30:01] That's on their, so to talk with leaders about that is like, it makes perfect sense. It's not that complicated. Folks have to be able to come to you and you're gonna be effective at helping them sort and soothe and figure it out. And they have to know your steady and stable, So that they don't have to worry about you and they don't have to worry about dedicating energy in their own systems to danger, which is really where people start to lose efficiency. So yeah, I mean, that frames the conversation with leaders quite well.

Seth Allison: And the reality is you can approach that from a hedge level. Oh, how should I be a good safe haven for this person? But I think where we're going is, Mmm, attachment systems don't work up in heads. They work in bodies. And so a lot of folks who achieve the C-level have used avoidant strategies to get there. They've disconnected from their body and they believe that's a virtue to be able to stay clear headed to get stuff done to achieve all sorts of compulsive performance as a strategy in work. [00:31:13] always rewarded.

Seth Allison: But then if you switch to, but my job is to be a safe haven and a secure base for people, that is a huge detriment that you're not emotionally connected and understanding the signals in yourself and others.

Joel Monk: [00:31:29] So there you go, I want that for, and I know how you feel about this because we checked in about it. This, you know, we were talking about the role of a coach, in our times and I shared with you as playing around with this term transformational practitioner because which I'm going to steal. Yeah, yeah, because if they're the intensity of our times, you know, that I think as a response to what our clients need, we're being invited to do deeper work with people and work at the level of attachment, as well, and so yeah, I wonder how you feel about that. [00:32:06] What possibilities you see and how you view

Seth Allison: [00:32:10] the role of a coach, so, you know, how I coach people is difficult for me to separate from being a, how I've been a therapist for 25 years, but as I was telling you, the difference in many ways between therapy and coaching is the client, and if they're coming in in a place where they're not, way below the line and struggling with symptoms and trauma. They're not looking for healing. They're looking for healing if they're down there. If they're up at a baseline, a pretty good. But they're saying, yeah, I want to become more effective, powerful and essentially emotionally intelligent for for myself, for my family, for the people that work for me. Yeah, I mean, there's a degree to which I like to be [00:33:00] most folks in those positions really, their manager parts really need to understand it before they trust and let go a little bit.

Seth Allison: So it's helpful to have a framework and attachment theory is a pretty good framework. It's pretty accessible, but then you need to practice. And so your views embody that today is a phrase and I think it is a really good header on the attachment system. You can't learn how to hit a golf ball by reading a book. You can't learn how to be embodied by reading a book. And you need practices that help you. And this is where IFS comes in for me, that I think IFS is a technology.

Seth Allison: You could think of it as, oh, I'm gonna go in my head and I'm gonna talk to parts. And I think that's a real, that's a pretty, that you can do that, that's a pretty limited version of IFS. where IFS is really powerful is when you allow it to be an embodied practice where you're connecting with parts that actually are in the body that are exerting influence on your nervous system. [00:34:11] You know, helping, unless instead of saying leaders, we'll just say individuals that are looking to grow. As an attachment guy, I'm thinking, okay, how do I help them be a secure base How do I help them be attentive, present and available, responsive and engaged to their own bodies and their own signals? And IFS is just like brilliant to it. It's just brilliant.

Seth Allison: It's a relational model. And so it reflects what truly reflects what it is to be human, which is where all multiple, we're not made up of a single monoself. We're in constant dialogue and relationship with our bodies, our signals. We also personify things, it's just how we do it.

Joel Monk: [00:34:57] So it's really easy to call in parts and to work with them.

Seth Allison: [00:35:00] Whether you truly believe they're literally little people in you, which I would say Dick Schwartz does believe, or you're willing to be flexible and say, no, no, they're real or not, but that's how I'm experiencing it and that's how we're going to go through it. And developing that sense of, oh, my parts can feel their feelings. They can bring them to me. And they actually, and this is where I might do I have that sort of differently, Joel. I just end up being like the old EFT couple's therapist. I'm helping a part get to what's really going on and to say it to the person. And I don't have to tell the person a lot. Here's how you respond to that.

Joel Monk: [00:35:42] If they're kind of, we say in self, which can be confusing.

Seth Allison: [00:35:46] When they hear it, they naturally have compassion. They naturally want to move towards the part. And what the part gets, sometimes for the first time. Oh wow, I'm not really alone here. I'm not really actually by myself. [00:36:00] And then what happens after that sometimes needs no direction at all. It's if something's been restored and suddenly the part can just see the options more clearly and they can do what they want to do.

Seth Allison: And they often have really basic requests to this self. I think you probably know this. It's like, you know, it's like just reassure me that you're not going to drive us off the road. or reassure me that you want these things that I want. And can I trust you to be in leadership here? And then it actually feels that simple to me now. And it's lovely, it's deeply relation.

Joel Monk: [00:36:38] Well, I think you're speaking something really important here and I know you talk about relational growth and I think we're in that topic now and you could say more about it, but it's really important what you say about it's really simple at distinction between, you know, when people are doing parts work and it feels a little more mechanical. you know, there may be in self-like parts and, you know, there's a sense of it like as the facilitator, you can feel they're not fully in the process and they're not wrong for that, that's not right, but there's a big difference between that and when, you know, [00:37:18] the process is happening by itself, like as you're describing it. It's like that you don't need to make certain invitations so much because that's already naturally unfolding, and that's just how exactly is it? There's like an intelligence to the process and exactly.

Seth Allison: [00:37:35] Exactly. Right. It's really nice. There's an intelligence to the process that I'm trying in some ways to not get in the way of, If you can get somebody fully down to their primary gut-held emotion, and they can actually say it, get out of the way. You're now in the way if you start trying to coach them, you're taking away the opportunity for them to flex the muscles. [00:38:05] But I want to pick up on your coin. A coach who's just getting into IFS, what I'm talking about right now is what we might

Seth Allison: simplicity that lives on the other side of complexity. Okay. Yeah, so I think when I'm talking about this and I'm describing the sunset over the Grand Canyon of watching the attachment system suddenly work, where I don't have to get in the way, suddenly it's just part feels presence, self feels part and then their feedback loop is just suddenly working. That sounds beautiful and simple, but it is a kind of simplicity that lives on the other side of a very complex mountain. And so, if I'm talking to coaches that are just getting into IFS, a lot of times, the best way to experience what I'm talking about is to do a demo and to actually feel it and to see it. [00:39:03] Just like if we were trying to learn to swing a club, the best way to do it is swing a club. And then there'll be a moment where you get that contact with the ball and it goes and Okay, and then the next hundred, you don't get that, but there's a kind of body learning so maybe that's the intelligence.

Seth Allison: I think what I would go back to, so you mentioned self-like parts, and I'd like to say a word about IFS for those that are kind of getting into it, everybody at the beginning turns self, we reify it, we turn it into a concrete thing, and so you'll hear folks say, I'm in self or I'm not in self and I'm blended with the part. And that's how we talk about it. But unfortunately, that creates a real binary that isn't totally accurate. When I was in a training, my very first I fast training, there was an older guy that had been doing a long time and somebody said, so how often are you in self? [00:40:01] And he went, oh, 10% of the time, like, at best and everybody went, okay. And it's like, yeah, how about we just say self energy? And the self-energy has this wonderful quality to it. And is it a manager part that has a lot of self-energy where are you actually in kind of a self-energy space?

Seth Allison: You can make those distinctions. But are you feeling, I got the eight seas, curious, calm, compassionate? Are those things coming through or is it something else coming through? That is the basic question that in IFS And I think my point to people is like, you gotta kind of be technical in how you, there are certain steps to follow that are really clear protocols about sorting that question out, right? You know, how are you feeling towards a part? Well, if you're not feeling those eight seas towards a part, we've got another part we need to go to. [00:41:04] But you know that moment when suddenly the parts are clear enough and you go back and you check in on the net the part you were just talking to that you didn't like a second ago,

Seth Allison: And suddenly there's this aha, like, oh, I see it differently. I feel bad for it. Can you tell it how you're feeling? Can you, can you? And I might say now, I might say, could you just move towards it? There's the attachment difference. I'm not trying to necessarily focus on a conversation. I would like, if self had a body, I'd like self-spotty to be close to that parts body, so that it, it, it.

Seth Allison: You know, the part can do the reach and the self would actually be there to sue that. That's what's in the back of my mind as I'm doing.

Joel Monk: [00:41:49] What's beautiful about this is I'm noticing how attachment and this is a question I have like to ask you which is how does attachment theory deepen your practice with parts because I notice, for example, often, or to again automatically, it's not like I'm thinking this to happen, you know, if I if a part, if a you know, if a part and with is childlike, you know, [00:42:13] often, there'll be an automatic kind of like, I'm just, I want to reach out and pick up the part and, you know, now the parts like looking at me in before, you know, often my ex-al parts, right, they're not looking away, they're looking away. Yeah, and they're right, they over that, when that contact unfolds, they start to brighten up and they turn towards me and then we embrace and like, often that's enough, you know, Exactly. Right.

Seth Allison: [00:42:43] Excellent. By itself as well. It's like we'd so I think, again, with the audience in mind, it's, I'm using, this is just how I'm thinking about the world and I'm thinking about, well, you know, if I'm seeing a couple, I'm thinking kind of the same thing. But I've got a diet inside somebody, so I'm kind of thinking the same thing. [00:43:02] But what you just said is really helpful because it's like, yeah, think about that kid on the floor with the toys. When they look at the parent, it activates the system. And the system feels really uncomfortable and bad. So they want to look at the toys.

Seth Allison: Mom comes in, they might shoot a glance, but then they look away. So the poor little part doesn't believe anybody's really there and if it looks at you and you're not really available and you're actually not going to work, that's really painful. So, but when you're there in their self-energy, again, But you're in love and you have capacity to love. And the part looks at you, it sees it. And it's different. And it's drawn towards it. But in IFS, we have certain protocols that really help when parts don't trust it.

Seth Allison: So if that part's been living for 30, 40 years without that love, it's probably not just magically going to be like, oh, you're here now great. [00:44:07] All right, we're good. And so I think what IFS would Dick is done, is he developed protocols of how to move kind of slowly and not overwhelm parts that have legit and trust issues and how to go, like, you might, let's say that part didn't just run to you, what we would do is just be like, all right, let's stay in witness for a while. Let's not move too fast. And so you end up asking, if you're gonna say anything, you say, what do you want me to understand? And maybe a part will bring you a memory, Maybe they'll tell you, or maybe they'll give you a sensation in their body. And we try to help people just stay, okay, I think you're sending me this.

Seth Allison: Is that right? Is that what you want? What do you want me to see there? What's important that I get? Is there anything else you want me to see? And once the witness scene has happened, usually a part is ready to go, say, I got a lot of achy stuff in me. [00:45:04] I got to get it out, or as a, as a, as a coach or therapist, I might say, I don't know if he knows this, but if he feels ready, we could go get all that stuff out of their body. Oh, yeah, absolutely, please, and we call that on Berkeley, right?

Seth Allison: Now, you know, I keep wanting to bring this back to coaching because I've been doing this for, you know, a decade plus, I get to practice it every day, it sounds really great. But it's really tricky when you're in that in the midst of that with somebody you have your own parts coming online. You have a part up here saying, am I doing this right? What if I don't do it right? This is why the same thing with the leader in real life. Once they start trying to do attachment based leadership, they've got the same problems. They're getting triggered. parts are up wondering if they're doing it right.

Seth Allison: [00:46:00] How do I read the feedback from the people that are working for me? Like this is not like a flip-a-switch kind of thing. Like it's really a practice that one develops over time. In that sense, a spiritual practice with being embodied, knowing how to understand the internal data in you, how to understand the external data coming towards you, use the term mentalizing earlier. how to mentalize about what's going on inside of other people, like what that data's all about. Like this is the thing that I like to coach and like to help people with. And I think I do think it's a higher level of coaching than maybe we talk about just generally. I don't know, you could speak to this so much more than I could, but you've gone on what sounds like quite a journey

Seth Allison: to arriving at a transformational practitioner where that feels really resonant and true for you. [00:47:03] And I think this show is a lot about kind of helping coaches, maybe explain to me if I'm wrong, but helping coaches explore what is possible in this field. Given that, I mean, everything I'm talking about, how does that inform a coach who's listening to this at wanting to move more into a context or a consciousness work? what might be going on for them as they were.

Joel Monk: [00:47:31] I mean, I think I, because I speak to a lot of coaches, and you know, of course, people listening to this podcast often have heard me or other guests talk about this. So, right, but when I meet new coaches, first, firstly, what I notice is if I talk about an improvement paradigm, which is often based in something's not right, something needs to be solved. We need to be somewhere other than we are. This is a paradigm based on what one of my mentors Steve March calls the poetic attunement where all you're doing is attuning to this moment and supporting the client to attune to this moment. [00:48:11] So in a sense, you're dropping the change agenda and you're coming from a place of, what if everything, what if I'm already whole, and what if everything I need is already here? So you can feel the quality of difference in that. So when I speak to new coaches, they just go like, what a relief, because a lot of coaching is kind of subtly reinforcing that sense of deficiency.

Joel Monk: It's actually parts, your clients' parts are coming to you as a coach with a, with a coaching topic, and if you're not aware of this deeper territory, you can kind of play the game of subtly reinforcing attachment, patterns and parts. So, you know, just the last thing I'd say, because I can see you want this something bubbling up for you, [00:49:07] move towards wholeness and, you know, kind of almost like universal principle of integration, which is that, and I think Dick, Dick named it in his work, but you see it in many other paradigms, you see it in Jim Dethmer's model, it's there, it's like this move from Um, you know, Einstein's idea you can't solve the problem from the same level of consciousness that created it. So parts, polarize and try and fix each other. So there's this shift into self, into presence, into the light, into above the line. You know, it's been named in so many different ways, but that shift into presence.

Joel Monk: that presence has the capacity to create that secure attachment to its presence that's the healing integrating ingredient in the work and its presence. [00:50:00] It's not only that, but it's from presence. That's where we access a kind of liberated intelligence, a spontaneity, a requisite, response to life and a deep sense of intimacy and interconnectedness with others. I think we're yearning for that collectively. We've lived in a paradigm that's kind of accentuated a hyper-individuality and identification with parts. I'm careful here to not make a part wrong. That's a little bit of what comes up to your question.

Seth Allison: [00:50:37] I'm very glad I asked it. I mean, you do articulate the fact, much better than I could have. So I mean, to reflect it back to you, the central theme here is a paradigm shift from coaching as improvement, which is essentially kind of subtly, and sometimes not so subtly of pathologizing model, it starts from a fundamental idea that we're not in the place [00:51:07] And that, and my experience is one way to say that is we end up coaching managers to keep doing the problem better versus helping managers relax into trust and intimacy with self or take their place at the side of the table instead of trying to run the meeting from that. But that is, I mean, we could probably stop now that's probably it. I loved the phrase, it was a Steve March's at the so poetic attunement as sort of a counterweight or a contrast to kind of a classic optimizing performance model, which I, there's an attachment phrase for avoidance strategies that they tend to break down into two classes. So we might call these parts manager parts. And a number of avoidance is trying to not pay attention to the signals.

Seth Allison: [00:52:00] They're not trying to avoid intimacy. That's what we think attachment means is I'm playing this out with a person and I either want to be really close to a person in an anxious or I want to stay away from the avoidance. It's like, no, actually it's the relationship to your body that you're being avoidant with. Or the relationship to the anxiety in your body, which you're too close to in your overwhelmed body. So somebody who's used avoidance, they still want intimacy, they still want closeness. But they've had one of two strategies. They've either compulsively performed or pleased or they compulsively caretaped other caretaken people. So I'm going to focus on getting the accolades of performance.

Seth Allison: And that's going to keep me safe in this world. Notice what's not going to keep me safe is tuning in to my body and relating any discomfort or pain to people. That's going to go very badly for me. So what's going to keep me safe and keep people connected to me is if I do really well. [00:53:03] That's probably 90% of the people that come through my door for coaching. The other option with avoidance styles or strategies is I'm not going to focus on all this data because again I can't bring that to somebody and expect it to work but will work to keep people close to me if I need them is I'm going to read them like a book and be the ideal caregiver There are a lot of leaders that are really good with people that that's what they're doing, but then they struggled mightily with boundaries. So you have both of which the key word is compulsive.

Seth Allison: What that means is underneath that there's fear and I'm being driven by the fear more than I am by the positive experience of what I'm trying to achieve. That's a paradigm where a lot of problems are created where you just can't fix and then that's same paradigm. [00:54:00] You have to shift out of that manager part to be able to see what's happening. That's the avoidance strategy stuff. There's a corollary on the anxious side.

Joel Monk: [00:54:13] Well, could you say, I mean, I think that's really helpful, and I think it's powerful because you can see, and I can see that in my own journey, you know, both of those, like, if I perform, if I put out a self image, you know, that it's kind of, yeah, a good person, good husband, good father, but also if I, if I please, if I accommodate, don't, it's great comfort.

Seth Allison: [00:54:40] I read you well, if I meet your needs well. Yeah.

Joel Monk: [00:54:44] You can see how that plays out in a lot of leadership. Those are like too classic. core leadership themes and you can tie them back to attachment styles. I mean, you know, in a way like our whole conversation has been, I know you're going to talk about the avoided, but I know her, her conversation has been about how do you work with those topics? [00:55:05] But could you say a little bit about how you would, you know, do we use IFS and the different parts

Seth Allison: [00:55:18] He, 100% would, but here's how it's think about it while I'm doing that. The way I would think about it would be this, for folks like that kid on the floor playing with the tools. Fundamentally, folks that are doing the avoidance strategies, again, I'm not using styles. I'm saying that these are strategies that therefore they can be flexible. If I'm compulsively performing, and that's my That's how I feel safe in the world and with people. The antidote isn't telling that person to stop doing that because what they'll probably do is try to stop doing that really well, ironically. And they're going to try to be conscious really well.

Seth Allison: Well, what it what it actually means is for those folks, same with the care taking folks. [00:56:06] Hey, your problem in the the four step baby in the crypt thing, your problem is step one. feel it in the body, like you've got a break that we've got to go all the way back to feel it in the body and start from there. And if we don't do that, the rest of these steps aren't going to come into play. And people are like, fuck, they're like, really, like, okay. And it's really hard because for those folks to stay with the emotions in the body, So they have a lot of protected parts that mobilize to keep them away from their feelings. So yeah, we end up working with those parts that are dedicated to protecting them from beginning swamped, getting overwhelmed, being stuck in stuff that is so painful, but can't be resolved, like baby in the crib?

Seth Allison: What if nobody's coming? What if your hungry and nobody's coming? [00:57:01] Do you want to sit there for eternity feeling hungry? No. Well, human beings to tune out the feelings we call it dissociage. So we're up against firefighter parts that want to numb out and dissociate. We're up against managers that want to perform their way out of it.

Seth Allison: So yeah, I go in and work with them. But the organizing thing with avoidant folks is back to the body back too much.

Joel Monk: [00:57:30] Would you, therefore, make sure that when you were I mean this is probably the case all the time when working with parts that it's really embodied you know you're working with how they show up through the body would you do that and also as those parts are able to relinquish the strategy also then take that client deeper into their embodied life or define that naturally they start to be able to you know sense their bodies more at those parts you know let go of the strategy

Seth Allison: [00:58:03] Can you tell me, give me an idea of what you mean by take them deeper?

Joel Monk: [00:58:09] Well, so I'm thinking of, you know, like Raja Selvam's work on embodying emotions, you know, extending our capacity to feel emotions in the body. So, I found that incredibly helpful as a practice. So things like that, you know, like, so it's not necessarily deeper, but it's like, you know, maybe maybe more, more contained in its focus of just feelings, feelings, you know, right?

Seth Allison: [00:58:38] Yeah. And I think CLG's like another good model for like a lot of their stuff is about, you know, can you feel the feeling? And when they get on like the drama triangle, one of the differences I picked up They're doing this. They believe the same stuff that I have asked beliefs. We're multiple. We have parts. A big problem is we don't feel our feelings.

Seth Allison: [00:59:01] We don't know what to do with them. And so there are all these practices that you just named one to that are like, let's figure out how we feel our feelings. I think that's. I have no problem. 100% yes. In fact, bring them all to bear for folks that are stuck in their avoidance strategies. They could use all of But IFS does a little differently as it adds this relational attachment context to it, that it's not just about feeling the feelings, but it's also about parts being responded to.

Seth Allison: It's about developing a bond, not just feeling a bit developing a bond internally. And I do think that makes a difference. But if you don't have relational competency inside with your parts, you're stuck at a certain level. that resonate for you?

Joel Monk: [00:59:59] Yeah, you know, I think that's a really crucial point. [01:00:03] I'd even go as far to say, like, everything's relational. Yes, you know, I think that's part of the paradigm we're moving out of, which is, you know, we've atomized leaders as if they're, you know, this kind of separate thing from the systems that part of, and that we can coach them in that way, but, you know, we're made of relationship. That's like fundamental to what we are.

Seth Allison: [01:00:26] We do not have a sense of identity outside of relationship because we don't stay in the womb long enough. We come out and what we see in someone else's face becomes who we are or what we don't see in someone else's face becomes who we are. The complexities of identity probably more grand than our topic today, but I can't agree with you enough. and that you can't, you cannot experience yourself or who you are in isolation, without massive distortions. [01:01:04] With it, without a lot of playshots. Now, people that are deep into meditation, more isolated solo practices may be really pissed with me for saying that. But, and I'm not trying to trash meditation, but I do think they're limits that we, We run into, or you know what I say it for myself, there are limits personally that I have experienced in meditation that I shouldn't make global judgment about it because of that.

Seth Allison: But I think it's just really, really hard.

Joel Monk: [01:01:38] I mean, I do want to come to avoid an anguish at this moment. But this topic, I'm with you on this, I think. There's a way in which I, and I think I could speak of seeing this more generally used certain spiritual ideas and meditation to kind of even accentuate that hyper individuality. [01:02:02] You know, even ideas like, no, you know, they're core concepts like no self. Right, right, right. So I've, like, my, even like non-duality for me has become very relational,

Seth Allison: [01:02:17] This is not ironic.

Joel Monk: [01:02:19] Not this, you know, almost like totally dissociated void like feeling of pure awareness, which I think is actually a half-stap or can be placed where people get stuck. No, that it actually brings us into a fluid relationality of interdependence, you know, suffused with consciousness. So I think that's where I've gone with my work. It's like it's all relationship. So, and there's a great kind of liberation of energy and a lifeness in that, you know? It's like it. Yes. Yes.

Joel Monk: It's supportive. Yes.

Seth Allison: [01:03:01] Yes. Well, I could have said it. Yeah, you and I are definitely together there. And I don't have judgment about making a, if your goal is to experience pure consciousness, mean, just did a ketamine journey with dear friends. And boy, did I have that? And it was amazing. It also did not help me in my job. It did not help me with my kids like it.

Seth Allison: and a lack of self back into whatever are other goals in the world are so not impossible and hopefully all we've together works for good but I mean yes to make a pivot tank just because I think in your talk we're talking about leadership which I'm a leadership On the anxious side, keep in mind the kid, remember the kid who can't be suits. [01:04:02] They feel their feelings, they hear totally feeling their feelings. They are overwhelmed by their feelings. And here's what's important. They're organizing the world around their feelings. So let me give you an example. I went through deep depression and a real disorganizing of my life at 40.

Seth Allison: that now at 50 feels like it's mostly reorganized. And I'd be happy to talk with you about that sometime because I think it's a powerful, it's just been powerful for me. It's good to talk about it, and I think it could help people. I was a pretty classic, like, compulsive caregiver. I mean, I've made a living out of it, right? I get paid. to do it being a therapist. Depression came along and it really knocked out my ability to stop to not feel.

Seth Allison: It really handcuffed my managers that wanted to stay above all the signals. And so I started getting flooded by him and when I got flooded by him, I couldn't control my anger. [01:05:03] I couldn't control my sadness. And what I found in her personally in it contributed to the end of my marriage was that I was falling into anxious strategies of attachment, which are you are generally looking to control the other person's behavior so that you can be suited. Whereas the avoidant people are trying to control their behavior so they can take care of that person and eventually they might get their needs met. The anxious folks, the kids that are beating on their parents saying, Suudmi Suudmi Suudmi Suudmi, they're trying to get the parent to do something different. It's at its very essence, anxious strategies

Seth Allison: I'm going to use guilt, I'm going to make you feel bad about what you're doing to me and hopefully that'll change you and you'll be different and I'll get what I need. Or I'm going to use threat. I'm going to bully you. [01:06:00] I'm going to use danger. And if I get you afraid, then you're going to do what I need you to do. If you think about tyrannical leaders in business, those are their two strategies. And they are coming from a place where their emotions are leading them in their decisions.

Seth Allison: And a lot of other data is being lost. Their focus is zoop. And if they feel angry about something, they're going to use coercion and threats and fear evoking fear in their employees to get conformity. Or they could do what we call faint helplessness, which is, I can't believe you're doing this. I work so hard for you. I've given you all this and yet you do this. What is that designed to do?

Seth Allison: Make the person feel guilty like it's their fault. And hopefully that's going to motivate them to do something different. Very toxic, right? But important to have compassion that that's not coming from, I mean, we could call that narcissistic. [01:07:00] We could call it abusive and at the extreme ends it is. kind of levels or modulate levels, it's just an attachment strategy that has come out of a situation where essentially if I didn't turn the volume up, I wouldn't be responded to. So think of it if you have a depressed parent and the depressed parents are off and they're not really available to you. You pull that slot machine bar once by trying to get their attention

Seth Allison: Okay, you're gonna pull it harder. Ooh, it worked. It worked. They got off the couch, they paid it, they came. Okay, does not take long before you know that if you pull it harder, you're more likely to get a response. As you grow up developmentally, you get more sophisticated options of doing that. But they generally break down into two categories. I'm gonna coerce you with fear, I'm gonna coerce you with guilt.

Seth Allison: [01:08:02] So again, on the avoidance side, I'm going to compulsively perform. I'm going to compulsively care to take staying away from my emotions. On the anxious side, I'm going to amplify my emotions to try and get you to conform to me. Both strategies are blocking out a lot of other data in themselves and in the environment. And they're making assessments and decisions that are usually not totally connected to reality and therefore not that effective and Apple Autorists.

Joel Monk: [01:08:33] What's the move there, you know, if with a void and it's helping people feel their bodies, what's the move with anxious strategies?

Seth Allison: [01:08:43] So you think of the baby in the crib, right? So these folks, they feel the pain and they are trying to symbolize it's step two. They're stuck on step two. The way that it's coming out of them is not getting them to step three, [01:09:02] It's not working, that's where it's breaking down. So I've got to go to, hey, you're feeling angry? What's underneath the anger? You're feeling afraid?

Seth Allison: Okay, okay, we got to the basic feeling. Not as hard for them. What is hard for them is they're so swamped that they're really disorganized. And it's hard for them to think in a linear fashion. So when I'm asking avoidant people to tell me a story about when they were stressed out and they needed help. They can tell me a beautiful story in order with details, but it'll have no emotion in it. There'll be no feeling words in the entire story. If I ask the same question to somebody who's generally more in the anxious spectrum, they'll have so many feeling words in it but they're gonna tell it literally out of order.

Seth Allison: It's gonna bounce, oh well this happened, oh no no, but then this, because they're organizing the narrative around the hub of emotion, not the events that are happening in order. Very hard to stay with. [01:10:01] Generally the intervention is, okay, I got the feelings, can we walk back through what happened? Can we keep it in order? Can we tell the story, A happened and I felt B. I did see A happened and then did like, you're basically helping them get back into their frontal lobes that can organize things. The goal being integration for both people. We want to integrate emotion and linear process for both people. So on the avoidance side, it would be, okay, I got it.

Seth Allison: You just detailed for 15 minutes, the interaction with your coworker and how it went wrong and all your ideas about why it went wrong. And but can we go back and when they actually said that first thing to you, what happened in your body? Did, can you check into your heart space? Did, what about your gut? And a lot of what I would do is like we're going to stay there and we're going to repeat that question 10 times if I have to until they start dropping death. [01:11:05] The anxious person. I'm going to have to go, okay, I got it. That really pissed you off what they said.

Seth Allison: Can we go back into what happened right before that? Can we tell that story? Can we talk about what might be under the anger for you? We could try to bring reason in a little bit more. Now, if we think of Secure, what is Secure? Secure is somebody who in a processing format can take what just happened and they can take the vertical accesses what I felt and how intense it was and they could tell a story that has both of those things. Does that make sense?

Joel Monk: [01:11:48] It does. Yeah. Yeah. That's super helpful. And, you know, I'm struck by how, again, I've said this, but that this sheds light on a lot of the dynamics we see. There's a kind of universality to a lot of leadership topics. [01:12:03] And I think attachment theory points to a lot of the reasons for that. And as we come to the end of our time, you know, I feel like, best of all, I would be going to do a

Joel Monk: You know, a couple of questions come up and maybe you can answer both or maybe you just select one that feels most juicy, and I'd love to also invite you to share where we can find out more about your work, but And this might be a kind of contradiction because we've said how relationality is a key ingredient to working with attachment. But I wonder if there are practices that people can do by themselves that could support developing a certain kind of trust that you've been talking about.

Seth Allison: [01:12:56] Yeah, and I think IFS would be the technology that I would go to first and so like an example of [01:13:03] a solo track. And by the way, for anyone that really wants to dive in, there are work books on this that you can buy from the Center for Self Leadership, or, you know, I think Dick is actually written a workbook that would be for home practice. My own personal practice is, I like to journal. I have, there are a certain small percentage of people aren't able to visualize very well in their head or at all. I'm one of them. So I don't get images when I'm working with parts. So it's really helpful for me to write down what I'm hearing them say.

Seth Allison: And when I write it down, they feel listen to because I'm taking time together. And I get to slow it down and go back and like respond to it a little bit. And then what I'm trying to practice and it is always just more of like a reflective listening. Like, okay, so what you're saying is this [01:14:01] will generally say, yes, no, fuck you, you're not getting it. Oh, no, they could say a lot of things. But if I just write a dialogue and sometimes I just, you know, my eyes closed and I'm typing it, I'm just trying to get it down. It, I come out the other side and feel a little more organized.

Seth Allison: Ask questions. I told me one time he has a thing on his wall that says, just ask. And it's like, yeah. get curious when in doubt with a part just ask, get curious, so I mean that's my response on practice. I would also say like, and this is going to sound self-serving and it's just bad timing, but like look for other people that are interested in it, like the power of doing some of this work in dialogue or in groups, is like, it really compounds exponentially to be not alone in the exploration itself, which I think what you're doing here is a huge service for folks. [01:15:12] It's, this is well beyond like reading the book because actually being in this conversation with you, people listening to it being in it with us. Part of what I want to offer the world is more, I think I'm getting used to the idea

Seth Allison: focus on whether I'm a coach like you said earlier like that's the wrong level of consciousness is asking who am I and how do I want to market myself. And it's more like I think what I do really well is I create containers for this stuff to play out. And so I'm trying to you can find me at sethallison.net and don't have a book but I'm trying to figure out ways to make these containers a lot of coaches are reaching out and I'm really really enjoying working with a lot. that coaches are playing a role in our society, that therapists can no longer play, and often aren't invited to play. [01:16:08] And it is that kind of, we're at the line and trying to go above versus we're down here, trying to recover. And I just, I want to empower coaches to be more and more transformative vessels. Oh, practitioners, transformative practitioners. Yeah.

Seth Allison: Anyway, my long-winded answer, but I would say that's it.

Joel Monk: [01:16:29] Well, I just want to thank you for the depth of your passion for attachment work and working with IFS and supporting attachment-based leadership. I think it's a beautiful practice and needed in our time. So, yeah, I just really hope people come and check your work out. So, thank you.

Seth Allison: [01:16:52] Thank you, Joel. I really appreciate the chance to have the conversation.

Joel Monk: [01:16:58] Here we are. We're at the end of the podcast. [01:17:00] Just do a heads up again. If you're not on our mailing list and you want to stay in the loop about other things we create, then head to coaches rising dot com put your name in the sign up box there. You'll also find some of our other offerings online trainings for coaches there and just want to end by wishing you well and I'll see you again next time.