Bill: Welcome to another episode of Not Your Typical Leadership Coaching. And we have special guest Stephanie Mitchell, who is in Sunshine Coast, Australia, right? Yeah. Let me just read a few things about you that I see on your website.

Bill: Stephanie is a Level 3 Certified IFS Therapist, Psychotherapist, Teacher, and Supervisor. She specializes in working with complex trauma and experiences which often get labeled as mental illness. Oh, I can't wait for you to talk about that a little bit. When I listened to the other podcast that you were on, I love the stuff that you had to say about that.

Bill: Stephanie's interested in how healing and change occur in the human to human relationship within spaces of safety and acceptance and outside the constructs of diagnostic labels. If I didn't already love you, Stephanie, that would make me love you. Stephanie's primary focus for all therapeutic work is on creating a safe space where all parts of a person are welcomed and valued and the pace of therapeutic exploration is set by the client.

Bill: I think they can read that. Yeah, they can go to your website, which is stephaniemitchell. com, right?

Stephanie: Yes,

Bill: because

Stephanie: of Australia. Yeah,

Bill: and we'll put it in show notes. So they want to get to you and the name of your website is Connection Heals. Yeah, that's right. Because that's what I believe. Connection heals.

Bill: Let's just jump right in. Stephanie, so much, I thank you so much for joining. It is 9 41 a. m. where you are, and I can see in the background behind you, that's either painted on your window. No, it's not painted on. I see the tree moving.

Stephanie: Yeah, that's my window. I look out. I live on the beautiful Sunshine Coast, which is east coast of Australia, about eight hours or maybe more.

Stephanie: Actually, I can't, I just moved here, so I'm not exactly sure, 8 to 10, 12 hours north of Sydney. So beautiful Sydney on the coast with all the beaches. We're north of that where it's tropical and warm and yeah, it's really beautiful place to live.

Bill: I'll bet it is. It sounds great. We are just now breaking out of winter and beginning to creep into the 50 degree weather which we had today.

Bill: Very nice, beautiful blue sky out here. So today, Stephanie, we are talking about leadership. Of course that's what the podcast is about. Not your typical leadership coaching. And I asked you to be on the podcast because you and I had a conversation here about a month ago, as I was reaching out to talk to you about the IFS training that you do, but there's so much more to hear from you.

Bill: When I mentioned leadership and then we bring in IFS, internal family systems and put that together, what comes to mind for you?

Bill: The first thing that comes to mind is about how I think IFS and is the perfect tool because when we think of leadership, IFS is all about self leadership, right? So as a leader, IFS really gives me the tools to know my own system, know my parts, to lead my inner world where I'm just far less reactive and triggered and having responses to the external that's unsettling, like this equilibrium where you're

Stephanie: kind of

Bill: grounded and you're okay. And then there's moments when you feel this equilibrious. Is that a word? I don't know. I can't find the word, but that's like it. Not. And so for me the, what IFS offers us is a chance to really deeply understand the places where we're stuck, the places where we're easily get

Bill: triggered with the places where we have aspirations, but we can't go towards them. Find all of that out. Find out where the root of that is. And then resolve them and through resolving that in me, then I get to really understand others better. So when they're having those same experiences, I'm like, Oh, like I see you and actually, because I've walked that path, I know how to help you to find your own self leadership, which will make you a much more effective leader when I'm, I just segue to say something that when I'm teaching, for instance, when I first started teaching, I wasn't as self led as I am now because I wasn't as far along my paths journey. And I was much more

Stephanie: like

Bill: knocked off my seat, my grounded center right by my students. And now what has happened is it doesn't really matter, even if someone's going, this material doesn't make sense to me.

Bill: And really there's a lot going on in the room and people don't like each other or whatever. There's a very much a leadership groundedness. It's this is all welcome. I'm completely un flapped by this. Let's just see. See what's here. I think that's really the core of leadership.

Bill: Absolutely. I love that we were starting out the conversation this way. Self leadership in the internal family systems model is really what we're after. We want to develop that. Can we slow it down though, for the people that are listening who don't, even though I talk about IFS in practically every episode, I don't know, we've only had one or two episodes where I broke it down.

Bill: So for new listeners, let's break it down a little bit. Let's start with what is self. And why would we want self leading?

Stephanie: Yeah. Okay. It's tricky because I don't think you can really explain who self is without saying what parts are but I will say so self is sort of our core essence of who we are.

Stephanie: And Really, it's tricky because once you start really understanding what that is, it can get a little spiritual. And some people don't really identify with the spiritual side. And so I want to be able to speak so that everyone can stay with me and go Oh, no, not that stuff again.

Stephanie: But it's essentially when in relation to our parts, the self is the wise, compassionate leader is the one who, our parts are the wonderful facets of ourselves, the feelings, thoughts, beliefs desires, drives that make our lives rich. We couldn't, we would be very, we would be extremely, it would be a boring life if all we had was self energy, right?

Stephanie: We would be in this very grounded state all the time. The richness, the fun, the playfulness, the excitement, the exuberance and the pain and the disappointments all come in from the parts of ourselves. And so the self is really the loving parent in a way, as well as the intuitive guide to all these beautiful parts of ourselves that make our lives rich, but also carry burdens.

Stephanie: So I'm hoping that by explaining the relationship between parts of self, I can keep self out of the woo land. Doesn't make sense.

Bill: Since we brought up parts, let's give it a couple of examples of parts and then maybe we maybe in those examples, we can look at the difference between a part that is burdened and coming from that burden or a part that is more self led.

Bill: Yes.

Stephanie: Okay. Great. Yeah.

Bill: Just a moment ago, I hit record for this episode. I began to do the intro and I introduced you as Leslie,

Stephanie: I

Bill: don't know who Leslie is. And so when thank goodness you pointed out. No, I'm not Leslie. I'm Stephanie. I had a part. That was very embarrassed.

Bill: So that's a part of me, a part got very embarrassed. That part was embarrassed and could have put stopped the whole show, except another part said, no, we're here to do an episode of not your typical leadership. And so quick and easy fix. We had just started turned off the recording. We started again.

Bill: So those are parts now. Can you work with that?

Stephanie: Yes, absolutely. It's a beautiful example. And I love the fact that you're embarrassed part trust you. So that's the leadership right there. Instead of derailing you into shame where you might have fumbled over words and not being able to recalibrate, which would have been a very burdened part who doesn't trust self, right?

Stephanie: Can't recalibrate in that moment. That part was able to, because I'm imagining you've done a fair bit of work with that part and it trusts you, it could just go, Oh, it's okay. I'm just gonna trust Bill to take over and manage this. And maybe later on, if that part needs some more time with you to hear what was under that, you would be with that part.

Stephanie: But I want to go back a step even further though, right? Yeah. Because the wounding that happens around, these social constructs of making mistakes is what creates the embarrassment, right?

Stephanie: The faux power was really not a big deal. It was oh yeah, that happened.

Stephanie: And I wasn't offended, I wasn't upset. I was just like I'm not sure that you really wanna go on and have that on the podcast, but pretty funny that you mentioned it, which is cool actually. And so there was no charge in it for me, but there was charging it for you because it's tethered to something where you were shamed for making a mistake in the past.

Stephanie: That is where the work that we do is in IFS is so powerful because just trying to use our thinking brain, our cognitive kind of way of working in our lives, which is such a big part in the Western society is not enough to help the parts of us who carry those burdens. We really actually do need to go back, not only cognitively find out where they're from, but help those parts to show you yourself or me for my parts, show myself what it was really like.

Stephanie: And in that process in IFS of really understanding not only cognitively, what was the wounding around being shamed around making mistakes that is still living in my body. That's like a hair trigger as soon as something like that happens. Not a cognitively knowing, which a lot of talk therapy does, but more than that to really feeling to the known sense when the path feels heard and understood by self.

Stephanie: Then the part can start to go, Oh, I'm really ready to have this be different. And, the way we work in IFS is we help, as a therapist or a coach, we're going to really help the person to build a relationship between themselves and that wounded part so that when the part feels like you, Bill, really get what that was like for me back then to be shamed for something that really was just a mistake and not a big deal but the burdens of the people shaming me were landing on me.

Stephanie: Their shame essentially about mistakes lands. It's like a domino effect. Then that part can we offer them the part. Do they want us to go into that time with them and really help them? And so we have this beautiful process in IFS where we actually go back into that time where maybe a school teacher shamed you and the self of the client can say to that little part.

Stephanie: What do you need? And they can say, I just need you big grown Bill to go in and say to that teacher. Oh, he's just a little boy and mistakes happen. Actually, we all make mistakes. In fact, I sometimes see you do mistakes to teacher and it's okay that you do it. It's okay that Bill did. And I'm wondering if there's some way that you could give an apology or whatever the part really needs, maybe the part really needs you to be much more forceful in that.

Stephanie: Or maybe the part says, we just want to get out of the school room. We don't really want to talk to that teacher. And What happens in that process? Is it incredibly, it's actually corrective and we get into a thing which is a little bit I don't know if a coaching understands memory, reconsolidation

Bill: Why don't you take a moment and explain it?

Stephanie: Memory, reconsolidation is a thing that's been studied around.

Stephanie: How do people really make exponential changes into the psychologically inside of themselves? How do they make those? Big shifts. And there's been research on therapy saying, here's the incremental that kind of Freud did over 10 years, five times a week with a client, right? Long, hard process. And then there's seems to be therapies that people get somewhere way quicker.

Stephanie: And how does that happen? So they did all this research and they found that there's this kind of like things that happen. I can't go in this podcast into the details of how it happens. But they've just, because that's exciting and rich, and I could spend an hour telling you, but I won't. But basically what happens is during the process of memory reconsolidation, which a few different modalities use, and IFS is one of them there's this juxtaposition between what was held as a belief previously, and what is now Oh, this is an embodied new knowing it's completely embodied and in the do over in that scene back in the classroom where the little person says, Oh my gosh, I want you to tell that teacher who's so scary to me and I'm feeling all the shame at the moment that I'm just little and I didn't know.

Stephanie: And then big Bill goes, Hey, like not on. And then the teacher goes, Oh yeah. I totally see that. That wasn't on and I was really coming from anxiety and me. And the little part goes, wow, you stood up for me, Bill, like no one did. And there's an embodied sense of I'm not bad anymore. And then you say to the little part, where do you want to, we're going to take you out at that time.

Stephanie: You never even have to be near that teacher again. Where do you want to come to live with Bill in the future? He's going to take care of you forever. And it's that part says, I want to go and live in Bill's house or on a beautiful, like my parts. I have a bunch of parts. You live in a tree house at this beautiful beach and visit them every day, and it's a, it's like what Robinson Crusoe thought you can pull up the staircase so that no one can come in and they, it's a fun places like places you can play and bouncy beds anyway.

Stephanie: My point is that They get to choose this fun place where kids might like to live, right? And they're taken care of by an adult who loves and knows them deeply. And that memory reconsolidation has had a lot of research around the fact that you have an embodied new, Memory of an old experience that erases the old one.

Stephanie: They call it erasure. It's pretty awesome. And then when you think about your question was burden parts and unburdened parts who are trusting self. So burden parts absolutely do not trust self. They're terrified. They, there, there was no one to protect them back then and they just know that they have to run the show and they

Bill: body and

Stephanie: they may not

Bill: even know about self.

Stephanie: Exactly. Yeah, that's right. And so unburdened parts have this beautiful relationship with self. And so even when they can come up, maybe some, there's still some tether or there's a part who hasn't had that process of memory reconsolidation happen yet. They, there's enough sense in the system they can turn towards Bill's got this and it's okay.

Stephanie: And maybe he'll come back later and help me with the piece that I'm still holding.

Bill: So what you're describing is way out of the ordinary. Which could be an acronym for W O, which spells WOO. This is the WOO that you were talking about earlier. Way out of the ordinary.

Stephanie: Exactly,

Bill: yeah. What I love about what you just shared is that the memory consolidation, what it does is it goes back in time to the version of me, if I'm the client, to the version of me that made up that making a mistake was bad.

Bill: Now, I had a lot of help with that. I didn't just make it up. I was giving, given the script. What you just did was bad. I expect more from you. For example that's not okay. You can't make mistakes. Punishment. Whatever reinforced a belief and that turns into a rule to live by now.

Stephanie: Yes.

Bill: And from that point on, I live by that rule.

Bill: And I follow that rule thanks to this young little part of me who is so devoted and dedicated to make sure his brother, another part just like him, never gets hurt again. Exactly. By doing the memory reconsolidation, now we go back. Somehow, the psyche allows us to go back in time. We time travel. Yeah, the combination of the unconscious.

Bill: Maybe you would use different words, but the way I talk about it is using a combination of the unconscious and the imagination. We time travel. We go back to these young vulnerable parts that are under resourced. And we help them to recognize that it wasn't their fault and what they were told that it meant didn't mean that they get the healing and now they can relax and allow us to run our adult lives.

Bill: I love that.

Stephanie: Yeah. What you described as, time travel and imagination. And I was thinking, Oh, how would I describe that? And I think for me, how it feels is. These parts who get like big in those moments of Oh, something here now feels like back then. And so now I'm feeling the shame or the fear or the whatever.

Stephanie: It's like it's held in memory. And so when something in the present happens here, I'm no longer only responding to something here where maybe Stephanie saying, Hey, no big deal that you said that Bill. You're the parts pointing to the memory over there and going no, we know that make a mistake.

Stephanie: Not good. So we we leave the present in the memory reconsolidation piece of to do over with the IFS to go back into the memory. And so we do use imagination. And what did you say imagination and

Bill: unconscious the we travel into the unconscious. Using the imagination and we time travel.

Stephanie: Yeah. And yeah, I was thinking, oh, yeah, we might frame it. And I'm like, yeah we use memory in the body because these memories are held in the body.

Bill: I felt it the moment you said, let me stop you. What's going on? You called, you just now called me Leslie and I felt this rush of energy and my face probably flushed.

Bill: It felt like I, if I was looking at me, I would have seen my, that my face was red.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Bill: So it's definitely in the body.

Stephanie: Exactly. Yeah. And that's why it's beautiful to use the imagination and to go back into these memories in that through the unconscious mind, because it's embodied at that point. Yes. We're no longer just thinking we're embodying something and that's why it's so powerful to change because now we're having an embodied different experience of, That little boy who was frightened and that flush of, oh, Bill's saying it's not a problem and actually that teacher, we don't know every single person's going to have a different experience back there, but a lot of my burdenings have been going back and having myself stand up for my younger parts and the other person can sometimes say, Wow.

Stephanie: Yeah, I totally get that wasn't okay. And sometimes when they can't, I tell my young part, even though my parent, for instance, is still burdened and can't see that because of their defenses, I know it's okay. And my little part can look at me as the new parent and go, Oh, good.

Bill: Yeah, I'm clear here. So you're not saying that in the example that you use my first grade teacher.

Bill: Yes, I'm going to literally go back to my first grade teacher who's probably not even alive anymore. And say, Hey, kids make mistakes. We're going, we're traveling in the unconscious back in time using our imagination by the word way that word imagination for me was it was a catch for me when I was first in IFS therapy.

Bill: Yeah. Because to me, I have imagination meant I was making it up and my therapist helped me to see that imagination is the word that describes what happens when we see images in our minds.

Stephanie: Beautiful.

Bill: That was so helpful for me. When I say I'm imagining it, I'm not making it up. I'm seeing an image in my mind, which is so helpful.

Bill: When having vision, having a vision that you want to fulfill on when you want to affirm that vision, you have golfers, professional golfers, they imagine that ball going to the green and it helps them to hit the ball onto the green. When I go ahead and give my imagination over to my unconscious in the time traveling machine and go back into the past to be with these parts that are burdened.

Bill: I'm just watching what they're showing me. That's

Stephanie: right. Yeah. And that's why I call it memory. Because, really when we're having that flush and we're remembering, we're also imagining the past. We're remembering a slash imagining. So you're right. We do go back and we don't go and we don't have to go and speak to school teachers and everything in the present.

Bill: Yeah. Now let's I've got my pivot foot down still, which means in basketball, if you pick up your pivot foot, then you lose the ball. You have to give the ball over to the other team. So in basketball you can move one foot around, but you gotta keep one foot down unless you're bouncing the ball.

Bill: So in coaching, I keep my pivot foot down most of the time so that we can come back to where we started in this conversation, which is leadership and IFS. And so you mentioned self leadership, but so now we've defined what is self. Self is that energy that, that is fully resourced and available and accessible when our parts that are burdened aren't reacting to, is that how you would say it?

Bill: How would you say it?

Stephanie: That's I just think that's a perfect, that's the perfect wording. Thank you.

Bill: Yeah. It's great. And then parts are either burdened, meaning they're still tethered to the past. To the, to an unresolved past with beliefs that, that inform emotions and body sensations, impulses and actions.

Bill: So when those burden parts of us blend with us, take over our perspective, then we act according to their perspective. Whereas the self led parts, the unburdened parts, when those are operating and providing perspective they clear the way for us to access those resources of self. Yes. Okay.

Stephanie: I formulated slightly differently.

Stephanie: So how it feels to me is, yes, unburdened parts offer a lot of resources to the system and they support each other. So they offer resources to sell to other burden parts. And they do clear the way for all of the parts in the system to have better access to self energy, and they can also let me know things.

Stephanie: So there's times when my, I might be having, I might be, say for instance in a session with a client, I might have a lot of self energy. My parts are very unblended, but I might be still hearing from some parts whether they're unburdened or burdened, but they trusting me. So it's like they're going, oh, oh, I'm not sure about that.

Stephanie: And I go, I got it. It's okay. Thanks for letting me know your concern. And there's a lot of wisdom they carry too. . Like when you think about being a leader. Sometimes I'll be in, in a group setting or something as a leader, and my parts will be like, Oh, that person is like, so it's like this, there's you see the people in the room, right?

Stephanie: You can see, read a lot of people once you do this work long enough. And so I might have a part who has a burden around a certain type of person and it might that part might say to me, Oh, that person like be mindful of that. Okay. And I can be a bit of thank you for flagging and I'm appreciating your wisdom, and I've got it too.

Stephanie: I got it. I get your fear but I'm not worried. So it's like wisdom in both burden parts and unburdened parts. And to be able to be the self leadership pieces, hearing from everyone and just I've got this. It's all right. We can, I'll take care of it. And they go, Oh, good. Thank God. You've got it.

Stephanie: Because I don't want to have to deal with that

Bill: thing. And that solid unburdened, unflappable place that you described it as we opened this conversation.

Stephanie: Yeah,

Bill: that's right. All right. So let's talk a little bit about now you train People in the IFS model you and specifically you train people on how to use the IFS model to help other people.

Bill: That's right.

Stephanie: Yes. And yeah, and I want to just say, because I think it's important to know that the IFS Institute is, quite worried about the people out there who teach and the way we talk about teaching and things like that. And so I think it's really important for me to say, I don't work for the IFS Institute and I'm not affiliated with them.

Stephanie: And obviously they have their training, which is approved by them. That's a very specific training and you go through their pathway. So what I offer is not that, yes. And so yeah, but I do teach people who are waiting to get into the level one official training who are coaches, therapists body workers, people who are already working with people.

Stephanie: Yeah, I'm just teaching them the sort of. Fundamentals of the IFS model and how to work with that. So I, and I have a lot of thoughts on what that looks like, but I'll pause.

Bill: Yes. And we'll see maybe another episode we could have. I'd love to have another conversation with you about your approach to training and what you think is important for people to learn about the IFS model.

Bill: But if we bring it back to our listeners who are leaders. Yes, aspiring leaders, active leaders that are looking to, to move that growth edge out a little bit further leaders that even maybe that think they already know it all and might be a little bit surprised by some things that we talk about here today.

Bill: You told me before we hit record that often you'll have 20 to 25 students in front of you on zoom. Is that correct? That's correct. That's great. Yeah. Yeah. And so I threw some questions at you that it seemed like it surprised you a little bit, but if it's okay with you, I'd like to ask those questions now.

Bill: All right. So the first one is what is hard for your students to incorporate into their lives and practices as you're training them on using the IFS model?

Stephanie: Yeah. As you said that earlier, I was like, Oh, that's a really big question, but now I've had some time to think about it. I was realizing there's sort of two camps of people.

Stephanie: And I think each camp has their own challenges and some people probably have an easier time because of what camp they choose. So there's the camp of folks who I wax lyrical in my trainings about you have to do your own work. You can't be self led and bless you actually go and be with your parts.

Stephanie: Right? And the cornerstone of the IFS model is self leadership. Okay, that is the cornerstone. So you can learn all the steps of the model and not be self led and you won't get clients. You just won't retain them. They might see that you've done some training. They'll come and look because they're interested in someone who's been trained a little bit in some IFS.

Stephanie: And and then now I won't hang around, you won't be

Bill: able

Stephanie: to help them. That's right. Yeah. So there's the people who do, who hear me talk a lot about do your own work, don't get good supervision and consultation and practice with your buddies on, each other because you both learn everyone's learning together and who do that.

Stephanie: And I think the things that they find in frustrating or what was that you said? What do they find difficult? Isn't a completely new way of working. It is like nothing else. You will ever learn. It's like Dick Schwartz and the way he was given the model and the way he was able to listen to his clients and learn from them.

Stephanie: It really is profound this new, different way of working and because of that, it's quite difficult to implement. And it takes, I always say. Good couple of years for you to really get good at the model after you started learning and with a lot of practice.

Bill: If you've got a lot of practice doing it in two years.

Stephanie: If you practice it. Yes. If you practice it with your buddies, if you're getting good consultation with someone who's experienced and you do your own work, go and see an IFS therapist or practitioner or coach and who's skillful and you do your work, those three components, it'll still take you two years to become really effective.

Stephanie: So that little piece is the hardest piece for people to get is Oh, no, I'm, I've learned the model. Stephanie. I've got, I'm going off and practicing, but geez, it is really hard for me to really get the nuanced being with my clients. And I'll just explain as, from the point of view of as a therapist, when I was, I used to be very attuned to my clients before IFS. And I would be with them and they would say, Oh my gosh, I feel you with me. And then I learned IFS and you learned this protocol, right? And so you bring the protocol into the room because you felt how effective it is. And then you feel as for me as a therapist, but it would be the same as a coach or a leader.

Stephanie: You would feel a little disconnected from your people because you're learning something new and you're trying to bring it in. Yes. And. So there's like some of the magic is a little lost while you're finding your feet and you're practicing and learning. So it feel a bit like that. But what am I doing here?

Stephanie: That's probably the hardest. Then there's the people who haven't really, but then you get there and that's why I try and encourage them. You'll get there. Just keep going. You're going to bounce around a bit, but your clients will teach you as well. If you know those two things, it's going to take time and your clients will be your teachers.

Stephanie: And as long as you allow them to, as long as you create enough safety for them to go whoa, Hang on. That doesn't feel good. And you have enough presence to go. Okay. I'm noticing my parts were feeling, shame. I got it wrong. It should do it better. Maybe I should give up on the model and go back to what I was doing because my clients never said these things to me, notice those parts, ground yourself back and go, I'm here.

Stephanie: And I want to hear what you just said to me, the client. As long as you allow those spaces, you'll get really good at this model. Yes. So that's the that's the main two things that I would say for those camper people. And then there's the camper people who just want to do the training and then go out.

Stephanie: And I think those people, I think their biggest challenge is that they probably don't retain clients. Because they, I had one person go, I seem to have a lot of short term clients that come for a few sessions and then they seem fine and they go and I'm like I actually wonder if people go because they're not getting anything and I don't want to tell you that.

Stephanie: So I think that would be the biggest challenge.

Stephanie: Yes,

Bill: that's great. Here's the next question. I'm wanting to jump on and add to, let me do that just a little bit at least. When you were talking about, this is a new for coaches, practitioners, and therapists who aren't already using IFS and just learning about it.

Bill: But there's a lot to let go of if my approach to coaching is I'm going to help you fix your problems That is not ifs if my approach to coaching is i'm going to help you change your thinking that is not ifs I'm going to help you shift your paradigm I'm going to help you to think about the positive and avoid the negative that is not ifs and when that Was working as well as it was for me those Different aspects of what I just explained to let go of those And replace them with something I'm just learning how to do was scary very and my parts got relaxed.

Bill: My parts were the ones that were scared, of course, as long as they were scared, then I had no access to that grounding that self energy that you were talking about. So it was a scary time. But I was getting so much benefit as a client. of an I F of IFS therapy, that I was committed to it. I knew that I could master it and I just needed to stick with it and so I'm, for any of my clients that I was serving at the time that I was learning IFS, I apologize and thank you for hanging in there.

Bill: Yeah, me too. I have to apologize to my clients when I was learning. Here's the next question and let's look at time. I'd like to have you for about 10 more minutes. Does that work for you? Yeah. Okay, yeah, that's great. What do you want your students to walk away from the training with?

Stephanie: That's such a good question. I haven't actually thought of that. What do I want them to walk away with?

Stephanie: Nothing's too much for self and the way that I do the trainings is I want to embody that. So the training space is held as like as best as I can. And I admit if anyone's previous student of mine might go hang on, Stephanie, when you weren't very self led, I didn't always feel safe.

Stephanie: But as best as I can, I want to create enough safety that all of their parts are welcome. And that's currently what happens. And so for me, I would like them to walk away with an embodied sense of that if they feel that in my training, there's a sense of taking that away in their leadership, they're gonna have that model to them.

Stephanie: They're going to take away. This is like what they can take into their practice as a leader or as a coach. That nothing, it can be that nothing is ever too much for yourself. When you can connect enough with your parts, that's what I want to

Bill: say what you just said in slightly different words.

Bill: And let's just see if it matches what you're saying. When I've developed the ability to return to self, when my parts are willing to allow that to happen. Because I've put enough energy and effort into getting to know those parts and developing trust based relationships with them.

Bill: Then when they get scared, if they'll allow me, if they'll make room for me then there's enough capacity within my system to be with whatever shows up.

Stephanie: Internally and externally. That's the key. I can be with anything internally and externally. Yeah, and that's important is if we're leaders, leaders, there's a lot of, I always say, as leaders, there's a lot of projection flying around the room.

Stephanie: If you're a leader that people are looking to you and they're projecting a lot of their own expectations, hopes and fears on you. And whether you're a teacher or I don't know what kind of leadership, whether you're a manager, whether you're a, someone who teaches trainings, whether you're someone who holds groups, you're bringing together a bunch of people who've paid you money, usually to get something.

Stephanie: And they're bringing a lot of all of those things, expectations, hopes and fears. They hope they're going to get this. They're afraid of this. They've had these prior experiences. And then all their parts are there right in the room with you and all of that is projected onto you. That's a lot as a leader for you to hold

Bill: it is

Stephanie: when you when your parts trust you and you've done burned enough.

Stephanie: Nothing is too much for yourself in the room with all of those projections. And I can hold not only my parts, I can hold everyone's parts in the room because it's not too much for myself.

Bill: Amazing. And I, and if you're like me then you can think of a time in your life when that was far from the truth.

Bill: I'll just say that's certainly true for me. Where I had a thimble of capacity for something happening out there.

Bill: Here's my next question. Assuming everyone in the room has the potential to be a leader. How, as you look at, out of that 20, 25 people in front of you, how do you perceive them as potential leaders?

Stephanie: Yeah, you asked me this earlier and I straight away had an image of the group that I'm with at the moment and who I see and how I perceive who are the leaders and who are not and the very first thing that came to me was Confidence and then I was like how do I explain that though?

Stephanie: Because confidence can be fake, right? It can be I'm confident I'm going to run from the front, like at least I always think of, the front runners of a person system who like pretend to be confident I'm going to put this facade on, that's not what I'm talking about.

Stephanie: It's like the people in my group who. How do I want to explain when I was thinking, how do I want to explain what I understand of confidence is an embodied confidence that sort of deepened. So when I'm teaching and I'm looking around the room and I see someone who is getting what I'm saying because they're I've done some of that work.

Stephanie: I understand some of the things Stephanie's talking about. I'm a leader who already is or maybe they're not a leader yet, but they're going to be because they're already to be a leader, you have to do some reading. You have to do not only your own work as far as your own internal psyche, but you have to have done some like study.

Stephanie: You have to have done some, like a collaboration with other people. You have to have enough depth of your practice is I suppose what I'm saying. And I look at the room and there's people who have. Depth of practice with no confidence. There's nothing in their depths of practice that holds some sense of I've got this, even though I've done all my learning and stuff.

Stephanie: And then there's the people who seem to have They've done some of the depth of practice learning and consulting with people, and they've somehow embodied that and brought it into themselves. So there's a confidence in it, and they can go, I'm hearing what you're saying, Stephanie, and it's just going into this place.

Stephanie: It's already a reservoir that I can just move forward with. That's how I perceive leadership.

Bill: There you go. That's that. So when you see someone with authentic confidence. Yes. And we were just talking about this earlier in the week. We had Hans Phillips on on the podcast and he's he's been coaching for almost 30 years now and then that's the topic he brought into the episode and what I got out of that conversation for myself was that interesting that we're talking about this right now is that what confidence is That I have the ability to trust myself.

Bill: I trust my capacity to be with it whenever shows up and I have nothing to depend. Yes. Yeah, exactly. I got two more questions for you before we begin to wrap up here. Oh, actually, no, just one more question. I've already asked that

Bill: I'm picking and choosing. It seems like maybe we've answered some of these.

Stephanie: Yeah, that last question you asked me about how, helping leaders, how does IFS help leaders. I think we've talked a lot about that.

Bill: Yeah, I think we've covered pretty much all the ground. What would you like? The leadership listener team that's out there listening to this podcast episode, what would you like them to know?

Bill: What's something that you'd like them to take away from this conversation?

Stephanie: Yes, there's 2 things that come to mind as you asked me that. Earlier, you spoke about how you used to do helping people change. What I would say so that what came up for me that relates to change about being a leadership leader was the words that came to me is it almost feels that I didn't know that you, I don't know that the people I know who are really good leaders haven't necessarily gone out of their way to become leaders.

Stephanie: They just became leaders because something shifted inside of themselves. And then that kind of arose and that's how I see change happening too. So I help people to know themselves better and change happens. I don't go into working with someone trying to help them change. I help them through the IFS model, see things that have been kept out of awareness previously.

Stephanie: And go to that place in a way that isn't so scary as maybe it has been in the past because things are kept out of awareness because it's too scary. So I've got this stuck place. I'm going to help you go there in a really safe way. So that, oh, that just resolved. And how does change happen?

Stephanie: What happened? How did that happen? And it's just did. Isn't that weird? Yeah, I know. It's so incredible. That's a whole lot. I could talk an hour just on that. That's a very exciting topic for me. I have so many anecdotes, but what I was also going to say is I think leadership for me is the same.

Stephanie: I want leaders to go away with, as you start to change in you, and there's some sense of that confidence you just spoke about, right? People will be drawn to you. And you will become a leader and then how you choose to be a leader is up to you, whether you choose to actually make it a career path and you go down something where you it's a deliberate I am a leader and people see you as a leader, become a manager or a teacher or a coach or something, or whether it becomes much more subtle, it's just something that, I think of some people in the IFS community who are just leaders.

Stephanie: Because of their energy, people are drawn to them and they've done very little to make that happen as a profession. It just is. That's what I would say. Leadership happens to you.

Bill: I love that. Change happens to you. Leadership happens to you. Yes. That's right. Yes. What a wonderful conversation. And Stephanie, don't be surprised if I ring you up and ask you to come back again and we can talk a little bit more about some of the nuances of the model and how it manifests in the life of leaders and those that follow them.

Stephanie: Great. Thank you so much for having

Bill: me on. If someone wants to reach out to you to be trained in the IFS model where, how would they go about doing that?

Stephanie: They can go to my website, which is stephanie mitchell.com au and all my training's listed on there.

Bill: And do you do more than training? Do you also help people with therapy?

Stephanie: Yes. So I'm a therapist and we didn't get to talk about how I work with non pathologizing approaches to mental health. Oh yeah. But that's okay. It's another conversation. But so I am a therapist and I have a team of therapist staff as well. My books are pretty full. I'm only when I do take on a client at the moment, I'm saying only seeing a very specific group of clients.

Stephanie: Because I'm doing some research on IFS and psychosis at the moment. So they're the only new clients I'm taking on unfortunately, but I wish I had more hours in my day so I could see lots more people, but my staff are all trained in my way of relationally using IFS and I have a team of staff, so yeah, so I do find room for somebody and I offer consultation to people who trained in IFS as well.

Bill: Stephanie, thank you very much.

Stephanie: Thank you. Take care, Bill. ​