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| Life Coaching in Addiction Counseling: How To Get The Most From The 12 Steps |
| Columns - Opinion | ||||||||
| Saturday, 30 November 2002 | ||||||||
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The focus of addiction counseling has always been to keep the client clean and sober, and restore some sense of functionality. It is about preventing relapse and providing a place of structure and safety to protect the person's sobriety. In this context, the 12-Step Program has literally saved countless lives. But what happens if the client doesn't effectively use the 12 Steps?
Life Coaching can take the addictive
personality through the 12 Steps, into a future place of gratifying
productiveness. When used as an adjunct, Life Coaching helps clients utilize the
12 Steps more effectively so that they truly experience the path of recovery and
not just sobriety. Unachieved goals and unrealized potential are a threat to the
recovering client's sober future. They keep him or her locked into an endless
cycle of running laps on the need-to-stay-sober treadmill. Life Coaching can
break this cycle and spin the client off into a place of realized dreams, where
the focus is on the positive future. For many recovering clients, the 12-Step
Program itself can become this cycle.
One of my associates told the story of a colleague currently cycling through 12-Step Programs. For 20 years she has joined and rejoined 12-Step self-help groups, always keeping herself in a "broken" mode, in need of fixing. For this person, and many more like her, there is no "post" sobriety victory. Life becomes a broken record, caught endlessly in the loop of therapy and self-help programs, never realizing what life can hold beyond the addiction. All of life is consumed with the need merely to maintain - never to reach and achieve. All energy is spent in staying clean and sober and not in practicing the other 11 steps. Don't misunderstand. As a therapist turned coach, I completely understand the need for conventional therapy for the person seeking release from addictive behaviors. The therapist's work is critical for recovery. But this work is necessarily caught up in relapse prevention, working through past pain and changing behaviors, holding the client accountable, anticipating and dealing with the myriad of problems that will occur in every addicted person's recovery and charting and overseeing the desired course of treatment to ensure a functional life in spite of the addiction. Addiction is treated as a diagnosable illness with medical and clinical models. It looks at the past in order to gain some functioning present. I am not suggesting therapy be replaced or modified, but, rather, complemented and completed through life coaching. Psychotherapy generally deals with emotional and behavioral problems and disruptive situations - such as addiction - and seeks to bring the client to normal function by focusing on his dysfunction. In contrast, life coaching generally deals with functional persons who want to move toward higher function - and achieve excellence while creating an extraordinary life. Coaching is a process similar to solution-focused techniques that many therapists use for less serious psycho-emotional problems and life stresses. Thus Life Coaching is not as effective for the active substance abuser, and not to be used for the recently recovered, but definitely for the individual who has been in extended recovery and is looking for new ways to achieve personal growth. Life coaching The basic philosophy behind life coaching is that as humans, we have immeasurable resources of energy, wisdom, ability, and genius waiting to be set in motion. We can create the life we want faster by having a coach who helps us utilize our resources to facilitate change and realize our potential. When you empower a person and show him what he can do - instead of focusing on what he can't do (weakness) - you can improve his overall mental health and life in general. Life coaching focuses on helping people who already have a measure of "success" in their lives, but who want to bridge the gap between where they are and where they want to be in their profession and their personal life. This "measure of success" for the recovering client is his or her sobriety, and a stabilized place of safety. With coaching, this safe place becomes a place of expectation and amazing potential, instead of mere functioning. A life coach is much like a trainer who helps an athlete win the "gold medal" - not just be in the race. A life coach helps their client design the life they want - bringing out their own brilliance so that they can achieve excellence and create a purposeful, extraordinary life. Coaching answers the question of "now what?" that recovering clients often ask after reaching that 12th Step. When are they ready? When is the recovering client ready for life coaching? Every patient will present uniquely different and individual needs for a personalized therapy program, and every potential life coaching client will likewise be ready at various places along the therapy path. For each client that place will be different and uniquely theirs. The trained therapist is the best one able to determine the moment in recovery when life coaching can either supplement the 12-Step process or continue it beyond the 12th Step. It is helpful to understand the major differences between therapy and coaching in order to best determine what combination of these practices would be suitable to particular clients. There are three broad categories that offer distinctions between therapy and coaching: The past versus the future. Traditional therapy deals with the patient's past, particularly how it applies to their current addiction. The therapist's role is to bring the client to an adequate present and reasonable level of functioning, considering the addiction. In contrast, the coach works with an individual who is already adequately functioning (state of sobriety) to move them to a higher and more satisfying future level of functionality (recovery). "Fixing" Versus Co-Creating. In the clinical therapy practice, the client comes with a presenting problem, in this case an addiction. In your therapy model for this client, you undertake the strategies you have been trained to use in the process of healing, including patient diagnosis and treatment plans. The client's perspective in all of this is that you will "fix" them. Coaching is not about fixing. It is about creating. The assumption in life coaching is that by working together the client will have greater success in planning, setting goals, and creating the life of his or her dreams. The therapist facilitates sobriety, and the coach facilitates the co-creation of a fulfilling life beyond sobriety. Professional Versus Collegial. During the initial treatment stages of addiction therapy, the therapist wears the hat of professional - the expert with answers. The power, from the client's perspective at least, rests with the therapist. Therapy sessions are quite often intense and sometimes difficult. Conventional therapy often involves a power differential between professional and client. The coaching relationship is one built on more equal footing, like an active partnership. A successful life coaching relationship is collegial. Coaching recognizes that clients have the knowledge and the solutions; the coach simply helps unlock the client's own brilliance. Coaching sessions are very typically open, often friendly, casual and even light. Filling up the hole All therapists know that in order for addiction therapy to be permanently successful, something must fill the hole that exists once the addictive substance has been removed. Life coaching can help the client fill this hole with productive alternatives, which will quite possibly allow them to reach potentials previously unattained. A transition occurs in the person's life as they experience a change from therapy to coaching. Therapy is centered in pathology, process, history and the exploration of the inner world. It focuses on solutions for specific "problems." As the move is made to coaching, however, the client begins to experience a broad focus on the whole person, not just the addiction. The orientation is on outcomes and action, moving from the inner world of therapy to the outer realities and possibilities of life. The therapist asks "why?" The coach asks "how?" The recovering client moves from being a patient with an illness to a partner with a bright, and attainable, future. As the patient of therapy transitions to the coaching client, the hole left by the removal of the addiction is filled with new possibilities for success, and a way to achieve them. What's next? The advent of the coaching profession has changed the outlook for those people who have reached a place of sobriety and are looking to create lives of fulfillment and promise beyond the plateau of maintenance. If you are a therapist, you have considerable options in exploring the possibilities of utilizing life coaching for your patients. For the therapist looking for coach training, there are resources listed at the end of this article in my bio. Some therapists have even moved out of the therapy profession altogether into full-time life coaching. Their former training and education as therapists make them coaches with unique skills and background, able to co-create productive lives with their clients, as well as receiving their own fulfillment in the realization of client success stories. For others, investigating the resources available in professional life coaches, and learning how to determine the appropriate time for the transition of their patients from therapy to coaching with another professional will be an invaluable asset to their addictive patients. However you choose to incorporate life coaching into your therapy practice, this potential life-saving option is the logical and most successful next step for your addictive patients who are ready to apply the 12 Steps in all aspects of their lives. It will take them beyond sobriety into a life of new and continuing successes. "Opinion" author Patrick Williams, EdD, has co-authored with Deborah C. Davis a newly released book titled "Therapist as Life Coach: Transforming Your Practice" published by W. W. Norton and Company. If you are interested in adding coaching to your practice, visit www.lifecoachtraining.com. For those looking for more information about coaching in general, contact the International Coach Federation (ICF) at 888-423-3131; e-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ; or visit their web site at www.coachfederation.org
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