In my coaching experience it’s essential to explore a client’s behavior in relation to adult based responsibilities and adult based behavior. Trauma and fear can trap the psyche in the very earliest stages of child development, which can lead to extreme pain, frustration and chaos in adulthood. Last year I reviewed a client who was simply living the same life as she did in her teens……and she was close to 50 years of age. Watching TV all hours of the night, focused on “boys”, clothes, being pretty and that was the daily routine. Retirement funds….never thought of. Savings were absent altogether. What ever money came her way…..she would destroy. If she was given $10,000, it would be gone just as quickly as giving her $1000. She had no other goals beyond looking pretty and wanting everyone to think she was a “nice lady”.
She never thought of her legacy, had no overarching goals and had no real long term aspirations what so ever. Her husband was also involved with the coaching and he said that she could no longer keep up with the basic household duties because her cell phone use had escalated to the point where her day was getting more and more unproductive as the years went by. All this qualifies as childlike behavior, which will always create chaos in an adult life. When an adult behaves and has thinking patterns similar to that of an early teen, it’s important to explore the issue with them and explain how trauma in childhood can block mental development and personal evolution. There are ways to overcome trauma based injury to our emotional development and sometimes it simply takes pointing it out, to get the ball rolling in the right direction.
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