From a client’s perspective, when coaching for stress, the main considerations should revolve around understanding and managing the impact of stress on their life, while creating a path toward a more valued and fulfilling future. The client’s active participation is key, as is a focus on their individual goals and values. Here’s how a coherent plan can be developed, incorporating various techniques:
1. Understanding Your Experience of Stress:
- Identifying triggers and reactions: Begin by recognising the specific situations, thoughts, or physical sensations that cause stress. Keep a record of these experiences, noting when and where they occur, and your mental and physical reactions.
- Recognising unhelpful patterns: Consider how your current ways of handling stress may not be helpful in the long run. Identify if you are trying to avoid or control stress, and explore how these strategies may be impacting on your life.
- Exploring your values: What is most important to you? Understanding your values can help you identify whether your stress is impacting your ability to live the life you want.
2. Creating a Plan of Action:
The plan should be created collaboratively, so you feel ownership of the process. This ensures it is tailored to your specific needs and preferences, and that you feel motivated to take the actions necessary to make change.
- Set clear goals: It is important that you understand the plan of action you are committing to, and that you feel the goals are relevant to you. The goals should be positively stated and within your control, focusing on what you want to achieve, not what you want to avoid.
- Develop a step-by-step approach: Break down your goals into smaller, manageable steps. This helps you feel a sense of progress, and allows you to celebrate the success of each step along the way, rather than becoming overwhelmed by the overall goal.
- Prioritise your tasks: Arrange your tasks in an order that feels appropriate and achievable. Start with smaller or less challenging steps, and gradually increase the difficulty as you feel more confident.
3. Incorporating Techniques and Tasks:
- NLP Techniques:
- Identify your internal representations: Learn to identify your dominant mode of thinking (visual, auditory, kinesthetic), as this can help with how you manage stress.
- Use reframing: If you notice a negative thought or feeling, reframe it to something more positive.
- Practice the “swish” technique: This can help you alter your subconscious responses to stress triggers, changing how you react automatically to stressors.
- Timeline work: Examine past events and re-evaluate them in a more positive way.
- Set anchors: Create anchors through touch or sounds that help you recall feelings of calm. Use these in stressful situations.
- Improve your language: Use language that helps you reframe negative situations, and makes you feel more positive and empowered.
- Havening Techniques:
- Self-Havening touch: Use calming touch on the hands and arms, while thinking of a positive outcome or reciting a phrase. Havening uses touch to alter your subconscious response to stressful memories or events, which can help you let go of past issues.
- Identify emotional triggers: Be aware of when emotions arise, and use havening to neutralise the emotional charge associated with these triggers.
- Use affirmations: Use affirmations or hope based phrases, combined with havening touch to reinforce new positive pathways.
- Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) Techniques:
- Mindfulness: Practice mindfulness exercises to observe your thoughts and feelings without judgement. Use mindfulness to understand the process of feeling anxious, rather than trying to get rid of the anxiety.
- Acceptance: Practice accepting your feelings and thoughts as they are, without trying to change or control them.
- Value identification: Define what is most important to you and your values. Identify areas of your life that feel out of alignment with your values.
- Committed action: Take action towards goals that are consistent with your values, even when you experience anxiety or stress.
4. Sample Tasks and Expected Benefits:
- Daily Stress Journal: Record stress triggers, reactions, and coping strategies. This will help you recognise your patterns of stress. Benefits: increased self-awareness, identifying specific challenges and unhelpful reactions.
- “Swish” Exercise Practice: Practise the NLP swish technique to change negative responses into positive ones. This will help you change automatic reactions to stressful stimuli. Benefits: new, positive associations and altered submodalities.
- Self-Havening Routine: Use calming touch with positive affirmations daily, or in moments of stress. This aims to create new positive neural pathways. Benefits: reduced emotional intensity of memories, and a sense of calm.
- Mindful Observation Practice: Practice observing stressful thoughts without judgement, using a variety of mindfulness techniques. This can help you create a distance from stressful thoughts. Benefits: non-reactive awareness, reduces the power of thoughts and increases your flexibility.
- Values-Based Activity Challenge: Choose one activity that aligns with a key value, and commit to doing it, even if it causes stress or anxiety. This is action based on your values. Benefits: moving towards your goals, reduced impact of anxiety on your actions.
- ‘Coming back to the present’ practice: Notice when your thoughts have drifted to the past or future, and use techniques to bring you back to the present. Benefits: increased self awareness and flexibility.
5. Ongoing Review and Adaptation:
- Regularly review your progress: Assess how far you have come, and what areas you are still struggling with, and make changes to your plan accordingly.
- Celebrate successes: Acknowledge and celebrate every step you have taken and every goal you have achieved.
- Adapt to setbacks: Recognise that setbacks are a part of the process, and use them to learn from and refine your approach. A relapse or setback is a chance to practice your skills.
Coaching for stress should be a collaborative process focused on understanding your individual experience of stress, and actively taking steps towards a more valued life. A plan of action should include specific goals and actionable steps incorporating NLP, havening and acceptance and commitment therapy techniques. These techniques, and related tasks can help you change your thinking and responses, develop new coping strategies, and reduce the impact of stress, so you are free to move toward the future you want.