Why I LOVE Coaching for Emotional Well-Being
- This is Part Two of an interdependent series, here is a link to part one: The Intersection between Coaching & Mental Health: Why I choose to place myself in the heart center of the evolving mental healthcare paradigm shift
Here are just six of the reasons why I love coaching for Emotional Well-Being (EWB).
I truly hope this might be useful for anyone who cares about further developing this intersection between Coaching and mental health, as well as any potential Coaches considering making EWB an area of focus to enhance their professional offer to the world!
We can view and consider these six reasons from a transtheoretical coaching approach as they showing up in one or more Emotional Well-Being (EWB) Domains: Awareness, Clarity, Balance, Resilience, Connection, Flexibility
- EnCOURAGEment
Many people perceive coaches as cheerleaders providing encouragement and motivation to support clients in meeting their health goals, which is not an accurate portrayal of the work. To truly be IN Courage as a coach is to get to…
Bear witness to the profound resilience and vulnerability within our clients AND be the most simple and bravest support to another human being. Coaches get to hold safe space, provide deep compassionate listening, and be in the most genuine moments and inquiries with another person.
We all really just want to be seen and heard and felt (aka known). Only then can we shift our energy away from dis-ease, suffering and loneliness into noticing our inherent goodness and common humanity, seeking it out and ultimately basking in it’s wonderful essence.
Awareness requires emotional safety and the utmost vulnerable courage. In order to feel elevated, aware, confident and capable, we do NOT need a cheerleader. We all know what false hope looks and feels like…mostly like shame. We need to feel the muddy gray of our existence together, and witness the drying and cracking and shedding of the layers of caked burden that weigh us down while trying to avoid it. I cannot celebrate enough, the number of clients I have had who verbally and physically and spiritually breathe a huge sigh of relief just to have a space to BE-YOU-tifully and share in the BRUTIFUL (as Glennon Doyle has compassionately named it, blending Beautiful and Brutal) nature of life.
To truly encourage our clients is to authentically BELONG WITH one another in hope and awe and courage and wonder and everything above and below and in between. This requires a willingness to step more masterfully into empathy, compassion, and genuine affirmation, and is truly one of the most satisfying aspects of EWB Coaching .
There is nothing greater than belonging, first to ourselves, so that we may enrich our own existence and ultimately realize our healthiest interdependence with one another.
It is through the processes of curiosity, empathic learning, discovery and acceptance that we can coach to foster authentic self-growth.
2. Contentment from Clarity
All of our best evidence-informed models of mental health care emphasize values identification, clarification, alignment and ideally embodiment.
We know that the more we understand our own needs, deepest cares and greatest desires, the better chance we have of attending to pursuant effective action rooted in clarity and confidence.
This is particularly important for effective interpersonal communication and appropriately being able to interact in the most healthy ways, from a clear and differentiated self able to know first, and respond accordingly.
Sometimes the most wonderful outcome in coaching is to see our clients reach a glimpse of acceptance. It is not uncommon, and quite appropriate, that someone may come in seeking change in themselves, only to find that their true contentment and health begin to manifest out of discovering what needs to be released, let go, and accepted. Sometimes just landing consistently (with lots of support and practice) in this unburdened state and lifting the loads and loads of pressure, expectation, “shoulds,” and never enough-ness is the first and most satisfying destination. Every other path and choice from there shines more brightly and the resulting steps come with a more easeful pleasure.
How powerful is it to get to experience our own smile and contentment in the form of clarity and balance? Like really feel it and enjoy it and taste it so distinctly as our own?
How might it feel to quite literally smile upon ourselves instead of “shoulding” on ourselves day to day, moment to moment?
What becomes possible when we become so accepting and present with ourselves, that we actually get to feel into the changes we choose to make from there? Like really feel our own success coursing through our veins in jubilation for who we are and who we are becoming?
Love After Love by Derek Walcott
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
3. Balance: Self-Care as prevention in mental health
As coaches, we regularly and consistently partner with our clients to create individualized and personal plans in any aspect of health they may choose to focus on. Self-care cannot be understated as a core skill set for coping and navigating our mental health and whole health planning needs. In fact, this is what most mental health programs ultimately hope for is the ability to direct as many clients as possible into balanced self-efficacy. And, the self-help industry is as booming as ever with resources abound to enlighten and overwhelm us all! Most of us can relate to the direct correlation between our daily balancing act of self-care habits and how they keep best aligned in our own well-being.
Effective self-care calls us to be the captain of our own body, mind and soul, determine our real needs and greatest joys and move toward more and more confidence and efficacy in meeting them.
A great coach is an excellent resource in self-care planning and bolstering the readiness, knowledge and confidence needed to consistently engage in such vital practices and routines such as building healthy relationships with our bodies, physical movement and food/substances, and balancing our needs, roles, choices, relationships and experiences in our lives.
It is a great joy as an EWB Coach to support such efficacious and purposeful planning efforts, while guiding and shaping the growth mindset and flexible processes to allow a client to find their own balance. To support, affirm, and celebrate this ongoing commitment to self-care is truly an honor.
4. Emotional Awareness and Resilience — Permission to Feel and Respond Effectively
Our culture and education do not have strong foundations in social emotional intelligence, intuitive and indigenous knowing and somatic presence (being connected to our own bodies), often disrupted by cycles of various types of trauma, violation, and violence.
We need more spaces where we can allow ourselves to safely feel into our own hearts and be alive in our own skin. We need more emotionally nurturing places to simply BE and choose to show up in our raw essence so that we may know, and act from this inner knowing.
Even to embrace the discomfort of the unknown and seek refuge is a humble and forward-moving act. We have been told what to do for so long, and been potentially exploited and traumatized. Just finding our own voice and shifting from “tolerating” our own experience to declaring and shaping it is a revolutionary act.
We have historically believed (or been told) that when we are struggling to generate change or suffering in some aspect of our health and well-being that we are broken and need an expert to tell us what to do to fix it. Coaching is much about reminding us of our own humanity and partnering around those common denominators that make us real (Read The Velveteen Rabbit excerpt). As a coach, this may be my most powerful tool of activism and I am so so proud of it. If I can play a role toward my clients feeling measurably more connected to themselves, their own “worn around the edges” humanity, more efficacious and resilient in response, I know with certainty that my clients will have more health-affirming outcomes.
5. The Power of Activation and Connection
I love Coaching for EWB because I get to put some of my greatest wishes and hopes into the world with my own commitment to agile pursuit, ideally modeling and supporting the process of unfolding an authentic life path as it emerges along the way.
This often requires really being in the gray and navigating the various continuums of Emotional Well-Being. We may each find ourselves at various points of meeting ourselves right where we are at on the continuum of low to high and all of the in between…the ebb and flow…the wave of life. This is the place where growth comes from accepting and embracing real life. To claim, reclaim, and keep reclaiming our Emotional Well-being. To growth, to authenticity, to supportive relationships, to boundaries, to values and needs alignment, to our fully human emotional range. To balance and to a healthy mindset that keeps us in the best company with ourselves on the journey… As we choose and know with clarity what is best for us, with great resilience and balance, with adequate rest and abundant recovery, with generous grace and compassion for ourselves and each other.
These are my deepest wishes around activation and connection for myself, my clients, and all of us alike.
How we step or do not step, and with who matters!
Getting to be someone’s co-pilot, along for even a small but significant part of the ride, is a deep honor and responsibility. To be allowed into someone’s journey to healing and change is a significant connection, not to be taken lightly, nor squandered. Imagine knowing exactly who we want surrounding us with engagement, focus, direction, guidance, evoking and planning as we take our most important steps toward EWB.
6. Professional and Self-Growth
Coaching EWB with conscious awareness, great skill and within scope of practice calls us to our own selves and well-being as much as we are present for our clients, often even more. In fact, who we are and how we show up for ourselves has everything to do with how effective and appropriate our Coaching will be. And how we improve our Coaching skills and practice, bolsters our own confidence and has a profound impact on who we are becoming ourselves.
This is probably my favorite thing about coaching EWB; it quite literally forces me to put on my own oxygen mask and really inhale the abundance of collective well-being. The greater my inhale, the greater my exhale and impact and offer. I learn from my amazing clients every day and breathe the same air. My roots grow deeper with every Coaching conversation and the mutual blossoming is SO contagious.
A community of coaches can be a watering hole for individual and collective replenishment, accountability, and self-growth. We must drink from our own fountain; we must be a well…
If Each Day Falls by Pablo Neruda
If each day falls
inside each night,
there exists a well
where clarity is imprisoned.
We need to sit on the rim
of the well of darkness
and fish for fallen light
with patience.
And while we certainly have ethical and professional boundaries in our role as a coach, we do not put on an expert hat, nor elevate ourselves above our clients in any way. We provide guidance and direction in the coaching process, with our full humility and common humanity at the helm, and our client being in full and unequivocal choice every step, or pause, or turn of the way.
We get the amazing privilege to know a lot of North Stars along the journey, helping each of our clients discover and follow their own on their unique chosen journey to health, becoming their bright shining best self along the way to their preferred future.
And importantly, we as coaches get to be at our own center, on our own parallel journey, allowing us to serve better and better so that all of us may collectively shine.
“The sun shows up every morning, no matter how bad you’ve been the night before. It shines without judgment. It never withholds. It warms the sinners, the saints, the druggies, the cheerleaders- the saved and the heathens alike. You can hide from the sun, but it won’t take you personally. It’ll never, ever punish you for hiding. You can stay in the dark for years or decades, and when you finally step outside, it’ll be there.”
― Glennon Doyle, Carry On, Warrior: Thoughts on Life Unarmed
Warmly and with great hope for peace within and all around,
Traci Corbett
Traci has donned many hats and explored various trails personally and professionally over the years…Social Worker, Educator, Health and Fitness Professional, Community Activist/Bridge Builder, Mother, Mental Health Advocate, and Counselor. All paths converged to ultimately becoming a National Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach (NBC-HWC). She is an advocate for and loves EWB Coaching as a core and essential component to inclusive whole health, wellness and quality of life. Traci has seen firsthand the powerful impact coaching in this arena has had, and is passionate about advocating for its growth and positive impact in mental health care.
*If you would like to find out more about how to be further trained, mentored and supported in Coaching EWB, please visit the Wave Coaching Training Program
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