Relationship coach training doesn’t provide you the tools to save or repair every relationship. No kind of training can do that. But one of the things it should give you is some tools you can teach your clients so they can manage their own emotions during stressful times in their relationship. Recently I coached someone who was so stressed by her marriage that she completely forgot several appointments she had scheduled, including our coaching appointment. Here are some of the tools I taught her.

How To Change Your Emotional State

In a troubled relationship emotions can run high and become overwhelming. In your relationship coach training or elsewhere, have you come across the concept of the triad—the three points that determine your emotional state? These are physiology, focus or beliefs and language. The components of the triad can be intentionally shifted to change to a different emotional state. Have your client remember a time when she felt calm, peaceful and happy. Have her engage all her senses in the memory: stand the way she stood, breathe the way she breathed, hear what she heard, etc. Since she has already had the experience, the memory of it is in her body. When she goes back into it, her emotions will shift back to the emotions of that earlier time. It isn’t a long-term fix, but it does put her into an empowered state for a while, so she regains some control.

Use Affirmations And Incantations

Learning about affirmations and incantations is not unique to relationship coach training, but they are another tool I coach relationship clients to use. One particular affirmation that resonates with most clients during stressful times is “I am relaxed, confident and happy.” Have your client write out the phrase in cursive, and make it a habit to read it or say it repeatedly throughout the day. It works particularly well to turn the affirmation into an incantation by repeating it over and over while doing some physical action like swimming or jogging. Persistence pays off with this technique.

Relationship Coach Training Suggests Taking A Time Out

Relationship coach trainers know that time outs aren’t just for children. Most people will respond to the energy in the environment around them. If the energy is about anger or hurt or frustration, it can be difficult to stay on an even keel emotionally. Sometimes the best way to defuse a situation is to get out of the situation for a while. This might just be a ten minute walk or jog, reading a book or having coffee with a friend.

These are a few of the tools I find useful from the relationship coach training arsenal. When you help your client manage her emotions, she feels better about herself and communicates better, and her relationship has a better chance of healing.

Hope you took some great value out of this post today! I’d love to hear your feedback, so make sure you leave a comment with your thoughts or questions. And also, you can click on the Twitter button below to retweet this article… Thank you!

Dorine G. Kramer
JTS Advisors Strategy and Accountability Coach