A Solution Focused Approach to Anxiety: What a life coach can do for you

A life coach for anxiety offers a distinct approach compared to a traditional counsellor by prioritising future-focused solutions and client-driven change rather than dwelling on past problems or distress.

Here are some of the ways a coach might differ from a counsellor:

• Focus on Strengths: A coach helps clients to shift their attention to what is working in their lives, encouraging the building of resources, rather than focusing on deficits.
• Emphasis on Positive Emotions: A coach will focus on increasing positive feelings, while acknowledging negative ones, in order to help clients improve their lives. This contrasts with a counsellor’s more typical aim of reducing negative feelings.
• Client-Led Approach: The coaching process is driven by the client’s own goals and aims. The coach elicits the client’s own ideas for change. The coach supports clients to develop their own theory of change and allows the client to define the end of the coaching, instead of a therapist-defined end.
• Action-Oriented: A coach helps clients to move towards a valued life by identifying their values and then taking action consistent with those values. The focus is on what a client can control (their actions) instead of what they cannot (their thoughts and feelings).
• Optimism and Hope: A coach encourages optimism and hope, helping clients to see that change is possible. They work to build a positive alliance with the client.
• Practical Tools: A coach provides clients with strategies and techniques for immediate use in managing their day-to-day anxiety. A coach will focus on enabling the client to move forward and enhance their performance.

A solution-focused coach will help clients to visualise their preferred future and to take steps to make that future a reality. They will focus on the present and future and work towards enabling clients to lead a fulfilling life. They will work to understand what is important to the client, then use this information to develop strategies to help clients to move towards their chosen goals. A coach will help clients to identify and build on existing strengths.

Summary

A life coach assists clients to manage anxiety by helping them to focus on future solutions, enabling them to identify and achieve goals aligned with their personal values. A coach takes a client-led approach focusing on the client’s own resources and strengths. Coaching is an action-orientated process which encourages the client to create positive change by moving towards the life they want. This approach focuses on what clients want to have instead of their problems, and works to create a more lighthearted process.

Tags: anxiety, life coaching, solution-focused, personal development, wellbeing, client-led