How are you showing up for yourself when no one is looking?
By: Laura Christoph, PhD, NBC-HWC
Head Nourishment Coach, Three Point Balance
Clients often say “I have it all together for everyone else, but just can’t seem to take care of myself!”.
Picture a CEO managing a company with millions of employees by day and eating Oreo cookies on the couch while watching Netflix every night, even though she told herself she would have a balanced meal at her kitchen table.
The thing is, we feel selfish for showing up for ourselves in the way we show up for everyone else. I had a client last week tell me that she feels she is “giving every ounce of myself away and there is nothing left for me”.
WHAT’S GOING ON HERE?
In the 1950’s, Erving Goffman published “The Presentation of Self in Every Day Life” which introduced the concept of “Front Stage Behaviors”, those behaviors we perform when we know we are being watched, and “Back Stage Behaviors”, how we act when we think no one is looking. Incongruence between the two creates friction.
We often turn to backstage behaviors like eating sweet foods and binge watching TV when we feel depleted and want to “check out”. But that isn’t who we really want to be. It causes internal conflict, as our backstage behaviors diverge with our front stage personas.
my story
In my personal life, I balanced an extreme front stage and back stage divergence. I was a nutrition professor struggling with an eating disorder. When I called for support, admitted I needed help, and surrendered to the recovery process, it was hard. I felt like I was admitting failure. But slowly and surely, I worked with my care team, and eventually my coach, to experience coherence between what I was thinking, saying, and doing both front and backstage.
In my work with recovery clients, most were actually drawn to me for my courage in addressing incongruencies in front and backstage behaviors and their desire to do so as well. When I asked people in the recovery space why they chose me as their, coach they would often say, “You were a PROFESSOR of nutrition and had bulimia. If you recovered from bulimia, I believe that might be possible for me too”.
No one cared as much about my knowledge of nutrition and public health or my health coaching credential. It is my honesty and integrity in showing up for myself AND for them that is a draw.
Even as I progress in my personal work and my field, I am continuously working on aligning front and backstage behaviors. I still work with a coach on movement, as I have tendencies toward extreme exercise that causes me injury. I notice that when I am experiencing stress, I still want to run or row longer than prescribed to feel relief.
This is a backstage behavior incoherent with my front stage presence, which touts balancing hard work with rest and recovery.
My coach partners with me to create a solid training framework and helps me notice when these backstage tendencies creep in. We have a variety of healthy tools I can use when I am stressed that better align with my values than overexercise, and I have a space to create awareness around my tendencies and plan to address them each week when we meet.
creating space to do the real work
When we can come clean, admit to ourselves (and maybe a trusted coach) that we are not integrating our front and back stage selves, we can FREE ourselves up to work toward a more messy truth.
Many of my clients at Three Point Balance are working on merging their front and back stage selves in their relationship with food. Whether it is eating foods that cause digestive issues, eating until overfull, or eating foods out of alignment with values, we are all working on something. Partnering with a coach can be a powerful way to begin to stop hiding your backstage self.
A coach’s job is to help you explore what is happening backstage and gently and deliberately partner with you to work toward coherence.
How would it feel to have a space to talk through and address those backstage behaviors with a Guide who can help you see what they are all about?
That is what we do here at Three Point Balance!
Do you desire a life that feels coherent - truly aligned with your values?
take action
If you’re ready to explore coaching, let’s begin a conversation about your Vision & Goals and how to bring it all to life! We will ask lots of questions in pursuit of understanding you really well, so we know the best places to get started and what coaching structure will be most successful for you.
Simply send us an email to begin chatting: info@threepointbalance.com
The Three Point Balance Team wants to empower you to connect with your values and show up for yourself both front and backstage!
let’s do this together!
AUTHOR
Laura Christoph, PhD, NBC-HWC
Head Nourishment Coach, Co-Founder
Three Point Balance
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