Grief coaching may be the most challenging area of coaching. This is because few human experiences affect us like the death of someone we love. The finality of death creates a barrier that can amplify every doubt and feeling of guilt, and can deny us closure and therefore a sense of peace. But because of these very reasons, the benefits brought by the skilled grief coach can literally save the life of their client.

Letting Go without Saying Goodbye

The profound absence of the dead loved one is clear enough. But the uniquely human ability to maintain a connection across the chasm of death can be encouraged. So whether through personal faith or simple memories, it is possible to let go without saying good bye. The impact of this ability to somehow maintain this connection is often enough for us to successfully adjust and deal with the loss of a loved one.

Focusing on the Good Times and Moving beyond the Bad

Everyone, who has lost a loved one, is immediately struck by the knowledge that they will never make that apology or say how much they love them – that one last time. Effective grief coaching involves helping the client focus on the good times and to understand that these times prove that their last messages were conveyed through actions if not words. And that their loved one understands. Just as repeated positive affirmations can change ones emotional state, repeated focusing on positive, shared memories can change the mental state of the client.

Finding New Purpose and Direction Are the critical, final Steps in Grief Coaching

Letting go, not saying good bye and focusing on the good times are all necessary positive steps in successful grief coaching. But they are all about the past and living human beings are all about the present and, more importantly, about the future. Given time for grieving, the grief coach must help their client identify and move toward new purpose and direction. If the coach can do this, the transition is complete. If they cannot the client is condemned to looking for their meaning in a past that no longer exists and which cannot lead to their happiness.

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Dave Iuppa
JTS Advisors Strategy and Accountability Coach

Technorati Tags: Grief Coaching, Psychology Coaching

Grief coaching is one of the most fulfilling ways to use psychology coaching skills to help a coaching client. There is no feeling like knowing that you made a client happy after a long or intense sad time in their life. What you might be surprised about is that grief coaching is actually much easier for a naturally empathetic and intuitive coach than you might think. If you have decent psychology coaching skills already, with a few additional understandings, you’ll save your coaching client a lot of needless pain and suffering.

The 5 Minute Grief Coaching Cure: Psychology Coaching to Change Their State of Mind

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One of the first things you’ll want to do when you get a client stricken with grief is to use a 5 minute technique to massively change their state of mind. The first step is to use anything outrageous to jar them out of their current funk. For instance, do something to make them laugh, or make them angry, or get them in a more curious state of mind. Really, anything that you can do that won’t hurt your client or your relationship with your client may do at this point. The object is to get them out of the depth of despair that they are currently in.

Once you’ve knocked them out of the current ‘grief state’, you want to demonstrate how quickly they can change their emotion by putting them in a new state of mind. Use good psychology coaching skills and simply ask them to change their physiology (Have them stand up and breathe deeply with a big smile on their face. Get them to dance around like a crazy person, etc.). Get them focusing on things in their life that make them happy and excited (Have them visualize those things in their head, or put themselves back in a time when they felt great.). Get them to use positive and joyful language patterns (i.e. have them say positive things and things that make them happy).

The Linchpin to Grief Coaching: Creating a New Meaning

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Once you’ve used your psychology coaching skills to change their state, and they realize that they can change how they feel regardless of their circumstances, now is the time to help them keep that change for the long term. This is the key to grief coaching: Move them out of feeling bad all the time to feeling good most of the time. All you need to do in order to create this change in how they feel for the long term is help them to find what meaning they are creating in their life (whatever the circumstances happen to be) that is causing them so much grief. Then work with them to change that meaning into a more positive or neutral one. Make them understand that they are in control of the meaning they create our of any circumstance, so they might as well get your psychology coaching on how they might create a meaning that serves them.

Good Grief Coaching Means Better Client Choices From Powerful Psychology Coaching

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To be good at grief coaching, you’ve got to be good at helping people make better choices. When your psychology coaching leads to your clients making better choices about what they do in their life to make themselves happy, as well as how they get over their own grief about the not-so-happy parts of their life, you’ll be well worth your coaching fees.

Jeffrey T. Sooey
CEO, JTS Advisors
Founder, Coaches Training Blog community

Technorati Tags: Grief Coaching, Psychology Coaching