The Central Dogma of Coaching
Essential to coaching is to create a judgment free space for all of our thoughts and emotions. Every thought and emotion is allowed to exist, acknowledged for occurring and accepted for being.
It is when we cross over into action, into value space, that we need to consider ethics and moral values.
Central to coaching is asking ourselves questions to offer new perspectives and increase our awareness. What are my thoughts about my thoughts? What are my thoughts about my emotions? When I have these emotions, what thoughts come up?
Our thoughts shape our emotions, which fuels our actions, and our actions affects how we feel.
The CSI Coaching Model
The arrows of the CSI coaching model highlight the most essential parts of coaching. This is the core of coaching and we will continuously come back to this model.
The CSI coaching model puts emotions between thoughts and actions. Because, we can use logical arguments all we want, but if our gut feeling tells us to pause, we pause or we experience increasing anxiety, i.e., our body must think that we did not hear it when it told us to pause, so it amplifies it’s signal, until it is screaming at us to STOP!
The Hand Model of the Brain
The Hand-Brain-Model is a widely used concept to explain the link between our biology and our experience of emotional regulation. Daniel J. Siegel, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, UCLA School of Medicine, elegantly describes ‘the Hand Model of the Brain’ in his many books. Here we provide a short illustration and explanation. In coaching, emotional awareness and regulation are vital skills that must be practiced and tied to our biology.
Brainstem: represented by your wrist, responsible for basic automatic functions, e.g., breathing and keeping our heart pumping.
Amygdala: represented by your thumb, involved in our emotional response through, e.g., fear, anxiety, and aggression.
Prefrontal cortex: represented by your fingers, helps us make complex decisions and manage our emotions.
When we experience fear, danger, or intense, overwhelming emotions, our prefrontal cortex goes offline, and we become reactive; in these situations, it is very difficult to make thoughtful decisions and be aware of our actions' long-term consequences. Because we temporarily lose access to that biological function.
We can practice becoming aware of situational and emotional cues within ourselves when our prefrontal cortex is about to go offline.
By accepting our biology and practicing recognizing when it presents itself, we can choose to provide for our needs in helpful ways. By pausing and taking a break, e.g., a deep breath, acknowledging our feelings and our need to calm down before proceeding. e.g., when pressed for an answer, take a breath and say: "I need to think some more about this before I decide".
Trauma and Treatment
It is our mission and sincerest wish to create more awareness and destigmatize the topic of mental health in our society. Coaching can help, and we illustrate its place in our everyday lives. Let's introduce a Social Acceptance Barometer to demonstrate how we generally feel regarding whether something is socially acceptable. It feels perfectly acceptable, and not uncommon, to have an accident and break your leg or scrub your knee. It would actually be considered strange and "weird" not to take action and care for oneself after a physical injury.
When it comes to physical trauma, we generally do not experience any feelings of "wrongness" regarding trauma, treatment, and maintenance in the form of physical exercises.
Pay close attention to your Social Acceptance Barometer and note if and how it shifts once considering forms of mental traumas. This could be anything that we feel is difficult to deal with emotionally. It is very common to experience feelings of shock, shame, and denial. We want you to know that you are not alone in this. Everyone experiences this; it is part of the human experience.
Coaching can not replace care from a psychologist or other health professionals, but it is a highly valuable tool as essential as regular physical exercise. And through its use in sports, it has become more socially acceptable. Ultimately, our mission is for all of us to feel that a mental injury is just as socially acceptable to experience as a physical injury. That the skills to deal with a mental injury and how to get help will be just as obvious as today for a physical one in our society.
Rest
We are often told that sleep, food and exercise are key factors to live a balanced and healthy life. While this is very true, what is less discussed is that sleep alone is not sufficient to provide the rest that we need to fully recover and regain our energy. In fact, seven types of rest have been defined which all balance different aspects of how our bodies and minds are drained in our daily lives.
PHYSICAL rest includes sleep but also other ways of making our bodies relax, for example with the help of breathing exercises. MENTAL rest means to give your hard working brain some time off while doing something that helps you shift focus and slow down. EMOTIONAL rest is to ventilate your feelings and thoughts with a good friend or a therapist. For SOCIAL rest, you spend time with people who fill you with energy rather than deplete it. Or maybe you need some alone time away from others.
CREATIVE rest is finding your inner child, loosing yourself in a creative process. SPIRITUAL rest is achieved when feeling a part of something bigger than yourself. Maybe a mindful walk in nature, some meditation or community work can help to put things in perspective? Finally, with SENSORY rest you give your senses a break from the constant flow of input. Find a quiet space, close your eyes for a few minutes and leave your phone untouched for a while.
What type of rest we need varies depending on our personalities and what activities we've been engaging in. We can practice checking in with ourselves and explore different alternatives to find the right type of rest for every moment in life.
Meditation
When we sit down to meditate, we create space and time to become aware of our feelings, where they are present in the body, and what thoughts travel through our minds. Looking from the outside, it might seem like the skills practiced are sitting still and taking deep, measured breaths for long periods. But, if we could look inside the body and mind of a practiced meditator, we would find that the practice looks different every time - because our emotional state and mind are different every time.
During meditation, we accept, acknowledge, and observe all emotions that come up; we take note of all thoughts that might travel through and then gently let them go. This is a practice of becoming aware of where all our emotions present themselves in our bodies. When an emotion comes up, we gently note and label it as an 'Emotion', then let it go by moving our focus back to the breath that slowly comes in and out. We move away from identifying our sense of self with thoughts and emotions and towards being the observer and the one experiencing them.
This is also a practice of watching our thoughts without getting pulled into them. When a thought comes up, we gently note and label it as a 'Thought', then let it go by moving our focus back to the breath that slowly comes in and out. Thoughts can be very 'sticky' and slowly drags us along thought pathways we had traveled before, which can become a thought spiral, often into something that brings up uncomfortable emotions such as anxiety and stress.
If we regularly practice meditation, we train our mind and brain to notice the beginning of such thought patterns and improve our ability to detach from thoughts and avoid going down such thought spirals. We become aware of what emotions and thoughts often appear together, and what actions we feel moved towards taking. We start to create pauses when we note our feelings and thoughts and practice letting them go. Such skills train us to become responsive instead of reactive toward ourselves and our environment.
Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT)
”Tapping”
Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), called 'tapping', is a self-help therapeutic approach representing a concise intervention combining components from exposure therapy, cognitive therapy, and physical stimulation of acupressure points on the face and body. This is a helpful skill for processing intense and uncomfortable emotions we sometimes experience — an excellent complement to breath exercises and meditation.
Important: Always start with accepting what is, all the emotions and thoughts that are. When tapping, use the index and middle finger to firmly (but never unpleasant) ‘tapp’ at the acupuncture points.
Tapping topic: Select an emotion or issue you want to process or change your beliefs and behavior on.
Self score of intensity: Make an estimate from 0 to 10, how intense is the emotion or issue? Where 10 being the worst. After tapping, this will be repeated to see how much the exercise has shifted the emotional state.
Setup statement: While repeating this statement a few times, tap the karate chop point. Modify the script below according to what you want to process E.g.,:
Even though I have this [emotion/issue]
I choose to deeply and completely accept myself
Reminder phrases: These are spoken to help us focus on the emotion/issue, to explore and accept all aspects of it. While also tapping on all the points, one at a time for about 5-7 taps on each point. Do not count the number of taps, let the focus be on the emotion/issue that is to be processed. It is very important that you focus on what feels relevant to your specific situation.
Tapping adjuncts: Sometimes we need a bit of extra guidance for statements to fully resonate with us and/or be more effective. When tapping, these are suggestions for such phrases to use.
I choose to…
I’m willing to one day be open to…
Even though I’m not quite sure about … I’m open to learning why that is.
What is it I need to protect myself from?
Why should I keep this feeling?
I choose to accept the part of me that thinks this … is necessary.