Ep 159: The Healing That Can Happen When Women Gather

Have you ever been around certain people and felt instantly at home–like you could exhale and completely be yourself? I’ve been thinking about that profound sense of belonging as I prepare for my group coaching program to start up again, and today I share the magic that happens when women with similar values come together to do the tender work of becoming our favorite versions of ourselves.

I work with women who share core values like belonging, growth, community, freedom, connection, and kindness. Even though I expect it, I’m still amazed and touched by the healing that unfolds when they share their struggles and triumphs and witness each other’s growth.

In group coaching, women come to realize that everyone’s journey is unique and that there is no one right way to grow. They witness one another finding their own answers, trusting their own wisdom, and making choices that fit with the life they want. Intentional communities for growth and healing are powerful spaces for change that help you move even closer to being your favorite you.

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Transcript

Hey, this is Melissa Parsons, and you are listening to the Your Favorite You Podcast. I'm a certified life coach with an advanced certification in deep dive coaching. The purpose of this podcast is to help brilliant women like you with beautiful brains create the life you've been dreaming of with intentions. My goal is to help you find your favorite version of you by teaching you how to treat yourself as your own best friend.

If this sounds incredible to you and you want practical tips on changing up how you treat yourself, then you're in the right place. Just so you know, I'm a huge fan of using all of the words available to me in the English language, so please proceed with caution if young ears are around.

Hey everybody, welcome back to Your Favorite You. I'm Melissa Parsons and I am so grateful, as always, that you're here with me again today.

I've been thinking about this episode quite a bit lately, and I have a new group coaching program starting up again in October, and I was trying to make it happen so that the women who are currently in the group that's finishing up could come and gather and meet and talk about the healing that has happened in the group that we are just finishing up. And it has not been easy to get us all to find a day and time that works. So I thought, how could I convey this to you all without having them all here to talk about it? And of course, we're going to find a day and time that does work. But until then, I wanted to write something and put out something that might be compelling if you've been thinking about joining the group. So here goes.

So I'm wondering if you've ever been around certain people and just felt at home, like you could actually exhale and completely be yourself. I've been thinking a lot about this lately. Like I said, especially as I've been watching what happens in my group coaching programs. There's really something magical that happens when women with similar values come together to do what is tender work of becoming our favorite versions of ourselves.

When they share their struggles and their triumphs, when they witness each other's growth, it creates this healing that I absolutely expected when I started facilitating groups, having experienced it myself as a client in other groups.

And even though I expected it, I'm also still amazed when it happens and I'm truly touched by it every time. Sometimes it involves healing parts of us that we didn't even know we were seeking to be healed.

And today I want to talk about why some people just feel so good to be around and what happens when we create intentional communities for growing and healing together. So in my group coaching programs, I work with women who share certain core values, things like authenticity, belonging, growth, community, compassion, freedom, connection, of course, humor because it's with me, kindness, vulnerability, openness, and of course, confidentiality. When you put women together who share these values, something really beautiful happens. And here's the thing. Some of them trust this right away and they're sharing right from the get-go, while others take some time to actually believe that vulnerability really matters and to believe that authenticity is worth the risk.

And this is why I have to intentionally set the container and create clear agreements that we're going to abide by together. It's only when they experience the safety that we provide in the group that they can truly lean into what's possible.

I noticed that it's so easy to be my favorite version of myself in these communities, both in the ones that I lead and in the ones that I participate in. There's something about being with other women who are also committed to becoming a favorite version of themselves that brings out a favorite version of me too.

It's like the community creates the conditions where your favorite you can naturally emerge. You're not performing. You're not trying to be someone that you're not. You're just more yourself. Of course, we live in a world where so many of our interactions feel surface level, where we have to wear masks and play roles and we worry about saying the wrong thing. But when you find your people, people who share your values and who are also committed to growth, suddenly you can remember what it feels like to belong. 

I got curious about this phenomenon, so I did some research on why certain people just feel so good to be around. I also learned many of these concepts in my training with Bonnie Badenoch regarding the science of trauma and creating safety, and of course, in my recent internal family systems training. The science behind this is really interesting. When we have positive social interactions with people who feel safe to us, our brains release a cocktail of feel-good chemicals, neurotransmitters. So oxytocin, which is a bonding hormone, it gets released when we feel connected and safe. Dopamine gets released as a reward for positive social interactions, making us want to seek out these interactions again. Serotonin levels increase when we give and receive kindness, and endorphins can create that helper's high when we support each other.

And there's more. Our brains have these amazing cells called mirror neurons that help us literally catch other people's emotions. When you're around someone who's positive and authentic, your mirror neurons can fire and you can start to experience their positive state too and start to feel more authentic yourself.

This is why being in a room full of women who are committed to growth and healing feels so good. You can literally absorb their energy and they can absorb yours. It's emotional contagion at its best. And I'm a germaphobe. That was interesting as a pediatrician being a germaphobe. But this type of emotional contagion, I can get behind.

Here's something that you need to know that's key to this. All of this only happens when we feel safe. When we can be our authentic selves without fear of judgment, our nervous systems can relax. Our brains perceive it as a safe space, which lowers our stress hormones, lowers our cortisol, and really allows all of those good chemicals that I just told you about to flow.

And research shows that strong social connections don't just make us feel good in the moment. They can have profound health benefits over time. So lower rates of anxiety and depression, higher self-esteem, better physical health.

Community isn't just nice to have, it is essential for our well-being. Let me share some examples of this unexpected healing that can happen and that happened recently in one of my groups. We have women ranging from those of us with grown children who no longer live with us to moms with little ones.

So one woman shared that she was newly pregnant after a recent pregnancy loss, and we coached together on whether or not she would share the news with others. We explored her fears, her hopes, and what really felt right for her.

After the coaching, another amazing woman in the group whose children are now in elementary and middle school shared how witnessing that coaching helped heal a tiny part of her own experience when she experienced a miscarriage in her first pregnancy years ago.

And she shared that she wished she'd had coaching back then to help her through that loss. And of course, there wasn't a dry eye in the Zoom room. Here was healing happening for someone who didn't even know that that part of her was still seeking healing.

Another time, one of my clients was preparing to have a conversation with her mom about how the quote unquote advice her mom gives feels more like criticism and isn't really helpful. We coached on how to approach that conversation with her mama with love and boundaries.

And this coaching helped another mom in the group realize that the quote unquote advice she was wanting to give to her own daughter would likely create less connection between them, which is the opposite of what she actually wants with her kids.

Watching someone else work through that dynamic helped her see her own patterns more clearly. This happens for me as the facilitator too. Remember when I talked about my relationship with my body and how I eventually decided to try a GLP-GIP medication?

I had these biases against taking the medication for myself, even though I would never judge my clients for making that choice. It was actually witnessing my clients' courage and self-compassion in my group that helped me see my own double standard.

I was holding myself to a different and of course harder, higher standard than I would hold my people. Being in community with these brave women doing their own healing work helped me heal a bias I didn't even know I was carrying.

Many of the women who fill out testimonials for my program specifically mention that I create a space that feels safe to share all the parts of themselves, not just with me, but with the other women in the group.

I think this happens because I'm genuinely curious about each woman's experience. I don't have an agenda for how they should grow or what they should choose. I'm just fascinated by their inner worlds and committed to helping them find their own answers.

I also really freely share my own struggles and growth in real time. When I'm working through something in my own life, I don't pretend I have it all figured out. I let them see me being human, making mistakes, and learning and growing right alongside them.

This gives everyone permission to be imperfect, to not have it all together, to be in the process rather than having somehow arrived somewhere. And I consistently model those values we talked about. Authenticity, vulnerability, compassion, humor, openness.

When you consistently show up this way, it creates permission for others to do the same. And like I said earlier, it becomes contagious in the very best way. We also create very clear agreements about confidentiality.

What's shared in the group stays in the group. This isn't just a rule. It is really sacred. And we all sign a confidentiality agreement. It's a contract that each of the women sign in the group, and I sign it too. So when women know their stories and struggles will be held with utmost care, they can risk truly being seen. There's something powerful about being witnessed by other women who are on similar journeys.

When you share your story and someone says, I see you, I get it, you're not alone, that hits differently. It's the difference between being told you're not alone to actually feeling it in your bones because you're surrounded by women who truly understand.

Having women at different stages of life in the groups creates this beautiful perspective. The woman who has grown children can offer wisdom to the new mom while the new mom reminds everyone about the tenderness of early motherhood.

And a single person in the group offers insights about autonomy that married women need to hear. So really everyone has something to give and something to receive. And what happens in these groups doesn't just stay in these groups.

These women go back to their families, to their work environments, to their communities as more authentic, more compassionate versions of themselves. And they become the people who feel good for others to be around.

And the healing then ripples out. In group coaching, women get to witness other women finding their own answers, trusting their own wisdom, making their own choices. It reinforces that they have everything they need inside of them too.

They see that everyone's journey is different and that there is no one right way to grow. How boring would that be? If you've been feeling at all isolated in your growth journey, if you've been doing this work alone, I want you to know that there's another way.

There's something profound that happens when you do this work in community. You don't just grow faster, you grow differently. You heal parts of yourself you didn't even know needed healing. You remember what it feels like to belong exactly as you are.

In my groups, we meet weekly for group coaching calls where everyone gets coached and everyone learns from each other's coaching. We have a private community where women can support each other between the calls.

And we create this container where it's safe to be real, to be vulnerable, to be imperfect, and to be growing. If group coaching isn't the right fit for you right now, that's okay too. Just start paying attention to the people in your life who feel good to be around.

Notice the values they embody. Seek out communities, whether that be online or in person, whether they're formal or informal, where you can practice being your authentic self. Because when you find your people, when you experience what it feels like to be truly seen and accepted, you become someone that can offer that to others. You become part of the healing.

Here's what I know for sure. There's very little we're meant to do alone. Even just sharing with one other person can help speed and soften the healing. We're not meant to figure out how to become our favorite versions of ourselves in isolation.

We need each other. We thrive with witnesses. We need people who believe in our growth, even when we don't quite believe in it ourselves. And when we find those people, whether that's in a group coaching program or a book club or a hiking group or wherever it is, magic can happen, not just for us, but for everyone around us.

So I want to give you permission to seek out your people, to look for communities where you can be authentically yourself, to surround yourself with people who feel good to be around, not because they're perfect, but because they're real.

Because becoming your favorite you is so much easier and so much more joyful when you're not doing it alone. All right, folks, thanks so much for listening and I'll talk to you next week.

Hey - It’s still me. Since you are listening to this podcast, you very likely have followed all the rules and ticked off all the boxes but you still feel like something's missing! If you're ready to learn the skills and gain the tools you need to tiptoe into putting yourself first and treating yourself as you would your own best friend, I'm here to support you. As a general life coach for women, I provide a safe space, compassionate guidance, and practical tools to help you navigate life's challenges as you start to get to know and embrace your authentic self.

When we work together, you begin to develop a deeper understanding of your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. You learn effective communication strategies, boundary-setting techniques, and self-care practices that will help you cultivate a more loving and supportive relationship with yourself and others.

While, of course, I can't guarantee specific outcomes, as everyone's journey is brilliantly unique, what I can promise is my unwavering commitment to providing you with the skills, tools, support, and guidance you need to create lasting changes in your life. With humor and a ton of compassion, I'll be available to mentor you as you do the work to become a favorite version of yourself.

You're ready to invest in yourself and embark on this journey, so head over to melissaparsonscoaching.com, go to the work with me page, and book a consultation call. We can chat about all the support I can provide you with as we work together.

I am welcoming one-on-one coaching clients at this time, and, of course, I am also going to be offering the next round of group coaching soon. 

Thanks for tuning in. Go be amazing!