I’d like to share with you what one of my clients wrote to me. This is a common phenomenon with those who are moving through periods of deep transformation. You can feel how dispiriting this experience was, and how a coach’s insights into what is happening can help a client normalize their experience and provide some relief.

“Monday and Tuesday I had incredible shifts. I had a few moments in each day when I felt my heart completely open, and there was so much love i was brought to tears. One time I was at work and literally felt love radiating towards everyone that walked by me and i could clearly see/sense the light in others. Then Wednesday came with a world of a bad mood that i am still trying to shake off. I am not sure why exactly, but throughout the day I started just feeling frustrated and angry. It didn’t seem to be at anything in particular. It seemed to linger through the next few and while I feel better today it still isn’t completely shaken and more than anything I feel exhausted. I did have a rough week of the baby not sleeping well though. I am assuming it is part of the process and hoping you can shed some insight on where I go from here.”

Is this a normal part of deep transformation? Yes it is. But what are some variables that could be explored in a session to reveal more on how to live and work with it?

1. The spiraling nature of transformation

The inherent dynamic of transformation includes swings or cycles between highs and lows. Those who experience it often cannot see that it is a spiraling dynamic, part of our never-ending quest upward. While it feels like a backwards movement into one’s old way of being, it is an integral part of the deeper pattern of evolution of human consciousness. There is learning and growth potential within the backward swing as much as in forward movement, as both dynamics allow us opportunity to construct ourselves anew.

2. The need for purification

Having been born into the human body, we have a brain that runs on chemical fuel. This fuel is easily polluted by not only what we take into the body through the eyes, ears, and mouth, but by the events of our lives that pull us out of optimal rhythm. In short, my client was seriously underestimating the effect that having a new child while working full time in a highly stressful environment was having on her. At some point, with all the clients I work with in a transformational way, there will be a conversation on purification. This includes purifying the foods they consume, purifying the information they take in, purifying negative thoughts, energies, and emotions, and getting deep rest (sleep alone can do wonders for optimizing oneself).

3. Sustaining higher, positive frequencies within our being

Raising our personal vibration is a process. It is the rare person who makes great shifts in consciousness and is able to sustain it immediately. In his book The Big Leap, author Gay Hendricks writes about our positive energy threshold. We all have a threshold, he write, which is the amount of positive energy we are comfortable holding within our being. For some this level is high, for others low. Regardless, when our threshold is transcended, and we start to feel “too good” (beyond our normal limit), this will trigger a negative thought or action which then brings us back down into our comfort zone. Our work, he says, is to become aware of our positive energy threshold, to notice how we trigger ourselves out of a higher flow of positive energy, and to work on expanding our threshold to allow ourselves to hold more and more positive energy within our being.

I appreciate his big leap concept, because it acknowledges that we must consciously expand our ability to hold more positive energy in our being. For those on the transformational path working with spiritual energies like love and light, it is helpful to recognize that the human system takes time to calibrate to those higher frequencies so that they can be sustained for longer periods of time within our being.

You can see, by sharing insights such as these with your clients, you help to normalize what they are experiencing while opening doors to explore. The dynamic of transformation is by no means easy, but our work can certainly make it more easeful.