A potential client recently asked me, "Hey, Dr. Paul, can coaching help me to
feel calm when I experience anxiousness or depression?", I've got an answer for that.
Are you ready for some relief and looking for some hope? I'm Dr. Paul
Jenkins a professional psychologist. I have done both clinical psychotherapy and life coaching.
I'm going to share with you the benefits that I'm seeing for taking this powerful coaching approach
and let's get that answered for you today. First of all, let's put our mental health for just a
moment on a spectrum or a continuum. Clear over here on the left end of the spectrum is the sick end.
This is where we have diagnosis, pathology, treatment, all that fun stuff. What is it that's
over here on the other end? Let's go there in just a moment. I think we'll start first in the middle
and the middle is health. Health meaning not sick. Kind of like in your physical health you can be
sick in bed with a fever throwing up there comes a time you can get out of bed and you're not sick.
But that doesn't mean that you're truly fit, thriving, prospering, that's over here on this
end of the spectrum. Now, clinical psychotherapy tends to focus on this end of the spectrum where
we focus on diagnosis and treatment plans and we build the insurance company and we work through
a course to hopefully get you out of bed so you're not sick. But what about this end of the spectrum?
This is where coaching lives. I've basically taken my practice and I moved it from this end
where I was for 12 or 13 years in my early career over to this end where I've been hanging out ever
since and I'm having a whole lot of fun. Now, there's some overlap in the middle
because everybody's got issues. Have you noticed? Look around you a little bit, you're going to see
everybody's got some issues. Now, in the question that I was asked by this potential client.
Can I experience some calmness and relief if I experience anxiousness and depression?
I'm putting those two in the middle of the spectrum, okay, anxiousness and depression.
Meaning, the common human experiences of those emotions. So, I'm not necessarily talking about
a clinical diagnosis that might be pushing it farther over here to this end of the spectrum.
But everybody experiences anxiousness and depression from time to time. Welcome to earth. That's how we
roll here. You're going to experience some of that. Now, the question is, can coaching help me with that?
Absolutely, let me show you how. Most effective coaching models are based on
principles of cognitive psychology and when I say cognitive psychology there's the classic cognitive
triad. What you think, what you feel, and what you do and these three areas are what we focus on in
coaching. Start with circumstances, okay. Everybody has whatever it is that's going on in their life
right now. That's your circumstances. An important coaching idea is that circumstances are neutral.
Now, you might look at your own circumstances and say, "Well, mine aren't neutral because I got this
not and this not going on", when we think that our circumstances are extraordinary
because they're ours. But when I say they're neutral I don't mean that they're not challenging.
I don't mean that they're painless. I don't mean that they're easy. In fact, some circumstances are
extremely painful and very difficult. When I say circumstances are neutral all I mean is that it
could always be better and it could always be worse. Check inside of your
own mind and see if that's true. I don't want you to take my word for it, just try it out.
Because if that's true it means that no matter how bad things seem they could always be worse, true?
I think of things like September 11th, 2001. Do you remember the terrorist attacks that occurred on
that day and the death and the destruction that happened? How could it possibly be worse than that?
One more death? Another airplane flying into another building? Yes, it could be worse. Now, am I
morbid and sick because I can imagine that? No, we can all imagine something worse so just notice
that. Is that true on the other end of the spectrum? No matter how good things seem they could always
be better, is that true? Check your bank account see if that's right. So, starting from that place
of circumstances being neutral what we want to go to next is our thoughts. Remember in a coaching
model cognitive psychology suggests that we've got our thoughts, our feelings, and our actions.
It's our thoughts that lead to our feelings not our circumstances, okay. Our circumstances are just
what they are but what we think about them creates how we feel about them. This is why coaching
can help you when you're experiencing feelings of anxiousness and depression. We look at our
thoughts not our circumstances we can't change our circumstances sometimes. But we can always
change how we think about it. Our thoughts in turn affect our feelings. Here's a quick example,
life is so unfair. It's a thought. Now, you might identify with that thought or you might have
some resistance to that thought but either way what if you were to think that how would you feel?
You might feel cheated. You might feel slighted. You might feel mistreated. Well, let's try another
thought on, life gives me everything that I need to have every experience that is necessary for me.
Okay, that's a weird thought. maybe you can relate to that. maybe you feel some resistance
to it. Either way, if you believe that how would you feel? Grateful, abundant, blessed?
Life doesn't change that much. I mean, it just kind of goes on doing what life does.
But what we think about it creates how we feel. Now, what we feel in turn changes how we show up.
It's our feelings that guide our actions. Some of you may have some experience with coaching. If you
have and have experienced the impact of personal coaching in your life would you go to the comments
and just leave us a little example of how that's impacted you? I would love to know
what your experience has been. Go to the comments share some of your experience around coaching. I've
been sharing with you the basic philosophy behind coaching. You know Brooke Castillo is the founder
of the life coach school and she has presented something that she calls the self coaching model
CTFAR, C stands for circumstances, circumstances are neutral. T stands for thoughts, thoughts are
not neutral. F stands for feelings and our feelings are created by our thoughts. Do you see how this is
following perfectly with the cognitive psychology foundation that I've already shared with you.
The feelings lead to A the actions how we show up and actions lead to results that's on the
R line. This is just an example of a very successful life coaching model that was
designed by Brooke Castillo. There are other models out there that follow a similar pattern. The crux
of this is you can change how you feel and you do that by addressing and changing your thoughts.
One thing that I really love about coaching is that it gets us into a mode of metacognition.
That's just a fancy psychobabble word that we made up sometime. That means thinking about
thinking. Metacognition is a higher level of thinking. Thinking about thinking. When we go
to that level and we engage someone to help us to see it more clearly it puts us into a
more powerful and choice-centered approach with our own thoughts and we already know that when
we change our thoughts we change our feelings and when we change our feelings we change our actions
and it rolls out from there that our results will be drastically different.
I had one of my coaches explain it to me this way. He said it's like we're all inside of a box
and everything that we experience is projected on the inside of our box, it's all we can see.
There are instructions for getting out of our box and they're printed on the outside of our box.
Do you see the issue? Coaching gives us someone that can read the box to us. That knowledge
then empowers us to get out of our own way and create and live the life that we love.
You can tell that I'm a big fan of personal coaching and if you don't have a coach yet
I would be honored to jump on your team here's the URL go.liveonpurposecentral.com.
That's my coaching platform where I can be available to
you to help you with this process. I would love to be on your team.