Lasting Change blog posts

If we can help coaches to understand more about what is often not covered in coaching training about the relationship between coaching and psychotherapy / mental health, we can help to create a straighter, clearer path to helping our clients.

Let’s look at some of the key concepts that coaches might learn from psychotherapists:

• Even though most coaches don’t talk about “counter-transference”, coaches are human beings that can be impacted by their clients. When working with one client, we might notice that we are thinking of them as though we were their parent, or we might notice that they annoy us, or that we become suddenly bored, or disoriented. It can be helpful to wonder what these feelings might be telling us and to reflect on whether these feelings (which might be any combination of what is going on with the client and of our previous history) might get in the way of our work and/or provide something to explore with our client
• Some clients are better than others at reflecting on what is going on inside of them and/or inside of others. Some therapists call this mentalization, reflective function or mind-mindedness. Part of our work as coaches can be to help our clients to become more reflective and, in some cases, to realize that their intention (and how they think something might impact someone) is not always the impact they actually have (and that the same applies to others’ intentions and impacts on them).
• From our earliest days, we are learning about the world around us, what to expect (and not to expect) from those who we rely on, and are developing strategies to do the best we can at staying safe and getting our needs met. This refers to what some call our attachment styles and/or attachment strategies. For example, when we are not at our best, do we tend to “turn up the volume”, to distance ourselves and avoid confrontation, or do we employ other strategies? Do we tend to become more cognitive and downplay emotional signals or focus on emotional signals and downplay cognition?
• A growing number of coaches are becoming “trauma-informed”. Trauma can impact how  people see themselves and how they see others. Trauma can lead people to distance themselves from things that might trigger overwhelming feelings, so that even something like focusing inward or a brief meditation might feel overwhelming to some clients.
• As humans, we can all become overwhelmed at some point, and when we move out of what some call our “window of tolerance” our emotional brain may take over and our thinking brain may become much less accessible (what some call the amygdala hijack). Until we can get back into our window of tolerance, it is likely to be very difficult, if not impossible, to have effective discussions with someone.
• We don't know what we don't know (by definition). Coaching supervision / reflective partnerships can help us to explore these edges and how we want to approach how we help others in ways that our ethical and effective.

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