Elizabeth Carlin Coaching

People around us might notice tendencies, habits, and patterns that we cannot yet see ourselves.

Vulnerability might not be comfortable, and it can be illuminating.

We don’t have to surrender authorship of our experience in order to become curious about what someone else sees.

There is information in our receptivity, too.

What happens in us when someone who loves us offers a reflection?

Do we become curious? Defensive? Open? Certain? Ashamed? Interested? Do we immediately need to explain ourselves, or can we let the reflection sit beside our own knowing for a moment?

Receptivity does not require agreement.

Perhaps the invitation is simply to remain open enough to wonder:
What might I be able to learn about myself through the eyes of people who love me?

Seeing the pathway isn’t just about having an obvious vision of it. It’s a feeling experience.

Sometimes we can self-abandon through hopeful optimism.

That doesn’t mean it isn’t worth having hope. It doesn’t mean optimism is misplaced. But when we’ve been holding hope and optimism for a while, and there is still no illuminating of a pathway toward the thing we’ve been hoping for, what becomes important is honesty.

Honesty with self.



Stay tuned for my private program for women coming soon.
What does it mean to experience more of you… To experience more of life… INHABIT.

Life asks us
How to BE ourselves through its challenges, its breadth, its wide scope. Through friendship, partnership, family, parenting, work, play, hurt and pain, we are asked to experience what is our deepest Me, our truest I.

Trying to eliminate trigger, activation, discomfort and challenge is not the path that real human integration is about. At least not for me. For me it’s about developing a way of relating to ourselves, and others, that permits everyone to be their truest and most honest expression. When we do that, we integrate. When we do that we create safe-enough spaces for honest meeting of self and other.

To me, this is what the practice of human integration is about.

If you are a woman who is curious not just to talk about this but to practice it, join me and a small cohort of women for a six week journey of Relational Literacy.

Message me to get on the interest list. Enrollment begins later this week.

I am so passionately alive in the development of this work.

I keep returning to a question:
Is there consciousness in the relationship—or not?

Not: are we always calm?
Not: do we never hurt each other?
Not: can we communicate perfectly?

Instead, can I become conscious of what is happening inside me before I turn it into an unquestioned truth about you?

Can I notice what my body is experiencing?
Can I express enough of what is moving through me that I restore capacity for discernment—not use expression instead of discernment?

Can I become curious about the beliefs generating my interpretation? The narrative. The meaning. The identity that may be organizing around it.
Can I name real impact—even harm—without surrendering authorship of my experience?

Can I discern: is this patterned activation asking to be met, or is something genuinely out of alignment with my values?

And then, from somewhere increasingly integrated inside myself:

Can I choose?

This is what I’m developing inside Relational Literacy, a six-week experiential cohort for women.

NOTICE → SHARE → INQUIRE → OWN → REPAIR

From unconscious reaction toward conscious relationship.

I’ll be sharing more soon. If this work makes something in you go YES, you’re exactly who I want to hear from.

What parts of you are wanting to be seen the way you want others to see you?
What parts of you are still seeking proof or evidence of themselves through another person’s perception?

Do you need someone else to see how lovable you are?
Desirable you are?
Fun you are?
Generous you are?
Thoughtful you are?
Capable you are?

Feeling misunderstood, misperceived, or inaccurately represented by another person has been one of the most challenging adult experiences I’ve ever worked with.

At times, the mission to correct another person’s perception of me has been intensely consuming.

“No, that’s not what I meant.
“That’s not who I am.
“If I could just explain it differently, you’d understand me.

But underneath that compulsion lives a fascinating question:

What becomes unstable inside me when you don’t see me the way I see myself…

And even deeper:
What if the person who misunderstands me is showing me the exact place where I still need them to understand me?

This is where rejection has become one of my teachers.

Not because rejection doesn’t hurt.

Not because human beings don’t need belonging, mirroring, intimacy, or being deeply known.

But because another person’s perception of me does not have to become the authority on my relationship with myself.

You are allowed to misunderstand me.
You are allowed to dislike me.
You are allowed to decide that who I am is not for you.

And I can let the feelings that creates move through my very human body without making your acceptance the condition upon which I return home to myself.

I don’t have to abandon my knowing of myself because you cannot see me there.

There is tremendous energy returned to us when we stop campaigning to be correctly perceived.

Energy for discernment.
For creativity.
For relationship.
For pleasure.
For truth.
For becoming increasingly, unapologetically particular.
Increasingly Me.

So yes.
Reject me.
Let me discover whatever part of myself still believes it requires your agreement in order to exist.

Let me meet her.
Let me know her.
Let me bring her home.

And let rejection become an invitation into deeper BEing of Me.

Thank you for rejecting me
so that I can become
even more
Me.

The capacity to experience more life because less energy is being spent trying not to experience oneself.

Avoidance is energetically expensive.

Suppression is expensive.
Chronic indecision is expensive.
Hyper-analysis is expensive.
Being at war with parts of ourselves is expensive.
Continually reaching outside ourselves to stabilize what feels difficult inside is expensive.
Holding incompatible internal positions without ever bringing them into relationship is expensive.

So much of our energy can be consumed by the interior friction of not wanting to experience what we are already experiencing.

Integration doesn’t mean we suddenly have unlimited energy.

It means
less of the energy we do have is consumed by that friction.

More of the organism becomes available.

Available for clarity.
For discernment.
For creativity.
For relationship.
For pleasure.
For play.
For rest.
For grief.
For desire.
For the unexpected.

For whatever life is actually asking us to meet.

This is part of why I care so deeply about increasing our capacity to experience ourselves.

Not so that we can become exceptionally good at tolerating difficult lives. Not so that we can learn to “deal with” everything.

But because increasing our capacity to be with what is increases our capacity to experience the breadth of life.

There is less distance between me and myself.

I am here.

More of me is available for my life.

More Life...
that is the destination.