When I first started psychology coaching I was CONFUSED all the time, and scared MOST of the time.  What I mean is that as a mental health coaching professional I didn’t know when to use the scramble technique that the NLP guys taught me and I didn’t know when just to ask re-framing questions, and I didn’t know when to confront my client, or what??

The hard part about psychology coaching is not a lack of tools.

The hard part about psychology coaching is not a lack of exercises to put your client through.

The Hard Part About Psychology Coaching is ALWAYS About When to Use WHAT TOOLS

…and that will always be a COMPLEX TASK.

So since I’m supposed to give you psychology coaching tips to make this complex thing (that some will call ‘mental health coaching‘) SIMPLE, then what do you do?

The First Part of Making Mental Health Coaching SIMPLE

The first part is to understand that a good percentage of the time, your mental health coaching skills are just NOT going to be advanced enough to help you choose the PERFECT tool for your client to get the best result. You’re just not experienced enough when you first start.

So don’t expect to use the perfect tool, in fact, don’t even let your mental health coaching client think that you’ll use the perfect tool for their outcome / problem.

The Psychology Coaching Key to Making Mental Health Coaching SIMPLE… Say Something Like This:

“Mr. client, there are over 100 different tools that I could use for any problem or outcome that you bring up in our coaching sessions, and it’s my job to choose the best tool at the time to move you forward, but I won’t always give you the tool that’s going to work perfect for you the first time you bring up a new goal or problem, so I ask you to be willing to try the tool I give you and be open to it working like a charm, but also, can I ask you to be honest with me if it doesn’t work perfectly the first time you use it? If you let me know that a tool didn’t work at all, or even that it worked only 50% of the time, or even most of the time, but every once in a while it doesn’t work, by doing that you help me discover the tool that will work the BEST for you. I am like your detective and if you can give me clues, then the quicker we can find the best solutions for you to get the best results.”

Once You’ve Learned All The Mental Health Coaching Tools, And You’ve Primed Your Client… Unleash Your Inner Psychology Coaching Guru

Once you have primed your new client for your less than perfect psychology coaching, then you can ‘go to town’ with all your tools with the kind of total confidence that only the most experienced mental health coaching professionals have. When something doesn’t work, just try something else, each time learning from the lessons you gained when your client told you about how something didn’t work. That’s the key.

If you keep learning from all your psychology coaching mistakes, then, in time, your ability to provide mental health coaching will be above mere mortal psychology coaches.

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