A Little Bit About Myself …
Bio: Todd Gunderman
Certified Life Coach
Certification
My True Self:
I am a leadership and life transformation coach, a non-conventional construction engineering manager, a passionate listener and most importantly a dedicated Dad. I utilize my own life and professional experiences to provide a safe place for people to find the best versions of themselves in their personal and professional lives. I have intimate and deep thought-provoking conversations filled with radical self-inquiry and awareness. I believe we all deserve to live a life of purpose, happiness and joy in every aspect of our lives. What keeps us from living that life, is the computer between our ears that keeps us chained down in our own mental slavery. We have the key within ourselves to unlock those chains and step onto a path where we meet our fears with vulnerable self-honesty and a courageously open heart.
The basis of why I created my own coaching company: Path to True Self is to share how I found my key and to guide others along their own path.
About me?
That question has haunted me most of my life. My standard answer would be to tell you something about one of my 3 amazing kiddos and say the standard “nothing new just working away and living life.” Then I would skillfully manipulate the conversation to be about you. To talk about myself, triggered a deep-rooted fear because I had zero concept of who I was and felt stupid because I didn’t.
You see I was adopted into an alcoholic dysfunctional family where there were 3 rules – Don’t Talk, Don’t Trust, Don’t Feel. This “protected” the secret that behind the doors of our home, we were not the happy perfect family that we had to portray at all costs. My EGO (the part of the mind that controls how to respond to fear) developed a false self so that I could survive based upon the 3 rules. I took on the role of “hero” and became adept at being a chameleon. Whatever the family needed me to be, I became. The perfect quiet little boy – always overachieving, bringing home good grades, showing no emotion. The protocol son – 1st to go to college, became an engineer to fulfill my parent’s dreams, successful career and married with kids. The ultimate cost for me was never establishing a connection to my true self.
It worked! I survived and made it out into the real world. However, that childhood programming stuck with me into adulthood. Always searching for my self-worth from someone or some thing. This had some benefits as my career was a success because of my workaholism. But with nearly 3 decades as an engineer, I’ve never felt like I belonged. I don’t think in a linear, black or white way and always encourage other’s opinions. I stayed because that was normal for me to feel alone and judged. This “normalcy” worked in my personal life as well as I was a magnet to emotionally unavailable dysfunctional partners so I could continue fulfilling my “hero” role and rescue them. The generational transfer of the dysfunctional disease was complete. I became yet another link in the chain of our family dysfunction and I was well on my way of adding three more links with my kiddos.
Then at the age of 42, my life came to a screeching halt. On the outside – three beautiful kiddos, happy family, top performer at my company, always smiling and making people laugh. On the inside – I was dying a slow death, marriage was in shambles, miserable at work, convinced this was what my life was to be. All the pressure of being everybody’s hero, trying to keep everything “under control”, finally brought me to my knees and my life erupted as I hit my emotional bottom.
After the eruption and the ash settled, again like a volcano, the healing began, and a new landscape was created. For me, the healing process has been defined by breaking the chain of those family dysfunctional traits that have bound myself to my EGO’s trauma responses. I’ve dug deep, peeled back many layers and uncovered the core to a beautiful new landscape – my true self.