What To Do When You F**k Up!
Career Coach Diploma in Catastrophising: What to do when you f**k up! Are you prone to catastrophic thinking? Do you traumatise yourself and veer between the worst possible outcomes when things seem to be going wrong? Here’s a real story that might resonate with you….
Ten minutes deep into a coaching session with a client there’s a knock on the door… it’s another client… neither of these clients signed up for group coaching. Faced with the second client, I scour my brain, decide she was my ‘one o’clock’ and not my ‘ten o’clock’ and return to where I left off. Where I left off was a tender place for the individual sitting in front of me. From a safeguarding point of view, I would not have been good practice to shove him out into the world all raw and undefended. The lid was off this particular can of worms and no amount of shoving would get them back in the tin effectively … we had to work on through this.
80 minutes later, with mind returned to me post-session, I return to doubting myself. Did I actually double-book? Have I sent a hopeful (& previously trusting!) client away erroneously? What does she think of me? Is she ok? What can I do to make amends….
Career Coach Diploma in Catastrophising
STOP!!!!!
Suddenly I see I am swinging wildly between “it is HER fault” to “it’s MY fault” to “OMG she’ll hate me”and “I’ll have to work for free forever…” (&, even if money is only one metric of value of the work that I do, to work for free forever could feed a nice resentment that could taint our work…). This was catastrophic thinking st it’s very best! I am almost proud of it! So, what I needed to ground myself. To eat. To breathe. To reconnect with me after the last 90 minutes of exploration within another’s world. I needed to ground myself in fact: Time to track it back:
“Oh look, here’s the email I sent stating our next session would be at one pm…”
Thank goodness for that digital trail… and, I land… Interestingly enough, had I actually made a mistake (& people do!), then nobody died. I could have apologised and perhaps amended the fee for this session and navigated the trust issues arising. I don’t know if you recognise this but nobody is as hard on me as I am….. I used up SO much energy in those moments as I played emotional ping-pong in my head about what a terrible person I was. In reality what I had proven that I can:
- Think on my feet
- Remain outwardly calm (irrespective of what was happening on the inside)
- Hold space safely and professionally on behalf of a client
- Fact find to inform my next steps
That sounds pretty professional. If you too are prone to catastrophic thinking, learn to pause, to breathe, to check the facts… it might not have been your mistake at all…. And, If it was, trust you will be able to navigate it like an adult.