Coaching clients with traumatic background
Author: Team xMonks | Published on: Mon, 22 Feb 2021 04:27:24 +0000

- Practising as a fake-therapist or entering the domain of therapy
- Engaging with clients who would be better helped by a therapist
- Working only with those with obvious signs of trauma, such as PTSD or addictions.
Do not ignore the feelings of the client
Feelings, neither our client's nor ours, should not be neglected. As coaches, we need to be mindful of our emotional reactions and how a client might be influenced by those reactions. Do we get hooked by something that a client is going through? It may be that a client's trauma is very similar to one in our own lives, and we have difficulty distancing ourselves from it. Or it may simply be that this client and his or her life are emotionally invested in us, which causes regular, natural sadness. But it must be discussed when the grief overwhelms us or causes us to shut down and remove ourselves from the client.Making the client aware of their own trauma
The self-awareness of trauma shakes the foundations of one's biography and strengthens a new view of personal experience. With each new traumatic event, the resolution imaging increases. Unfortunately, one experiences a new traumatic phase as one becomes conscious of the trauma, which may intensify the trauma or delay the appropriate care. Knowledge of a traumatic experience does not offer any relief, contrary to the psychoanalytic belief that awareness relieves or reduces traumatic symptoms. We can clarify to the client what's going on while remaining true to our position as a specialist at the same time. Our help is needed and warranted by the client, and our appropriate role is to ask how best to coach the client at the moment.Nuances of a Trauma-informed coach
Trauma-informed coaches have a working knowledge of trauma, not as deep as the criteria of a therapist, but adequate to identify and explain what it is. From conception onwards, they also understand the circumstances that generate the permanent neuro-physiological trauma response. To be able to explore their survival habits and personalities, clients need to feel comfortable. Not all coaching environments allow this, and the context may be sensitive to trauma-informed coaches.- These coaches are able to listen to the signs and symptoms that, both in the client and in themselves, may be part of an internal trauma system.
- Without any intention of becoming diagnosticians, they have innovative approaches to obtaining autobiographical knowledge.
- They are eligible to encourage the client to discuss potential associations between 'there and then' and 'here and now,' and to focus on what behaviour is healthy for their well-being in the present.
- They also feel secure about when and how to raise the trauma problem, and how it should be addressed to the client, while remaining securely in the partnership and approach of coaching.