Life coaching defined
Life coaching is a way of providing people with personal support that is committed to their success and development. The coach is someone who will make a difference in the client’s life by supporting them and by encouraging their personal and professional growth. The coach will work with the client to enhance their quality of life through their identification of various ways in which they can achieve their goals or aims or personal state.
Life coaching is not about being a therapist of counsellor, it is not about looking back into past experiences or emotional issues. Equally it is not a short-term measure to cope with crises.
A belief that underpins coaching is that individuals have the resources they need to overcome the temporary issues they face. This means the role of a coach is not to tell you what to do, but instead work with you to raise your own self awareness and in turn identify your own solutions and guide a pathway towards these goals/aims.
What is Anxiety Coaching?
Anxiety Coaching is very similar to the definition of life coaching above. However, rather than looking at an individual’s life as a whole and their aspirations and/or needs within this. Anxiety Coaching applies the coaching methodology to the specific context of anxiety. By identifying how an individual would like their relationship with the human function of anxiety to be different.
When you first start anxiety coaching, I ask clients to fill in an intake form, within this it is important to tell me as your Coach about any diagnoses you have and if you are undertaking any other treatment for your anxiety. This will help inform your coach’s approach when working with you and can ensure you’re getting the best support. It is vital to note that anxiety coaching does NOT replace medical advice and intervention. This if felt needed should be sought also.
In the first session, we will look to understand how you want your relationship with anxiety to be different and start to understand what anxiety looks and feels like for you.
Anxiety coaching sessions will often involve the coach asking you questions to help you understand your anxiety better and identify more helpful responses when your fight, flight or freeze response is triggered. Anxiety can be triggered and felt cognitively and within the body. Therefore, there are a range of different tools to use to help reduce the anxiety and wear these as habits to manage anxiety moving forward. It is not a one size fits all.
The number of sessions you have will depend on what you hope to achieve and you as a unique individual.
Who can be coached?
Life coaching is open to anyone, regardless of age, class, gender, educational background or cultural upbringing. I coach adults only at the moment.
What does it involve?
The coach helps identify where the client is now, where they want to be and how to get there; and then keeps them on track until the achieve their goals or aims. It is important that the life coach does not impose their own ideas on the client, life coaches do not tell people how to do things. The coaching role is to help people find their own way and keep them moving along that way, whether or not it is the way the coach would have chosen from themselves.
How does it work?
Life coaching can take place with me via Teams or Zoom or telephone if preferred. I provide a brief resume of key points of each session with follow up notes and/or materials that may have been referenced/discussed. This provides a wonderful dossier of your coaching journey and tools to use when you move forward after coaching.
Before each scheduled session, I ask that a prep form is completed, this is a short one pager that acts as a snapshot on where you find yourself since we last spoke to enable you to gather your thoughts and it serves as your own agenda for the session we hold. This is a great self reflective practice as well as ensuring you make the most of your session with me.
