An important kind of healing occurs

through meeting and ‘being met’ rather

than through insight and analysis- Martin Buber

Prior to becoming a coach, I worked for many years as a psychiatric nurse in a variety of mental health settings. This was a formative period for me where I encountered a rich array of approaches to healing the human mind including psychotherapy, clinical psychology, family therapy and arts therapies. Being immersed in such a world, it was quite natural for me to go on and train as a play therapist and also acquire a certificate in counselling skills. Allied with a background in mindfulness meditation and therapeutic men’s work, something from all of these approaches has influenced me to the extent that I very much take a therapeutic approach to my coaching.

 By therapeutic, I mean facilitating change at an internal level, not just at the level of external behaviour. This is very much about working at the level of identity and ‘what it means to be you’. The benefit of working in this way is that the changes you make in one area of your life often ripple out into other areas. This is because you will tend to bring the same underlying psychological and emotional apparatus to most of the situations you encounter in your life. So, if you can change this deeply engrained apparatus in relation to one situation then you equip yourself with the ability to apply these changes to other situations. In doing so, you find you are able to change long held patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving in a lasting way.

 Another core feature of a therapeutic approach involves paying close attention to the quality of the relationship between client and coach. One of my mentors is fond of saying “a client might not always remember what was said in a coaching session, but they will certainly remember what it felt like to be with you”. This comment speaks to the experience of being truly ‘met’, which can be profoundly healing in and of itself. The essence of the quality of the relationship manifests in the capacity to ‘hold space’- creating an atmosphere in which you can be exactly who you are in any given moment, free to express any thoughts or feelings that you wish to, without fear of judgement.

 Within this safely held space, it’s possible to work at depth with your emotions. Our emotions underpin so much of our behaviour and so in my work I place a high emphasis on helping you to become more emotionally aware so that you can identify the ways in which your emotions are driving your behaviour. In this context, I see emotions as having a purpose- they provide valuable information, or messages, that can inform how you choose to act. Emotions are not there to be ‘got rid of’ or supressed- even though we may feel the urge to do this, particularly with difficult emotions. In my experience, when there is emotional clarity, clarity in terms of what to do next is never far away.

On a practical level, I will support you to slow down, or ‘freeze-frame’ a moment in order to create some space around your emotions, so that you can understand and experience them more fully. Emotions by their very nature live in your body, and therefore I use a variety of embodied exercises to help you regulate your emotions, be ‘in balance’ with them, ground yourself and channel your emotions so that they flow as opposed to stagnate. Another way in which we enlist your embodied self in the coaching process is through the conscious exploration of gestures and postures that you display. The premise here is that your body is trying to communicate something on your behalf which hasn’t yet entered your conscious awareness.

 Coaching in the manner outlined above- exploring ‘what it means to be you’, working at depth with your emotions and listening to the wisdom of your embodied self- can be a very rich and growthful experience. This approach is particularly suitable for working on a longer-term basis with people who are committed to their own well-being and want to embed personal change in a deep and lasting way.