The Transformative Power of Coaching
In one of my first blog posts, Coaching: It's Not What You Think It Is, I delineated the difference between coaching, counseling, and therapy. Now I'd like to take a deep dive into the coaching difference and what makes this approach to self-healing and self-growth, in the hands of a well-trained and compatible coach, so extraordinary.
However, before we launch this discussion, I'd like to offer two personal examples from my own life to illustrate when counseling is effective and when counseling/therapy is not effective.
Specific Issue of a Specific Nature
When I was in my early 40s, the mild generalized anxiety I had lived with and managed well for most of my life began to overwhelm me. My anxiety symptoms were chronic, consistent, and heavy. I was struggling to function at the capacity I needed to maintain to keep up with life's demands.
I had many coping skills and had always leaned into natural methods to help ease my anxiety symptoms, such as exercise, nutritious food, and herbal supplements. But the chaotic, stressful circumstances of my life at this time, and my resulting anxiety, were just too much for me to manage on my own. Even though I was suffering greatly, I bristled at my husband's (a Registered Nurse) advice to try a psychotropic medication. I had no idea what to do.
I saw a counselor who helped me assess the situation and who, after a few sessions, very rightly recommended I see a psychiatrist for anti-anxiety medication. Since I had never taken medication before, I was reluctant. But the counselor helped me work through my hesitations in one session. Luckily for me, Zoloft was the miracle I needed to right myself again.
This is an example of effective counseling. This was not an issue appropriate for coaching. Why? My need was focused on how I could get functional to better manage my current life circumstances. I needed relief, not psychological growth.
Complex Issue of an Unknown Nature
By my late 40s, my chaotic life circumstances had settled to a normal level, but I now found myself suffering with severe, treatment-resistant depression. In other words, psychotropic medication was not only unhelpful, it mostly made me feel worse.
I had an underlying awareness that the psychological part of my depression was derived from grief, a natural and common aspect of mid-life transition. But the physiological component of my depression was so acute and different from anything I had ever experienced before, I was at a complete loss to manage it. Nothing I tried worked. My body was rotting from the inside out and failing me.
Image by Engin Akyurt from Pixabay
Despite seeing numerous medical professionals, both alternative and conventional, counselors and therapists, I could not find effective help to relieve my suffering. Unfortunately, every health professional I went to for help was ignorant of how severely disruptive, and even debilitating, perimenopause can be for women who have a history of anxiety and/or depression.
What I had needed was someone who could provide effective counseling to help me get to a medical specialist to (1) resolve the physiological aspect of my depression so I could then (2) effectively work on the psychological aspect of it. Without an effective step one, I did not have the capacity to undertake step two.
Barring being well-informed about helping women in perimenopause, the best counseling could offer me was coping strategies for my depression. I was not interested in just coping. I wanted better than that and knew it had to be possible. It was just not reasonable to me in this day and age that a woman must suffer so greatly during a natural aging process. Counseling, therefore, turned out to be a disappointing tactic offering little value for me.
When one of the therapists I was seeing said, "let's talk about your past wounds next time so you can start to heal those," I never went back. I was not interested in conducting an archeological dig of my hurts. I knew damn well exactly what they were, had done a lot of introspective work on them, and was not interested in any way, shape or form retelling the "stories" of my tragic life events to see if that would make me feel better. I intuitively knew this would not only be a boondoggle of wasted time, but most likely would just make me feel even angrier about my current situation. I needed and wanted help fixing my body, navigating complex grief, making some really hard life choices, and moving in an intentional, positive forward direction with my life.
While I definitely needed effective medical intervention to help get my body functional again, my underlying psychological need and desire was honoring my call to Self. I wanted bigger and better expansion into a new way of being. Identifying the hidden elements causing my complex grief was merely a small part of this puzzle.
This is psychospiritual work on a deep level. It's not about "fixing" problems or coping better. It's about creating something new from the ashes of the past and the sound infrastructure that is fit to remain to support the creation process. I didn't know it at the time, but this is coaching work.
A Solution is Discovered
Nearly seven years into my struggle, I finally found a competent doctor who instantly recognized I needed hormone therapy to alleviate my debilitating physiological symptoms. Within days, the worst physical and mental symptoms of my depression began to subside.
I waited for a year to see how much progress toward recovery I would naturally make with my hormones stabilized. I rested and recovered from my excruciating and exhausting ordeal. And I continued to grieve, hard; although not exactly sure over what. It seemed like everything: my life, the state of the world, and the realization that one or both of my parents would most likely die in the next ten years, etc.
Muddying the waters was the fact that my personal life crisis transpired from 2015-2021. The daily events and circumstances of these years alone were a constant traumatic assault to the psyche for so many, especially in the United States. Some days I felt as though I was channeling the collective rage and grief of the nation.
The frustrating aspect of all this was my grief seemed to be arrested, meaning it was not moving through. I often described it as being stuck in my body. Intellectually, I deeply desired for it to take its course so it would become a lighter burden to bear. But it was not to be forced along by my willpower. The prior seven years of physiological dysfunction had left a lot of damage.
When the year was up, I got back to work on healing myself. I still had a long way to go to get to where I wanted to be, but now I had a solid foundation to work from and the energy to undertake the work. My complex grief was, well, extremely complex, and it had soul-level aspects. I also had at least a foggy vision of my desired future self and I was very eager to get on my way as quickly as possible. I had lost enough years of my life in deep depression.
Although I knew I needed assistance, I also knew it was something very different than what most counselors or therapists in the United States are trained to provide. I knew these options were not going to be effective and would leave me feeling disappointed, frustrated, and ironically, alone to figure it out for myself, again. Luckily, I had taken an undergraduate independent study semester in transpersonal psychology more than a decade earlier, so I was informed about some alternative resources to pursue.
I found a coaching program in a transpersonal psychology modality I studied that had left a lasting impression on me called Psychosynthesis and enrolled. It turned out to be exactly the right approach for the soul excavation and healing I needed to do.
The Coaching Difference
Coaching starts from the premise that a client is not dysfunctional or broken.
In fact, coaching presumes that a client has everything within them needed to heal or make change. It's a matter of helping the client identify what those resources are and then helping them to train themself to better utilize these strengths.
Coaching focuses mostly on the present-to-future self, and integrates past aspects only when needed to empower forward movement.
With coaching, you don't rehash all of the bloody details of your historic tragedies. It is simply not necessary. Coaching is not talk therapy. For those who have a good understanding of their traumas, acceptance and integration of past wounds that are preventing movement toward a desired outcome happens in a self-directed way during one coaching session.
Complex trauma and grief are like onions. Often when the right layer is peeled off, the remaining hurt will begin to evaporate on its own as long as it is allowed to flow. If and when needed, residual aspects that remain are metabolized in a follow-up session. This does not imply these insights are easy. Trauma always carries pain and grief. But insights gained in the coaching process are incredibly healing and empowering in a way much different than therapy can offer for those who are able and willing to do the work.
Coaching works with intention to align your unique values with your unique goals.
Specific, methodical attention is given to the why and how. Clarity and healing are incredible, but clarity and healing are not the only outcomes. Making goals material. Making progress forward. Making yourself accountable to yourself. These are part of the coaching experience because the client is self-motivated to undertake a transformational change and the coach supports that goal in loving, but firm, ways.
Coaching is not influenced or constrained by diagnoses, insurance companies, or clinical practice.
What does this mean? This means that coaches are free to acknowledge and work with the spirit and the soul. These are vital aspects to well-being, thriving and flourishing. You simply can't reach meaningful transformation without engaging anima. And, I don’t know about you, but I’m sick of having the insurance company dictate my healthcare choices and categorize me according to how lucrative it is for them to insure me based upon some arbritary “mental illness” label. That’s utterly disgusting to me.
Coaching has ethics and best practices.
Just as you would not trust your medical care to an unlicensed doctor, be discerning when choosing a coach. I recommend finding a coach that is ICF or BCC certified (or working toward certification), who maintains professional continuing education, and who is dedicated to growing their practice proficiency.
Lastly and most important, coaching is a true partnership.
Coaching is a dance of equals where the coach comes to the dance floor with specific choreography that unleashes often mind-blowing insights that empowers the client to dance in ways never thought possible.
To be clear, a coach is not a mentor or dance instructor. A coach does not teach, dictate or give advice. Coaching is not "intuitive counseling," although that is a separate service some coaches offer. Coaching is an intimate partnership of equals, which is what makes coaching, in my opinion, a far superior modality to counseling or therapy when one yearns to grow and thrive.
Why I Choose Coaching
From the age of 24, when I became pregnant with my daughter, I have been a self-growth junkie. Like many, my road was difficult and filled with many delays, challenges and obstacles. I accept that I may never reach my desired destination. But it is important to me that I continue to make progress when and where I can.
I have never been satisfied with status-quo. I find the average, mundane and routine excruciatingly boring. My motto is if you are not growing, you are dying. As I reflect back on my life, I see that for most of it, I have truly lived and breathed this ideal.
It is thrilling to me to work in partnership with others who are on their own path of growth and self-realization. When people shine their own lights brightly, it helps to alleviate and mitigate some of the suffering happening on our planet. When our souls shine, we are in abundance and have love to give. I want to know this power within myself and I want everyone else to feel and know this power within themselves too.
It would not be possible for me to make the true connection needed to do the deep soul work that the self-realization journey requires in a counseling or therapy framework. In a coaching framework, I am able to bring my authentic self. There are no masks, no aloofness, and I am not your judge. We have transparency and equal ground.
Coaching is a peer-to-peer and soul-to-soul connection. This is the kind of relationship I enjoy most and to which I am also naturally inclined. It's how I was made to be -- a powerful ally for those who find resonance with me.
I'm not sure I'll ever be comfortable with the title "coach." That label is so misunderstood outside of sports. I use a coaching framework, which is different than the framework used for therapy and counseling.
If you ask me to describe what it is I do, it would be this: I provide an individualized wisdom-provoking holistic service that empowers others to realize their highest version of themselves and live their best lives for the benefit of the whole.
I think I might prefer the titles "psychospiritual practitioner," "soul charmer," or "light worker," but you can call me a coach if that sounds more legit to you.
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About me:
I am a Psychosynthesis coach. I provide an individualized, wisdom-provoking holistic service that empowers others to realize their highest version of themselves and live their best lives for the benefit of the whole. The result is a magical life that feels more authentic, joyful, and fulfilling. If you desire to be brilliantly resilient and gracefully use your unique powers to transform challenges into opportunities for positive growth and thriving, I can help you get there.