Relationship Coaching
“You’ve got to find yourself first. Everything else’ll follow.”
- Charles de Lint –
What is Life Coaching?
Life coaching is not therapy. Therapy is provided by licensed professionals who diagnose and treat mental health issues and past traumatic experiences.
Unlike on social media, a life coach does not talk most of the time and gives life advice.
Instead, a good life coach listens and asks the right questions to help you reorganise your thoughts.
The goal is to help you improve your life by taking a holistic view of everything affecting it, discovering blind spots you are unaware of, and overcoming emotions to make decisions without feeling overwhelmed.
What is Relationship Coaching?
Relationship Coaching is doing life coaching for two or more people, specifically focusing on communication, mutual respect, and understanding and accepting each other.
We all have unique lives that nobody on earth has, not even identical twins.
One of the biggest challenges in life is having healthy relationships with other people without being influenced by our uniqueness and being able to accommodate someone else’s uniqueness.
Relationship coaching teaches us to focus on ourselves and our uniqueness first before focusing on someone else’s.
Building healthy relationships with others is impossible without a healthy relationship with yourself first.
Important
Coaching cannot heal past traumatic events that are affecting our lives.
I use a unique approach by integrating another robust process that does not involve any talk therapy to deal with past traumatic events.
Without dealing with past traumatic events, we will forever be stuck in rabbit holes trying to understand ourselves, let alone someone else.
The Premise of Coaching
- You already have all the answers you need in your head. All you need is someone to help you reorganise them.
This is why good coaches do not give advice.
- The only person who knows you best is yourself, and no one else’s advice is better than yours.
This is why friends and family do not make good coaches.
Who Needs Coaching?
Coaching is beneficial for everyone, but especially for those stuck in life, in a relationship, in their career, or who have to reorganise their lives after divorce, retrenchment, or the death of a loved one.
Every person on earth has the right to be happy.
Coaching is a process that helps you reorganise your life to improve your happiness.
My Coaching Style
My coaching style is based on neuropsychological coaching, also known as brain-based coaching.
It is based on the brain’s ability to create new neurons or connections daily, also called neuroplasticity.
Brain-based coaching uses this neuroplasticity to help you develop new neurons that lead to positive thinking.
The Coaching Process
I usually start with individual sessions before attempting combined sessions in relationship coaching.
Kicking off with combined sessions in troubled relationships leads to a lot of blame and shame initially, wasting time and money.
Coaching sessions last one to two hours at the client’s pace and budget.
The sessions are highly confidential, and I adhere to the International Coaching Federation’s Code of Conduct.
Coaching is not a quick fix or a magic wand. Relationships did not deteriorate overnight, and coaching will not bring calmer waters overnight.
As in sports coaching, you are the one running onto the field and not the coach.
It is up to you to make the relationship work.
Important
Always ensure your coach is a member of a professional organisation that adheres to coaching ethics. Life coaching is unregulated and can be practised by people without qualifications or training.
Coaching Benefits
Take control of your life
Being in control of our lives provides predictability, which is a sense of security we learn from a very young age. Feeling out of control can cause deep-rooted emotional instability and security issues.
Coaching identifies the root causes and implements mechanisms to regain that control.
Change the status quo
People sometimes feel their dreams might not have been realised, their careers might not be fulfilling anymore, or their relationships at home or work might not be working out.
Coaching helps you to change the status quo.
Overcome life’s challenges
Some of life’s biggest challenges are building healthy relationships, going through a divorce, being retrenched, or dealing with the death of a loved one.
In coaching, each challenge is analysed to the smallest detail, fears and emotions are addressed, and solutions are found for each one.
Become the best version of yourself, ever
Life coaching originated from sports coaching in the 1980s when coaches realised coaching the person behind the sport was equally crucial as coaching skills and technique.
That concept carried over to business when Silicon Valley CEOs like Steve Jobs at Apple and Jeff Bezos at Amazon turned to sports coaches to help them improve their performance at the start of the internet era.
Business coaching is life coaching at the workplace, and life coaching soon became mainstream.
Life is professional. We work, we build relationships, and we manage budgets at home or work.
Without coaching at some point in our lives, we will never be the best version of ourselves.
Holistic approach
I involve other professionals in coaching for a holistic approach if required.
One of them is a medical doctor who specialises in integrative medicine.
Physical health is a cornerstone of mental health, and she focuses on long-term health and healing rather than disease and treatment.
Another professional I involve is a trauma release exercise (TRE) specialist. She focuses on people suffering from stress, anxiety, or trauma.
The body retains trauma and stress if not released. TRE involves body movements that activate the central nervous system to release tension and trauma.
I am a big believer in TRE and go for sessions every week.
