What we can’t say.
Something exciting to announce. I’m collaborating with Mark McCartney to bring more human connection to organisations, teams and groups.
We’re facilitating spaces for real and authentic communication - which we define as a powerful and collaborative act of stating thoughts, needs and beliefs and truly listening to others who are doing the same.
We’ll be sharing more details soon - if you think this could be relevant for your team or organisation, or if you’d like to know more, please get in touch.
What we can’t say.
I remember the first time I spoke to a therapist. Like a cliched scene from a movie, I was flooded with emotions and broke down in tears. My whole body convulsed with the stories and feelings that I’d been holding on to for decades.
As I continued to work with my therapist, other memories and stories poured forth - things I had forgotten, things I didn’t even know I was still holding on to, things I had couldn’t believe I was remembering. This was catharsis in the ancient Greek sense, a purging and purification of myself.
What happens to things we’re not willing or able to talk about?
Things we can’t say might seem to be left unsaid, unexpressed, remaining silent - but it never ends there. They go somewhere, these words and thoughts, and the emotions they carry.
In the aftermath of corporate scandals and illegal activity, we almost always hear the phrase ‘a culture of silence’ or something similar. This is never unique to the scandal though, it is part of the everyday culture. The scandalous event simply exposes it and is enabled by it.
Corporate scandals, whether banking frauds or enabling opioid addiction, always reveal a culture where people don’t speak the truth and certainly don’t challenge people around them or ‘above them’ in the hierarchy.
Things we can’t say can get pushed to the fringes. They might become gossip or rumours, swirling around and wreaking havoc. They might become fantasies or myths that create a history that never existed, yet deeply influenced the present and the future.
In our societies, these phantom narratives sit beneath the surface of our culture. Many countries, especially the UK, have not dealt with their past. It is buried and repressed, yet still echoes through the present.
Just as unexpressed emotions and memories are stored in our individual bodies, so too are unexpressed stories, histories and events stored in the bodies of our organisations, politics, countries. There, hidden but only partially buried, they play out constantly.
Whilst they are out of sight, they still shape us, even harming us. And they require constant effort to keep pushed down, in place.
When people ask what I do with my coaching, consulting and facilitation work, I always describe the single thread that joins them all - having meaningful conversations to explore what is really going on.
Every individual or organisation I’ve worked with has been an encounter with things left unsaid, hidden truths, false narratives and myths. In surfacing these, through some form of dialogue, something is always revealed.
It is, too, often a cathartic experience as the emotional undertow of these stories is surfaced and released for the first time.
“Lighter” is a word people often use to describe this process, a sense of something being lifted. It’s not unusual to see someone’s posture change in these conversations.
I wonder about the unfathomable weight of what we’re not talking about in our organisations, families, relationships and society. The burden of the things we’re not able to express, share or explore.
They never truly, fully go away. They live somewhere in us and somewhere in all of the groups we’re part of.
What are you not talking about right now?
What is holding you back?
What’s the cost of not expressing yourself fully?
“The unconscious insists, repeats, and practically breaks down the door, to be heard. The only way to hear it, to invite it into the room, is to stop imposing something over it—mostly in the form of your own ideas—and listen instead for the unsayable, which is everywhere, in speech, in enactments, in dreams, and in the body.”
- Annie Rogers
Tipping Point: sharing information on the climate crisis
Ocean temperatures hit record highs last year, and continue to rise. The temperature of the seas is fundamental to weather patterns (warmer oceans mean more intense storms, for example).
About me.
I’m a coach, consultant and facilitator living in Berlin. At the heart of my work is helping individuals and organisations to make sense of who they are and the world around them. You can find out more about my coaching work here and my work with men & masculinity here.