Hi there, I’ve been struggling with this thought about showing up in my coaching business/as a coach that I’m too intense and I repel people with my intensity.

I was getting some coaching on it where we asked can I show up too intense/ too much/ just as myself for a period of time and trust that it would be OK. During the coaching, I was provoked to remember that my mom was a very intense woman which I hadn’t really been thinking about before. When I did, I remembered that I didn’t like that about her. That I found it exhausting and definitely believed that it put other people off and created tension in our relationship.

I’m clearly conflating the two but I don’t know how not to. I’m believing very strongly in the same kind of thoughts about myself and imagine the same reactions from my potential clients towards me that I had to my mother.

While I was journaling on this my husband called from a retreat that he’s been attending and was talking about how to rediscover a real sense of play and light-heartedness. My reaction was one of retraction, discomfort almost to disdain. It’s no surprise to me that I’m disconnected from my sense of play/ light-heartedness. But right now it all feels like a jumbled mess that I don’t know how to clear up?

How can I allow myself to show up as “too intense” and trust the process/that it’ll be OK…while also conflating it with my experience of my relationship with my mother’s intensity. How do I un-conflate them?

Do I need to counter my intensity by integrating a sense of play? And if I do need to do that, doesn’t that mean that I will actually be “too intense” and be repelling people in the meantime?