Other Voices

Terrice Bassler, a leadership coach, says that, when she is coaching someone, “I look for the red thread. I look for that thread that runs through somebody’s life story, even if it looks a little disconnected and wild.”

Bassler’s own red thread may be providing service to others.

Raised in the Helderberg Hilltowns, where both sides of her family had lived for generations, she says, “I was the first grandchild on either side of the family so I benefit from a lot of attention and love and teaching, which is with me still today.”

She describes, in this week’s Enterprise podcast, a series of seemingly small encounters that became life-changing events. “Small opportunities are what big opportunities look like when they’re young,” she says.

As Bassler has worked with visionaries “at extreme emotional edges,” she said she learned how to keep herself whole and support courageous others to stay whole.

Now, she said, international organizations are “more clued up about what needs to be done to support people at extreme emotional edges — and COVID has pushed that even further.”

Bassler calls this the mainstreaming of trauma.

When she was shaken by the death of her father, she stumbled upon a class in neurogenic shaking, which is used to release trauma and tension.

She practiced what is known as TRE — tension or trauma release exercise — that helps her stay regulated. With the shutdown caused by the coronavirus pandemic, Bassler became a certified provider and now teaches TRE online.

She has supported health-care workers and first responders. “A lot of folks are struggling …,” she said. “They’ve gotten to that edge where they can’t make meaning of what’s happening. There’s a continuous state of dread and uncertainty or discomfort.”

Bassler says she helps people in a few lessons learn how to keep themselves regulated.

Noticing the way society has become fragmented and divided — even in the town where she was raised — Bassler has found it useful to look for the wounded place — for her, that may be despair about the state of democracy — in the person with whom you are trying to connect.

“That’s going to make it easier to find common ground,” she said.

One of the things Bassler remembers about growing up in the Hilltowns was that it was completely normal to drop in, “to just pop by.”

“I’ve lived all over the world. Never anywhere I’ve lived since is dropping in as normal …. It was a queue of safety. It was a daily symbol of trust,” she said.

“And here we get back to the red thread,” said Bassler, “because one of the things I think I became able to do from my work in hotspots, in places of conflict … instead of holding all the suffering in me, with a sense of helplessness, somehow, I cultivated an ability to see the people who had the vision to move through … who were going to be courageous despite suffering, who were going to be both vulnerable and brave.”

Although for the last two years Bassler hasn’t traveled — not on a plane or even in a car — through the internet, she said, “I am able to support leaders who are doing courageous things.”

Read the full article on our website: https://altamontenterprise.com/01282022/terrice-bassler-helps-leaders-who-are-both-vulnerable-and-brave