But smiling has been shown to have a positive mode-enhancing ability. You can raise your level of happiness by pushing yourself to smile. Teachers can improve children’s learning ability because a smile creates a relationship change. Smiling teachers make school a pleasant experience rather than a dreadful chore.

According to some research, yes, smiling has an association between improvements in finance, career, and even the potential for marriage. For some couples, smiling or lacking it may signal an imminent divorce.

Smile, as the song says, though your heart is aching, and you may even improve your heart health because a positive attitude is associated with longevity and a decrease in mortality.

All, or most of us, are wearing masks these days because it has been recommended that this is the best way to control the spread of deadly viruses. How can you tell if someone is smiling? There is another way, and it’s something that has been utilized by artificial intelligence programs. I speak, of course, of the Duchenne smile, which is the amount of wrinkling around the eyes.

Wrinkling has a bad association, doesn’t it? But when wrinkling is associated with smiling, it indicates a genuine, optimistic emotional display. Sure, some people can fake wrinkling around the eyes to project a deceptive attitude about something or someone. Well, we can’t have it all.

Smiling does have something to do with the way I wrote an article and the couple I happened to meet in a hospital waiting area. We didn’t have to wear masks at the time, and their smiles were wonderful and genuine and very much appreciated. I needed a smile, and they, especially the woman, returned the favor.

How hard is it to smile? You pull those face muscles into an expansive grin, wrinkle up your eyes, and immediately you’re a different person. Yes, pulling those muscles in your face sends a signal to your brain that your mood is changing, and there’s a chemical reaction to lift your mood.

And smiling is contagious, so breaking out a smile helps others smile, too. If ever there was a free and readily available way to brighten the mood of a room or a group, it’s with a smile.

Of course, there are a variety of smiles, and some portend a degree of concern (think The Joker from Batman), but I’m talking about those smiles that signal openness and a willingness to enjoy something. These are the ones on which we should be concentrating, even in the darkest of times. Do I sound like a pollyanna? Sorry, but I refuse to dismiss this means of making myself or anyone who happens to be with me happier.

Even in restaurants or stores, smiles play an important role. “The “service with a smile” mantra has been universally proclaimed in the West for its enhanced effect on customer affect and service outcomes.” The smiling server or salesperson is usually more successful in making that sale or receiving a bigger tip.

Give it a try. See how many times you can turn something around today or tomorrow by smiling. It greases the wheels of success in careers, finance, and, as I indicated before, the possibility of marital bliss and courtship.

Go forth and smile.

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What feelings are you experiencing inside your body here and now?

How do you know you’re experiencing internal feelings?

Where are you experiencing the sensations in your body?

The following article is from a webinar section I delivered titled “The Intersection Between Agile Coaching And Psychotherapy” on December 16, 2020, for140 members of The Expert Agile Club, a global Agile community.

Somatic Approach

What is a somatic body response? Let’s look at the above example and consider physical and emotional changes in our bodies when we encounter an angry dog. Next, we will draw parallels to how we approach and respond to our somatic experience in coaching.

My dog Astor, a German Jagd Terrier, is a rescue who, by all accounts, previously lived in an abusive household. She can be volatile, even with me. In the past, I pet her and felt fear course through my body, like a wave running up and down my core. My heartbeat quickened, sweat glands perspired, and cortisol pumped through my veins in response to the fight or flight situation.

Despite trying to hide my emotion, Astor picked up on my fear and lashed out her teeth to bite, much like the picture above. Today when I feel uncertain around Astor, I withhold, reorient, and wait until the wave passes before engaging with my dog. Astor senses my calmness, and we can play and be together in harmony.

Psychology Today defines:

Somatic Experiencing (SE), as a holistic approach to establishing this natural flow between mind and body.

How does Somatic Response Relate to Coaching?

Before engaging with the client, team, or organizational system, a coach needs to establish a heightened sense of self-awareness between their mind and body experience. Humans are not merely heads possessing intellect and rational thought separated from the body. With the two integrated, the whole is greater than its parts. When we tap into a holistic approach to our human experience, we better understand our present psychological and physical needs.

Bringing our entire selves to our clients will create the container to ‘do the work’ with others. And it is only possible to know ourselves against the backdrop of our relationship with others. Notice how the focus is based on the principle of “here and now,” when we engage in the present moment and connect the mind-body experience, we are aware of the significant sensations within the body and environment.

We are better equipped to respond with intention rather than reaction. The result? If your client possesses emotional intelligence, much like our dog example, they, too, will be aware of your internal state of being. How we show up to our clients enters ‘into the field’ or container for all to experience whether we like it or not.

A Personal Example

When I consulted at the Royal Bank of Canada, I worked alongside a challenging, emotionally unavailable German man. Unlike anything I had encountered before, I wasn’t sure how to support my colleague in our challenging development environment. Like the example of the dog, I felt anxious around this man. Because I wasn’t paying attention to my bodily physical reaction, I wasn’t listening to my whole self, nor him.

As a result, I limited speaking with him, and when we did converse, the exchange was awkward— for him and me! The frustration was in “the field” of our team’s container, and others in the group also felt our mutual friction. Once I began to acknowledge my avoidance and anxiousness, I began to sit longer in the discomfort and allowed it to “be,” even vocally mentioned my nervousness with him and desire to move past the uneasiness.

In speaking my truth, I felt greater freedom with my colleague, and from that day forward, the discomfort gradually became less figural until we found a commonplace together.

To Conclude

Regardless if you’re in the coaching field or not (there are essential truths in this post relating to everyone), the best way we can self regulate is to understand and accept our own physical and emotional response in the here and now. In this experience, we remain authentic to ourselves and with others. And consider — when we’re aware of our present feelings, we make better, more informed choices. Can you imagine if I blindly continued to ignore my internal anxiousness with my RBC colleague? I guarantee the friction would have escalated. When we connect the mind and body, we are no longer intellectualizing our emotions; instead, we embody them.

Full Webinar below

The Intersection Between Agile Coaching & Psychotherapy.

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The experience I have had is that once you start talking about [experiencing a mental health struggle], you realize that actually you’re part of quite a big club. — Prince Harry

The COVID-19 pandemic is extremely stressful and has more victims than those lying in beds or graves; it has mental health problems and stigma. Why stigma?

The question of mental health and receiving psychotherapeutic treatment has always carried with it an element of stigma. Those with any mental health issues were berated, isolated, or laughed at with impunity. Often, the village idiot was someone with a mental illness.

Now, mental health issues have grown exponentially not only in the general population of all countries but also in their healthcare staff. And it is also in healthcare and law enforcement where discussion of mental health problems is verboten.

Jobs depend on mental stability, and too often, those in medicine or law are expected to be extraordinary individuals who are impervious to any suggestions of mental difficulties. Admitting to the stresses of the job during a pandemic is not expected or encouraged.

The refusal to accept the need for mental healthcare in medical professionals has led to breakdowns with tragic results as detailed in physicians’ suicides. But, in some countries, like China, the reluctance to seek mental healthcare during any time has been strongly supported by the culture.

In this study, a significant proportion of participants experienced anxiety, depression, and insomnia symptoms, and more than 70% reported psychological distress. In a previous study during the acute SARS outbreak, 89% of health care workers who were in high-risk situations reported psychological symptoms.

The full impact of the psychological toll on the citizens and the professionals resulted in China’s surveys of their needs and how to respond to them.

Mental health hotlines were quickly established across China and provided the public with counseling and psychological services. The telephone and Internet have been widely used to deliver mental health care services, and social media platforms (e.g., WeChat, Weibo) have been used to share strategies, guidelines, and education programs for managing potential mental distress.

In addition, a series of self-help handbooks for psychological care associated with COVID-19 have been published by the China Association for Mental Health, medical institutions, and universities.

According to the World Health Organization, there are nine therapists for every 100K people in China. The need may be great, but the lack of therapists tells how psychotherapy is viewed in the country. Who would enter a profession where patients refused to come to you?

Laws in China, which poorly define psychotherapy, but carry restrictions and deny anyone the right to be called a psychologist, are facing pushback by people in need. Now, the pandemic has only increased the need for services.

China Is Not Alone in Denying Mental Health Needs

When I was a doctoral student in New York City, another student in my peer group brought up a distressing situation for discussion. He was trying to offer services to his NYC community of Orthodox Jews and realized it was more than he could handle.

Rather than take mentally ill members of the community for psychological or psychiatric services, parents often kept the individual locked in a room. This would go on for years sometimes.

In recent years, numerous efforts have been made to address the stigma in the Orthodox community, where the fear of harming marriage prospects has drawn a curtain of secrecy around those suffering from mental illness.

Since that time, things have changed, but it may not be the case in all religious communities worldwide. Some societies see the mentally ill as possessed of a devil, others as touched with special powers. Would this person need a psychologist or a preacher?

I worked in a psychiatric hospital where a patient told me a nurse said he should fast to cure his schizophrenia. He already believed that he was suffering because of some sin he had committed. Now, she told him that was true, and he needed to pray, too. This was not an unusual case.

Visitors came onto a unit at another psychiatric hospital and performed repeated exorcisms with or without staff knowledge. One patient, after three exorcisms, told them to stop it.

Admitting to Our Humanity

The term “No one’s perfect” is surely the case because, if we were, would we be human? Even bots aren’t perfect, yet we think we can make them into perfection personified. We program them to be careful listeners and do work similar to therapists. Is that a good thing or yet another problem?

Our foibles make us who we are, and perfection may not be what we want or need. What we want is to be understood, accepted, and helped when we need help.

Algorithms can’t ask for help, but we can, so we’re better than the bots that are seen as performing yet another human task and doing it well.

Destigmatizing psychotherapy and mental health disorders has to be job #1, and we need to do it quickly, and the therapy has to be effective. We can teach people new behaviors and ways of approaching difficulties and to accept that none of us is invulnerable.

And we need to admit our powerlessness sometimes. But belief systems aren’t always easily fixed, but that doesn’t mean we should give up.

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