How a year of counselling training has added to my coaching practice

I'm writing this month’s blog amidst assignments, placement sessions and client work. If you've been reading these blogs for a while, you might remember that since September I’ve been studying part-time for a PGDip in Integrative Counselling and Coaching whilst also running my coaching practice.

My studies have tested me in all kinds of ways, and I’ve had to hold the individual pieces lightly while keeping sight of what I want to achieve.

It’s been a huge commitment to take on, and on many occasions, I’ve asked myself why I chose to go back to Uni and make my life so much more difficult! I’ve kept coming back to the same answer. I’m doing this because this work really matters to me.

How does counselling training make me a better coach?

I learn more about the art of coaching every time I work with someone, but most of my professional development this year has been about counselling and psychotherapy. Please don’t stop reading though! I am still a coach (and next year my course is much more coaching-related).

What I've come to understand is that in my coaching practice, my lived experience is like the root and trunk of the tree, and my training in the twin disciplines of coaching and counselling are like two branches of that same tree. All important and all part of a whole.

As I've trained over the years, I’ve been drawn to integrating a diverse range of approaches into my coaching style to better enable me to work with all aspects of the person in front of me. This course is helping me to build and strengthen that blend.

I do this because the people who choose to work with me are often looking for coaching that offers more than just accountability or goal-setting frameworks. When people bring their challenges to coaching, we sometimes find we need to go deeper, and depth requires understanding how people really work. Because of this, increasingly, I describe myself as someone who coaches with therapeutic awareness.

This year has sharpened my instincts considerably to know when to stay with the forward-motion energy of coaching and when to slow down and tentitively pay attention to what’s underneath with some of those counselling skills.

Over the course of this year, I've been studying six therapeutic frameworks alongside Transactional Analysis, which explores how our earliest relationship patterns can be seen in the way we communicate and connect in the present.

A person-centred approach keeps the supportive relationship I seek to create with clients at the heart of everything we do together. Understanding the key principles of existential therapy helps me to support people who are looking for answers to big questions about meaning, uncertainty, and what to do when the path ahead is unclear.

Elements from psychodynamic therapy help me make sense of the patterns my clients carry without always knowing why and tools from Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) give us a way to gently examine the stories we tell ourselves.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), my long-time favourite, asks us to stop fighting our inner experience and move toward what matters instead. And finally, working with elements from Gestalt therapy helps me and my client’s pay attention to what’s happening in the present moment, in the room with us, right now.

Each framework adds something different to how I understand people, and together they've given me a much richer set of ways to be useful as a coach.

What this means when we work together

All this valuable learning helps me to create a more detailed map of the interior landscape that my coaching clients are working with. I’m also more attuned to what’s not being said and understanding why someone might be stuck, even when on the surface, it may look like they have everything they need to move forwards.

I’m a work-in-progress human and I hope I’ll never feel like I’ve finished learning. I sincerely love deepening my understanding of people and by extending my skills through studying, I’m ensuring I continue to develop myself both personally and professionally.  

I’m also someone who’s had a demanding year that’s asked a lot of me, and I know what it feels like to keep going while life has felt heavy. I know how it feels to be uncertain and keep moving forwards anyway, and I know what it’s like to take the difficult choice to sit with discomfort in the service of what matters rather than try to find the nearest way out of it.

Willingness to keep moving forwards

My tenacity and willingness to take on new challenges, even when it's uncomfortable, are part of what I bring as a coach and are the spirit with which I work. That's my commitment and the energy I share with you when we spend time together and the reason I keep moving towards what matters, for me and for you.

If these words have resonated with you I warmly invite you to book a free 30-minute introductory session to explore how coaching can help you to move forwards too.