Life Coaching & Individual and Couples Therapy / Counseling

Life Coaching

Life coaching is now a commonly used term in the field of coaching and a new rapidly growing profession.  Life coaching addresses specific projects, situations or transitions in a person's life or profession, and it assists the client in clarifying and discovering a source of action to achieve specific goals.  Through coaching, a client  may feel empowered to make positive life changes that may result  in the enhancement of quality of life, confidence, work performance and well being.

"A coach is a person who supports and directs another person via encouragement and asking questions.  It differs from a mentor in that a coach rarely offers advice.  Instead, they help the client to find their own solutions, by asking questions that give them insight into their problem.  The major benefit of a personal coach is that they hold their client accountable.  So if the client has agreed to a plan of action, their obligation to the coach will motivate them to complete their plan.

When a person coaches an individual client, the initial task involves the coach and client working out a mutual understanding of the scope of work and documenting that understanding in a coaching contract.  Then the coach helps the client to prioritize their current needs and looks for ways to address any improvements.

Coaches tend to specialize in one or more several areas: career coaching, transition coaching, life or personal coaching, executive coaching, small business coaching, systemic coaching and organizational or corporate coaching.

Most life coaching is to help individuals reach individual goals.  Coaching people to enjoy better relationships, with parents, partners and children, or with team members and managers, need skills, experience and maturity that younger coaches lack.  systemic coaching increases the adaptability and survival potential of relationships,.  Systemic coaching helps people attain relationship goals and their individual goals.  Individual coaching can be embedded within relationship coaching." ( (source  - Wikipedia))

Individual and Couples Therapy/ Counseling

Carlos Durana’s approach is based on a resource model of growth and healing.  This model:

• Utilizes strengths and resources to generate growth.
• Is based on love, acceptance and regard of self and others.
• Assumes that we can change most easily from a position of strength.
• Is holistic in nature.

Emphasize Strengths, Not Weaknesses
Some forms of counseling and some models of growth and learning often place the emphasis on what is wrong with the person (pathologizing,) on what is the hidden cause of the problem and on what can be done to fix it. Although helpful, this approach has many drawbacks. For example, when a person is called phobic about relationships, this label and the associated lack of competencies can act as barriers that may prevent full understanding of that person. Such categories are limiting and can be counterproductive; they may threaten and raise defenses. It almost goes without saying that a person is always much more than a label. It may be much more useful, in this example, to say the person has forgotten how to relate because of past disappointments. Thinking this way when helping another may assist us in preventing ourselves from getting in a rut with this individual, trying to “fix them.” How we think of what goes on with an individual is very important.

Emphasize Love and Acceptance
A resource-based approach to growth is based on love, acceptance and regard of self and others—our human strengths. It looks at the essence of the person so as to facilitate change. It looks at what is right with people, what works or has worked for them in the past. It identifies assets in what people say and do. This approach rests on the assumption that change works better in a context in which positive aspects are emphasized and enhanced. There is a faith and an interest in everyone’s personal worth, personal competence and lovability. This approach holds that ultimately each of us, as adults, is responsible for what we say, think and do. Inner resources are many: these include images, attitudes, feelings, virtues, body states, etc. Accessing our resources creates greater ease in transforming tensions and inner obstacles.

Emphasize What Has Worked, Not What Has Failed
This model is also based on the assumption that we change most easily from a position of strength, not failure. The process of this method does not focus on failure. It is valuable to find out what has not worked, but it is more valuable to find out what has worked so that it can be enhanced and used: i.e., in what periods of our lives were we most ourselves, when and how we did we make the best decisions. By helping to create a context wherein a person can experience self- love, self-acceptance and enhanced self-esteem, we can assist others in the creation of opportunities to experience strengths and at the same time experiment with new ways of behaving and new ways of looking at ourselves.

In relationship work, a resource approach would emphasize what has worked, finding exceptions to the problems, doing more of the behaviors that create success, discovering strengths and resources under the symptom, redirecting attention to the couples' hopes and aspirations, and developing behaviors that increase marital satisfaction and happiness.

When we fail to develop self-competencies through effective interactions with the physical and social environments, we risk developing illness. For a healthy and stable sense of self, we need to learn to draw from inner and outer sources. This approach also has many implications in the areas of child development and preventive mental health. A resource- based model fosters love, self-esteem and assists in developing those competencies required for successful living.

Holism
Holism is concerned with the whole self–the mind, emotions, body and spirit. One of the underlying premises of holistic counseling is the belief that a person can achieve wellness by addressing all of these components. It is impossible to separate the mind and the body. All the dimensions of the person are addressed for the sake of understanding and appreciation as well as for helping clients achieve well-being and growth. If someone is seeking career counseling, for example, the counselor takes into account factors such as what clients believe their purpose is on this earth and what they hope to accomplish in this lifetime. Encouraging clients to live their lives to the fullest and empowering them to take responsibility for their whole being are among the most important functions of a holistic counselor.

Holism and Couples Counseling
In couples counseling, couples are assisted in developing skills to understand and change behaviors and characteristics that interfere with healthy individual and couple functioning. Holism addresses and goes beyond traditional cognitive, emotional and behavioral counseling. Often recognizing the existence of a force greater than the individual, the counselor uses this recognition to foster the healing powers of forgiveness, tolerance, courage, truthfulness and empathy. As the counselor helps put the current circumstances of a relationship into the larger framework of life purpose and choice of relationship, this approach guides the couple toward relating in ways that support each other’s core identities and life’s mission.