Coaching clients to defeat the predator in the psyche

Leonora Carrington Self Portrait 1937

There are innumerable obstacles in life to becoming who we are and achieving our authentic wholeness.

It is our responsibility as coaches, facilitators, and guides, to be on that journey ourselves and to help our clients navigate these obstacles in a deft and agile way. In order to do so,we must come to know the predator in the psyche.

In my line of work, I have come to understand that evil does exist and that for most of us, it lives in the deepest darkest corners of the psyche. But its there. And that is the predator energy in the psyche. Because we are part of the whole fabric of life, and because we know there can be no good without evil, we know that what exists without exists within. As above so below.

Therefore, when faced with a force that means to do us harm, we must be know how to disable it. We must know how to see the predator, face what we see, and call on our inner psychic resources, to weaken and combat this malevolent force.

Within the psyche, there are many ideas, forces, and complexes floating around. Its helpful to imagine that the psyche is composed of an inner landscape inhabited by all different sorts of qualities--an inner psychic microcosm of the personalities and qualities in the outer world. Just as many of these qualities are life-affirming and help us move further along on our path of individuation, there are some qualities and energies that mean to stifle and stop our growth.

Part of women's individuation process is coming to know the wildish nature within--the part of herself that is connected to her intuition, the part of herself that has a connection to the natural world, the part of herself that has a deep intuitive understanding of the natural cycles of the life-death-life nature. The predator in women's psyches seeks to cut us off from that knowledge and connection.

In our work as coaches, we are helping our clients shift into greater consciousness. We must be the force in the client's life that encourages and pushes the client toward that greater consciousness, by cultivating the client's creativity and curiosity.

In the Authentic Wholeness Coach Training Certification Program, I teach how to combat the predator in the psyche. The force that wants us to stop our creativity, stop our curiosity, stop our art, our writing, our living of full and vibrant lives. I teach how to recognize the predator and defeat him by cultivating intuition and creativity, and by strengthening the bridge that connects us to our ability to act with swiftness, decisiveness and aggression when needed.

The largest part of this section of the Authentic Wholeness Coach Training Certification Program is based on the Bluebeard fairy tale. The bulk of the source material is Chapter 2 of Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes: Stalking the Intruder: The Beginning Initiation.

Predators by Linda Hogan

I cannot smell the scent of the cat who slept on this sweater, but do know how the garden swells with old and pungent herb art. In sun the fox

bows to my feline and her good dog friends who rule this land. I hoe and cultivate, find my dead aim in the trust that many tales spun

this tract long before I came. The dogs do not understand wild nature. I also was domesticated. Oh, give me strength to watch their sorry looks as a bevy of vixen

feed on a much smaller body not the cat's ... But it could be.