Could coaching help us navigate this polycrisis? with Keri Jarvis

Is coaching just another navel-gazing pastime for middle-class women?
Or is it an important tool for helping us build community and make societal change?

That's the question on hand in this week's Soap Box episode.

 This week I'm talking to Keri Jarvis.  Keri is an intersectional feminist developmental coach, a community activist, and a charity co founder.  Her best work happens when she's exploring relational dynamics with clients, deepening their understanding of themselves and others in the context of oppressive systems, so that they can sustain easier access to their healthy adult selves, and rehearse the future we're craving into being. 

 Keri is also possibly one of the smartest people I've talked to in a really long time. And the whole entire conversation blew my mind.

Amongst a plethora of other things,  Keri talks to me about how coaching promises to be an antidote to the corporate world, but really just ends up reinforcing those systems, with a little bit of woo sprinkle on top.  We chat about how to navigate the discomfort that often comes with spending time on self development when the world is falling apart. 

And we explore living in the system whilst trying to break it apart.  If you've spent any time around the coaching industry, then a lot of the questions and the conundrums that we unpick in this podcast will be extremely relevant to you. And I'm hoping, and so is Keri, that this episode will give you a more positive perspective on the potential that coaching has to, be a rehearsal space for creating better relationships, , better movements and ultimately a better world. 

I'm convinced that you will love this episode, so I'm not even going to say that I hope you like it! So grab a cup of coffee, probably a notebook and sit back and enjoy Keri getting on her soapbox. 

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Check out her community on The Portal Collective

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Transcript

Okay, so, I have been sat here for probably about 25 minutes, trying to  adequately summarize, , all of the incredible takeaways, and interesting tangents that this week's guest took me on, , in this episode. And I couldn't do it, because basically, if I tried to pick out highlights, I would just be telling you about everything that has happened in the podcast.

So it makes much more sense for you to go and listen to the podcast.  This week I'm talking to Kerry Jarvis.  Kerry is an intersectional feminist developmental coach, a community activist, and a charity co founder.  Her best work happens when she's exploring relational dynamics with clients, deepening their understanding of themselves and others in the context of oppressive systems, so that they can sustain easier access to their healthy adult selves, and rehearse the future we're craving into being. 

She spends around 20 percent of her working hours co running Southend Care Bank, a charity she co founded to alleviate the impacts of hygiene poverty in her community.  Kerry is also a volunteer. Possibly one of the smartest people I've talked to in a really long time. And the whole entire conversation blew my mind.

Amongst a plethora of other things,  Kerry talks to me about how coaching promises to be an antidote to the corporate world, but really just ends up reinforcing those systems, with a little bit of woo sprinkle on top.  We chat about how to navigate the discomfort that often comes with spending time on self development when the world is falling apart. 

And we explore living in the system whilst trying to break it apart.  If you've spent any time around the coaching industry, then a lot of the questions and the conundrums that we unpick in this podcast will be extremely relevant to you. And I'm hoping, and so is Kerry, that This episode will give you a more positive perspective on the potential that coaching has to, be a rehearsal space for creating better relationships, , better movements and ultimately a better world. 

I'm convinced that you will love this episode. , so I'm not even going to say that. I hope you like it.  ,  So grab a cup of coffee, probably a notebook and sit back and enjoy Carrie getting on her soapbox. 

  Thank you so much for coming and joining us on the podcast. I'm really, really excited to get to talk to you. It

me. I'm buzzing to be here. 

feels like this has been a long time coming. And so you popped up on my Instagram feed, I think because of a mutual friend, like a couple of years ago, maybe, or maybe not that long. Because social media time has no meaning. And, uh, immediately. Connected with what you were saying and, and like the things you were talking about. So I'm pretty sure this is going to be an awesome conversation. No pressure.  So, before we get started for people who haven't come across you online or in the real world, can you give us a bit of a rundown on who you are, what you do and kind of how you got to where you are right now? 

Thank you. Yes. So I am an intersectional feminist developmental coach. And I put those two things together because my coaching is informed by my intersectional feminism, but of course my feminism exists outside of that arena as well. , I am also a charity co founder. , so I co run a charity called the Southend Care Bank, where we seek to alleviate the impacts of hygiene poverty in our community.

, I'm also like a full time football mom and, you know, trying to grow vegetables unsuccessfully, like all of these are the very cliche things that many of us are doing these days. , and how I got to here, , I mean, the main point that I'm always offering up in conversation with people, really for their own, to support their own access to self compassion they might require about where they are at, is that when I became a mother 11 years ago, on Friday actually I didn't think we needed feminism anymore.

Like I genuinely thought that that was done because I personally earned more money than my husband. So like, that was my starting point. Having, becoming a mother, having a baby was really my entry into examining the systems that we live in. And I went through a period of doing birth work. I retrained to be a hypnobirthing teacher.

I encountered a lot of fantastic feminists in that space who taught me a lot. And then as I developed that business, people started to ask me for mentoring and I was drawing there on skills from my old corporate life. I used to sell sprouts and knickers for a living for a major high street retailer.

, and I had a lot of experience there sort of developing people, working with people. , and then over time that, , That, that sort of progressed into me really focusing on coaching, mentoring, did some training, and did some certification. And, but along the way, like I feel like I'm kind of, I'm glossing over there.

Lots of what happened along the way that was not particularly feminist in my, , In my coaching endeavors, shall we say, , and you know, I kind of jokingly refer to it as like my girl boss era, sometimes my spiritual girl boss era.  But really, there's a lot of reckoning that has happened for me over the past, I'd say four or five years in particular. 

around what I was perpetuating in the versions of coaching I was participating in there. And particularly since I've been doing this community care work, it's a very odd experience to straddle these two worlds to have a foot in the online coaching space and another thought in community activism. So I wonder if that, that gives you a good sense of how I've got here and all the different things that have been going on.

Yeah, definitely. And that last point is really interesting. And I've been having, I've been having quite a few conversations, , with people on this  disconnect or like massive difference between the online business space and all the language that we use and all the, the goals that we set and all  the aspirations that, that we have  and the real world.

so much. Where,

like, everybody's off doing very different things, and,  and I think the more time you spend in this online space,  the easier it is to,  They make assumptions about people or to completely move the goalposts  for how things are like actually are in life. So that's really interesting. Yes,

so narrow, doesn't it? Like who is represented in these spaces? I, I saw an interesting post on LinkedIn, you know, talking about like our borderline obsession in the space with like 10k months. And then that was getting me thinking about sort of average salaries and what we see represented, , and how that skews our perception of how successful we are and what we should be striving for and all of that.

, it really is a wild ride sometimes for me to be, , distributing.  You know, shampoo and nappies to people who have been willing to queue for an hour in the rain sometimes to get them. , and then to be having a little scroll on the bus home and to be, I mean, gosh, there are thousands of examples I could give.

But, you know, to, I don't know, to be confronted by versions of abundance and  all of this stuff that just sit in such direct contrast with what I'm experiencing in my life around me in the material world. 

which brings me on to my next question. So, , for those of you who have listened to the podcast before. And if you haven't, there are lots of lovely episodes that you should go back and listen to once you've finished this one. , I ask everybody that comes on what their soapbox is. What is the thing that keeps them up at night that they can't stop thinking about?

Or that they find themselves like in a kitchen at a party at 10 o'clock at night talking someone's ear off about. , so Kerry, what is your soapbox?

  Well, I guess, this could be something different every week for me my thinking kind of moves on so quickly all the time but where I am right now is really sitting in this. what feels like a knowing to me that coaching has the potential to be sort of a portal that we move through, , in order to emerge from this poly crisis that we're living through at the moment.

 But is being hijacked, misappropriated in ways that have the opposite effect that actually keep us where we are.  , to say more about that, to sort of expand more on that,  what I'm really getting at is the potential that coaching has to be a rehearsal space for healthy relation, to be a place where we access more of our wholeness.

And we experience a sense of belonging, , and how I believe that that is fertile soil for us to be willing to take difficult steps to to resolve or to make contributions to resolve in these crises that we are living through. Whereas the ways in which I see coaching used often are all about sort of,  What do I want to say?

Like putting the self to one side, denying the self and the vulnerabilities of the self, self doubt, fragilities  in order to pursue goals, achievement.  And of course, we've got, we've got to do stuff like stuff's got to get done. Like, I'm not suggesting that we don't need to take action or have solutions to things.

Of course we do, but actually having sustainable ways of taking action depends upon us being willing to get into different relationships with ourselves and others. So there's something of a paradox that occurs here, I think. Yeah, kind of makes sense of what I've said, Peter. 

Definitely. No,  that's yeah, no, that's really, really interesting. I wonder if before we move on though we could unpack maybe what you mean by a polycrisis, because it's a term I'm quite familiar with, but I don't know if it's a term that kind of a lot of people would use on a regular basis. 

Yeah. So really when I use that term, what I'm getting at is these interconnected problems that we have, these obstacles that we face, these challenges collectively we could think about anything from climate catastrophe as a whole to where we're at with food in terms of like food shortages, quality of food mental health crisis, physical health crisis, healthcare and public service crisis violent conflict, violence against women and girls.

Yeah, we, we could possibly go on and on and on and on. But essentially the the poly crisis for me just, just captures that sense that all of these issues that we are facing happen.  In relation in some kind of relationship with one another. And that sense that lots of us have when we look around with sort of gloom and dread about, you know, for me, a friend was just texting me literally just before I came on here.

You know, what have we done bringing children into this world like to bring too much despair to the conversation but that does visit me from time to time that that sense of overwhelm. And there's, there's that  two sidedness of this where on the one hand. It's overwhelming when we acknowledge all of the different facets of crisis around us.

But on the other hand, when we do notice their interconnectedness, I think that that can be empowering for us when we think about our impact in any tiny way, our, our relatively small contributions potentially having an impact on the whole 

And I think  it also helps us understand how, because they are so interconnected, how we can't just tackle one of them.

Mm-Hmm

Because they're, they're kind of like all happening at the same time. It's not like you get, you can give us like a week to deal with this one, and then it's done, and then we'll move on to the next one.

It's not that simple. And I think that,  that idea, that feeling of, yeah, of overwhelm, a bit like when, yeah, when you're a mum, and you're like, somebody's yelling at you for a snack and somebody needs to find their football boots. And, but you've also got to find this council tax form that somebody

needs from you.

And then you've got an email from work and.  My partner can't find their keys,  essentially just describing my day  it feels so impossible to tackle any particular one of those because just like, there's just this massive overwhelm. 

And, and you know, the context is. That parenting inside late stage patriarchal white supremacist capitalism is a nightmare. And that particularly mothering in in that context is a nightmare. And, you know, I'm kind of I'm being a bit sort of overly simplifying for comedic value for myself, but it's that you know that that wider context that you've acknowledged there that you've brought here. 

This really reflects the wider point that I am getting at in terms of what, what coaching has the potential to do versus what it is doing at the moment in lots of spaces. If we can really support people to recognize like all the different  elements of their experience that are coming into play.  that, that understanding that I witnessed people having when they're in so much self judgment about like, why did I shout at my child when they just asked for that?

Or why did I not return that form on time? And it was just a form that I needed to return on time. We're so seduced all the time into this idea that things happen in isolation or in simplicity. When of course like everything is connected to everything else. And I'm very aware that I sound like a conspiracy theorist say that as well.

So let's just name that. 

, so. You've mentioned the potential that coaching has to be a tool and a space in that.

So, I'd love to, to come back to that in a little bit. But firstly, and this is going to sound overly simplistic to What is, or how is coaching going wrong  currently,  from your perspective? 

Yeah. So from my perspective, with all of my own biases  and judgments and my own attachments to my identity coming with me into this conversation what I believe on reflection of my own experience as a client, as a coach  who has been in this space,  I don't know, about eight years, something like that.

So, so this isn't, this isn't like a knee jerk. This isn't like me arriving on Instagram or LinkedIn and being like, Oh my God, like, here's my snap judgment about what's happening here. This is emerging from an interrogation of lots of my own experiences and also sitting with clients as they reflect on their own experiences too. 

I believe that the the, the level of focus that we as a coaching industry or, or segments of the coaching industry  place on very like cookie cutter goals and strategies to get there.  is potentially dehumanizing. And I use that language with caution because, you know, there are degrees of dehumanization that people experience.

And I'm not suggesting that this is the worst of the worst of what goes on in the world, but I think that we strip people of their context when we meet them with, so we, they, they share an issue with us that they're having and we meet them with. This worked for me, so it will work for you. And with that a sense that if it doesn't work for you, it's because you didn't try hard enough. 

And often, a real absence of acknowledgement even,  never mind exploration, acknowledgement of the impacts of marginalisation, trauma. Circumstances, look so any, anything else in somebody's circumstances, you know, the level of resources that they might have access to, whether that's like financial resources, emotional resources, like cognitive resources, time, you know, all of these things.

So I believe that I. Being so utterly consumed by  versions of success that just reflect the systems themselves that we already live in, whilst pretending to be an alternative to the systems that we live in. We're really like screwing each other up, basically. A

Yeah, I think that's, yeah, that's a pretty good explanation of the, of what's going on. I, that is, that in itself is really interesting. This,  on the surface, The narratives and the tools and the frameworks and the language that's being used is set up  to be an antidote, oh, I'm using air quotes, but nobody can see because I'm on a podcast to be an antidote to the, like, the corporate world or the current world that you're living in with all its limitations and stresses.  Whereas you're right, like it  it actually reinforces those things, but it just does it with a little bit more woo. 

little bit more word. And a little bit of kind of, you know, that superiority that, that sits with that as well. Like we have. somehow sort of outsmarted or outmaneuvered these forces, you know, there's nothing more seductive than that to me, actually, personally, like when I was in that space in that kind of arena, which I was for a good few years,  that was extremely available to me.

Like, Oh, I'm, I have like a superior level of like intelligence and capacity here.  To do things that other people can't do to see things that other people can't see and to really lean into like these individual solutions to systemic problems. So the reason I started my business was because childcare was extortionately expensive.

I didn't have family nearby, who could help me my mom and dad lived four hours away and still working full time. And so it didn't make sense to me to, to carry on in my career as it had been, even though I really enjoyed my work. But this smugness that I found myself in of like, well, there are all these systemic forces, but I  have been smart enough, astute enough you know, like, I don't know, there's something special about me.

So there's that tension there as well in that space, I think, as well, where we're sort of projecting this, like, I'm special enough to have overcome these factors.  What if you could be special enough too? We're kind of like dangling this carrot of specialness  people. And you know, I was in a really vulnerable place at that time, you know, personally depressed and sort of in an identity crisis and all of that.

So there's also something potentially quite sinister about that as well. 

It reminded me, and I don't know why it reminds me of this, but it reminds me of the Jehovah's Witness idea, that only a certain number of people are going to go to heaven, and so you have to be in that select group who,  I mean, this is a massive simplification of their whole entire theology, but, you know, and you have to be in that select group and you try and pull other people into that select group too, but you're fully aware that nobody else is going to get there or that not everybody is going to get there. So this idea that if not everybody can be special. So if you are, if you're telling people that,  you're special or that I'm special and you can be special too, then you're  leaving everybody else behind, which is problematic in itself.  But then also, it's also, it's more about  Rescuing people  and pulling them up on some kind of ladder  away from, I don't know, a burning building or a sinking ship or something, rather than putting out the fire or fixing the boat.  I'm all over the place with my analogies today,

all working for me.

but there we are then. That's

all that 

Uh, totally. I think about this all the time. I think about how inherent in these I'm going to use that language again, like seductions that occur in the marketing around this stuff inherent in them is this acceptance that some people will always struggle and suffer, and that we're not responsible for doing anything about that. 

You know, I think about like, who do people think is going to, who do people think are going to be sort of caring for our elderly relatives or our elderly selves even? You know, who do we think is going to be helping us get, buy our food in supermarkets? Like, if all of us are just out there, like, you know, abundant bliss or whatever, like, you know, all of the things, all of the very basic needs that we have to have met.

And it was very interesting to me, sort of during, you know, period of strikes around like healthcare workers and teachers and whatnot, the sort of lack of showing up from people who profess to have these feminist ideals, particularly around women making more money. And where was that solidarity for professions like nursing and teaching and nursing assistants that are predominantly female professions saying, Hey, we can't afford to like pay our mortgages.

It goes back to that separation that we touched on the beginning, I think, like what's happening around me in the real world and what's happening here on the internet. 

Yeah. And the,  the overwhelming assumption is that you will only find your bliss in a very prescribed way. So like you won't find your bliss. Being a nurse, you won't find your bliss sitting in a nine to five corporate job. The only way to, yeah, to do that is  to be, to be a coach for hours a week and spend the rest of the time wandering in fields with lambs. Although that does actually sound quite, quite a lot of fun. Like,  it really hit me  this last year  when a lot of the, like, the copywriting, marketing world  kind of fell apart because of the introduction of AI and because of market forces and stuff and  what everybody had been sold.  Was this massive freelance work and you could work how you wanted with the people that you wanted, wherever you wanted and you didn't need to be tied down to a corporate nine to five.  And what has happened specifically, like, in my industry over the last 12 months  is that I reckon about half of the people of the freelance copywriters or designers that I know have either given up again air quotes and gone to do something else. Which is a full time job, or they've gone and got a corporate in house job doing whatever they were doing. And that's kind of been, that's been frowned upon. Whereas actually, they've got a secure income, they're very happy, they're not stressed, and they've adapted to whatever was going on in the realities of the world.  To, yeah, to find a place where they're, where they're comfortable. So yes, I'd seen that work out in those different places is really interesting, but the other thing that you touched on was, and I think this is one of the things that you mentioned in some of the,  were they TikTok videos that then I saw on Instagram or were they Instagram videos 

All over the place. They could be anywhere. Yeah. And 

far too old for TikTok. 

When I 

you took, there was some that I saw that touched on this idea that if you just tried hard enough or if you just tapped into your kind of like spiritual power hard enough then you didn't have to be poor or hungry or sick. So if you were those things, then that was your own personal moral failing

 13, my mom had breast cancer and she, she is still thriving now all these years later, but she became very interested in Louise Hay alongside conventional cancer treatment. And so that that's been in my awareness for  26 years, that idea that you can manifest your way to health and, you know, uh, sort of life of ease  and luxury and, and all of that stuff.

And my relationship with that has changed. ebbed and flowed over the years where I've moved in and out of different circles where people have been on board with that kind of thing. And let me say, like, sometimes I've found that really personally useful to me as well. Like, I think this is something that when we have these conversations and we critique these things, what I always want to do is own up to and put my hands up to.

Well, There have been times when I have really leaned into these ideas because I've not known what else to do because I've felt like depressed and lost and someone is telling you like, if you just raise your vibration or if you just You know, spend time in the company of the five people who you want to become the most like, you know, buy your way into these rooms where you're the poorest and you're the whatever, like the least successful and then, you know, so  I've toyed with all of that, like to different extent. 

And always, always had this kind of niggle around like, well, what does that mean for like children who are born into war zones or famine or whatever? Like, and I've sought counsel on that from various like coaches and like spiritual counselors that I've had who have been sort of brought into that stuff.

And,  you know, sometimes allowed myself to be  soothed and to accept some of the kind of justification around that. Briefly, I would say largely sat with that discomfort until it became too much to ignore. And you know, the complexity of all of this is immense sort of, again, to reiterate this theme of  everything happening in the context, if you're in a situation where people you're connected to in your network are engaged in this kind of thinking, and everyone's kind of reinforcing that this is correct.

And like, Oh, here's this thing. thing that I achieved because I had this attitude and this kind of confusion about cause and effect and this confirmation bias that we have and all of our kind of inherent prejudices that are present and whatnot. Like, if you're in these spaces, it's  It's difficult to reconcile the fact that people who mean well are doing lots of harm, especially if those people have supported you as well through like difficult times.

So whenever I discuss all of this, I just want to like throw all of this in there as well, that this isn't me being like, well, how could anyone ever be so harmful and ignorant and whatever? Like I could, I could be harmful and ignorant. Like I have been. But when we really really get like follow these things to their logical conclusion.

And we ask ourselves like, you know, do I really believe that I can sit here with a certain sort of divinely assigned purpose that will be activated by the frequency of the vibration of love or whatever.  And someone else who is literally just the same as me on so many levels can be born into a situation where  They have no agency that will take their life out of being anything other than like suffering and premature death.

Like how, how can I reconcile these things? So I'm again taking us to some dark places in this conversation, Peter.

fine. It's all good.  It's I think, yeah, it's good to talk about like where things are before we can move on to where how they could be better. I do have to say, though, an awful lot of what you've been talking about has  felt very familiar as someone who grew up in a conservative evangelical church. It's a similar kind of vibe, like everybody's me. Everybody means very well. And but they can firstly also do a lot of harm with that.  That meaning but also, yeah, there is this idea that that you're in some way special and that you have access to things that  have made your life better. And if everybody else just tried a little bit harder or found out about them, then they could too. So, yeah, lots of parallels.

Yeah. And it's that capitalist norm, isn't it? That says like people generally get what they deserve, but also like to, again, to link back to the top of the conversation, you know, this, this sense that people have either in like religious spaces or spiritual spaces of like, I am good. I am moral. I am good. 

this moral credential effect that we see where you, you then cannot examine your own behaviors or interrogate your own behaviors because you're blocked from the possibility that anything that you do could be harmful and wrong because you believe that you are a good person. This is something that I think coaching has enormous potential to resolve for people.

And a lot of my work is. Around practicing what Robert Keegan calls the subject object shift, which allows us to take our perception of ourselves from this, like, I am this person, I have these characteristics, I am this way, this kind of like static, permanent self that then,  despite all evident to the contrary, you know, we will cling to because it gives us some kind of social collateral or like safety as we move through the world.

to get from there to like really loosening our grip on on who we believe we are and to recognize the self as multiplicitous and to recognize that we're in relationships with these characteristics like I am not good like I strive to be decent but I am not A decent person, like sometimes I'm behaving decent ways and think and feel in decent ways.

And otherwise I'm awful. Sometimes I lack generosity. I'm deeply unkind. I can be spiteful. I can be petty. Like none of that means I don't value decency and goodness overall, but when we can name all of that,  it's, it's so much easier for someone to sort of  at some of our behaviors and for us to respond in a healthy appropriate way that oh god yeah maybe I could change what I'm doing there rather than like no no no you've got that all wrong.

I, a good person would never engage in a harmful behavior. 

Yes. Yeah. And it makes it easier for us to make those changes. It makes it easier for us to invite criticism or critique.  The book, the Wake Up by. Michelle Kim 

book.

Oh, it's brilliant. So I'll put the link in the show notes.

So, she talks about that. She talks about that very idea. The fact that because we think that we are good people or because we think that we are. So she deals a lot with with racism because we think that we are not racist. That means that nothing that we do is racist because we're not racist. Like nothing that we do can be bad, nothing that we do can be cruel because we are not bad or cruel people. So yeah, no, that is a really, really powerful shift to be, to be making as we seek to make changes in like the world and in our relationships with people.

And it also really supports us, you know, in our advocacy for issues that we care about in conflict.  To recognize that the other person is, is having that same experience of like, Oh, you are trying to separate me from.  Something that I believe deeply about myself, you know, something that I identify as like who I am.

And when we actually really understand what's going on for people, we can be more effective to, you know, some of this is about compassion for self and others. And some of this is actually also about effectiveness in changing people's minds in helping people to. Develop their thinking without threatening their sense of belonging which is absolutely key and, and something that I think, again, can be compromised in sort of mainstream coaching spaces where your belonging is threatened.

If you are not kind of on the same page about certain things. 

That's true.   So yeah, we've talked about this, like where coaching is now and, and how it's not necessarily responding very well to or helping us respond to the context that we're in right now. So can you tell me a little bit about how you think coaching could be a more effective tool? 

So  the first thing is that when we say that we're coaching, I feel that we ought to actually be coaching. A lot of what is called coaching is like mentoring, consulting, teaching. And I include those things in my work for sure. So, you know, I run groups where we study books or we Engage with like a short, like curriculum that I've prepared or whatever, but I'm, I'm telling people that that's what we're doing, that this is a blend of coaching and thought partnership and, you know, teaching and whatnot.

So. Coaching, we need to understand what it is and what it isn't. And for me, like in a kind of relational approach to coaching that I favor,  we can do in that space that is so simple and so effective is we give people space to think. So really like Nancy Klein's work around time to think and the kind of absence of thinking space and time that we have in our lives, how that affects our access to critical thought.

And we offer them our unconditional positive regard, which is a kind of professional way of saying we evoke a sense of belonging, which is what all of us are seeking and craving and  orientate  oriented orientated towards like all the time you know essentially that radar is like where do I belong, where do I belong. 

And so.  Inner coaching, like I have this idea that, you know, in a, in a post capitalist society, there's the potential that we're all just coaching each other all the time because coaching is really just a a conversation that is rooted in the unconditional positive regard, where we are curious about what's going on for the other person.

And of course there are like other facets to coaching and whatnot, but you know, that would be my summary. And so,  When we are able to provide people with this experience that is uncommon in our lives to have that kind of relational safety,  firstly, we give them the opportunity to like expand into greater self awareness, like they can risk things in that space.

That they can't risk in their other relationships whereby you know, I've had a couple of clients over the last couple of days who've been talking about how they really would like to get something sort of clarified with someone in their lives, someone they're close to that they'd like to address something, but they rely on these people for childcare support or financial support.

And so it feels too risky. To be to, to be disruptive in these relationships to become like potentially disliked in some way to, to, to disappoint the other person, because then are they going to withdraw this kind of practical support from me? So we offer people this opportunity to kind of, uh, rehearse ways of being that reflect their wholeness.

So they can start to voice things that are present for them,  worries that they have. Boundaries they might like to have in place hopes and dreams, you know, fears, all of it. And then ideally they feel equipped to then take some versions of, of these ways of being back out into the world, into their relationships.

And that can be that they  mimic a kind of, uh, coaching style in some of these conversations. It can be as direct as that, or it can just be that they feel. reassured, encouraged and buoyed by this conversation that they've understood a bit better. Like I exist outside of difficult conversations with one particular person in my life that I'm in relationship with.

Like I'm not defined by you know, somebody else, like telling me who I am, like, you know, there's all kinds of other factors that could come in.  

 What about this idea that spending time in  a coaching situation or a coaching relationship, doing work on yourself or on your individual relationships with other individuals can be seen as  a little bit navel gazing and self centered when faced with  the poly crisis that we're in right now. 

 This comes up with my clients quite a lot.  In the sense that we will spend time, particularly in group work, talking about how they are navigating world issues, elements of this polycrisis.  What contributions they're making, how it's impacting them, all of that. 

And all the while there is in the room with us, this awareness of like the potentially kind of self indulgent nature of sitting in a,  you know, a significant amount of safety, having these conversations, being well resourced. So this is, is present in a lot of the spaces that I facilitate.  I think this, this sort of discomfort that we have around this speaks to the kind of binary nature of the thinking that we do in the systems that we live in, that either I can be someone who is like focused on myself, you know, like the kind of like go bossy vibes that we were talking about before,  or I can be someone who is like martyring myself  for the collective.

Compromising all of my own needs, sort of erasing any sense of self. And  what I think where I think we need some self compassion around this is that we still have to live in a system that demands that we operate as an individual. So,  Me knowing that we are all connected, that, you know, in a non bypassing way, like we are all one, we all impact one another.

Me knowing that doesn't mean that like the bank is gonna be like, oh, that's okay, then someone else can pay your mortgage  . Like, I have to find ways to provide for myself.  And so,  like alongside making my contributions.  And so  I think we, we  have to be sort of grounded in the reality  that says that  when I ignore my own needs here, when I ignore the fact that I'm feeling, uh, lonely, stressed,  disconnected constantly worried about like getting into conflict with other people about stuff.

You know, unable to advocate for myself and others, like all of that, like that, that does have an impact on our capacity for show up to show up for others and our capacity to show up for ourselves. And that the more we sort of refuse to acknowledge that we do have needs in navigating all of this,  the more we play into the systems that say, like, You as a, particularly like as a woman, like your role is to care for everyone else. 

So I suppose like the whole time that I'm speaking, I have this track running behind the words I'm saying in my head, which is how right for hijacking all of this is and how it does get hijacked. It gets hijacked into like. Put your own mask on first, you can't pour from an empty cup, like  idea that people have that like, oh, when I have enough, then I'll help others, like that kind of thing.

And I, and I'm really not, I want to name that like that's not it, that's not what I'm saying, but I am saying that we exist.  As part of the collective, and that whilst we move towards systems where we take better care of one another. We do have to do some things to take care of ourselves for our own sake, and for the sake of that collective.

So I've got clients who are you know leaving group coaching sessions that we're having. And, and.  setting up branches of climate groups, or they are having really difficult conversations with their parents about their racism or, you know, whatever that, whatever it might be, like just as a couple of examples. 

So  I guess as well, we all have agency in what we do with the the investment that we've made in getting to know the self, do we then direct that at  seven figure businesses or do we direct it at like wholeness and and how we want to move through the world kind of more holistically? 

No, that's perfect. It does, as an aside, it does massively annoy me that now we've moved from six figure businesses to seven figure businesses because in the capitalist framework of like continuous growth, we can't, we can't just leave the goalposts like in one place.

No, cost of living crisis babe, six figures not gonna cut it anymore.

that's very true.  That is a true story. That was fascinating and so helpful. And you have given everybody listening is like, normally at this point I would go, can you think of any practical ways that you can, that our listeners can blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, you've just given everybody loads of practical ways that they can do that.

So that's great. If people want to come and find you, talk to you, tell you how wonderful you are, start working with you. Anything like that. Where should they go?

Well I'm very much trying to get going on LinkedIn so I'd love it if you would come and make friends with me over there. It's about my seventh attempt to give it a go. So yeah, come and find me there. I think if you search like Kerry Jarvis, feminist coach or something, I'll pop up. I am on Instagram.

I'm constantly reassessing my relationship with Instagram for the various reasons that probably most of us are. And I'm currently halfway through the old, uh,  website rewrite that comes around every now and then, but it is still there. I'm not, I'm not even putting it into drafts. I'm just doing it bit by bit and leaving it because it's just the nature of my personality.

So who knows what you will find on there, but feel free to go and have a look.

There's a website copywriter that like gives me hives.  Cool. Okay. That's fab. And you are you are running a group with or running a group on a new platform with somebody who is coming on the podcast in a couple of episodes.

So can you tell us a bit about that?

Yes, I am. Thank you. So I'm running a group called composting and it is where it's on the portal, the portal collective with Sally Burns and Sally is building a new world. And if I may be so bold as to term it in this way, I am on the portal where she's really seeking to provide an alternative to learning environments online, where there is a hierarchy and I mean, I want to like gesture a pyramid with my hands, but this is a podcast.

Hierarchy in how we learn, you know, the, the leader has all the information has all  the Credibility and everyone else is just there to kind of like accept what is said. And, and I'm not saying that that's what happens in all learning spaces, but the way that the systems are structured is with this idea in mind that we wouldn't learn from one another as peers.

We just all are there to learn from this one person. So Sally is creating this platform that is mimicking a  mycelium network. It's based on permaculture principles. It's very exciting. It's early stages. So.  When people land on there, they are really supporting her to build this new world and being able to shape it as it grows.

I'm really honored actually to be a part of it. So yeah, you can come and find us over on the Portal Collective. 

That's very cool. That's all going to be in the show notes. I'm so excited to talk to Sally about this whole concept. Like my brain just, we had a chat, my brain exploded. So that's good.  Which is obviously my aim on all my podcast episodes.  Making everybody's brain explode , that was great. Uh, I loved that conversation.

Thank you so much for taking the time to, to kind of, yeah, help us think about coaching a little bit differently and and showing us how, as we try and run more socially conscious businesses we can, yeah, we can make use of it. So thank you.

Thank you so much for having me.