Are you GROUNDED in your coaching? How to look after yourself and build emotional resilience

Often during coaching, a simple question to a client can produce the most unexpected reply. This can be while introducing a whole new topic, or following up on a previous answer. This development can take the conversation along a new avenue that can be very insightful. Alternatively, it can bring up difficult or distressing memories for the client that could have a less helpful effect on your work.

Understanding how to cope as a coach when difficult topics arise is crucial. Not only for your client’s progression, but for your own safety and emotional wellbeing. It is also important to recognise when you might need to step away from the work you are doing with your client for a time. This is to help them seek different specialist help to support them in unpacking and tackling any trauma or distress that might be getting in the way of their progress with you.

Becoming GROUNDED

In the meantime, however, it is important that you are prepared as a coach for the possibility of difficult topics coming up unexpectedly[1]. Your ability to show a regulated and stable presence to your client throughout the session is crucial, as is your capability of maintaining a calm, emotionally measured state for yourself. It helps you to model and support self-management to your clients and protects your own mental health and emotional wellbeing at the same time. One effective coaching technique to help you achieve this desired state of mind is to follow the GROUNDED model[2]:

  • Grounding

When a client or coach feels stressed, their mind can often feel disconnected from their physical body. Grounding is a simple technique that brings the two back into alignment, while ‘bringing you back down to earth’. One way to feel more grounded in a stressful situation is to plant both feet firmly on the ground, paying close attention to how the pressure on the soles of the feet is feeling. So, uncross your legs or ankles and don’t sit on a desk with your legs dangling. If standing, stop slouching and place equal weight on both feet.

You can also create the same feeling by placing the palms of your hands onto a flat surface, or pressing them together. Feel the sensations and the pressure and sense any small movements as they happen. You can also do this more discreetly with your fingertips to bring you back to the present moment if you are with a client, or in a similarly public setting[3].

  • Regulation

Learning how to regulate your own emotions and feelings is also key to coping with traumatic or distressing details in a coaching session. This can be done by paying attention to your mindset and breathing patterns. There are many examples of exercises to help with emotional regulation online[4]. Some effective techniques can include stopping and making yourself notice how you are feeling. The more we know about our emotional state, the better we can control it.

Mindfulness activities can help too, such as deep breathing and sensory relaxation such as stretching, playing with a fiddle toy or walking around the room. Working on cognitive reappraisal, or looking at situations in a new, less negative way is another sensory relaxation technique, as it helps us let go of troubling thoughts and replace them with more helpful, positive ones.

  • Open and orienting

The O in GROUNDED can stand for two concepts. Keeping an ‘open’ mind is important when faced with someone describing a traumatic or distressing situation. Remain curious and encourage your client to do likewise, if that is appropriate. Never rely on assumptions; always look for alternative perceptions to see if they can help. After all, no two people will react to a situation in the exact same way. Even one person might have very different responses, depending on their mood, state of health or energy levels on any given day.

Equally, it is key to work on staying in the present moment – or ‘orienting’ – rather than letting your mind surge forward in a panic. This can help you support your client with their difficult feelings, as well as keep yourself protected from becoming submerged in them yourself. Use grounding techniques to sense what you are seeing, feeling, hearing and sensing in the present moment.

  • Understanding

Never make assumptions or judgements about what a client is telling you. Take time to ask questions and seek clarification to make sure you really understand the situation being described. Don’t ask for factual details about the event that could trigger feelings of fear, anxiety or shame. Rather, help your client understand what their response to it meant.

Explain how the body and brain can be affected by trauma – the so-called ‘fight or flight’ response designed to help the person survive[5]. The same goes for your own response to the event being described. You may find yourself experiencing a ‘fight or flight’ response – this is natural and the emotional effects of trauma should not be underestimated.

  • Nurturing

This next stage is all about helping the client – and, simultaneously, yourself – handle the resurfacing of trauma during coaching. Nurture and self-care are extremely important for building resilience and protecting long-term mental health. Help your client create a plan for looking after their mental health and soothing themselves when distressed. Then, go and do the same for yourself.

Many coaches do not consider the huge importance of self-nurture. However, working with others in an intimate and often intense way over a prolonged period of time is bound to have an emotionally demanding effect on the coach, however much they try to ‘leave work at the office’.

  • Drop the disorder

Diagnosing people with known emotional, neurodiverse or behavioural conditions can be hugely helpful in determining how to support them going forward. However, this is not generally in the remit of a coach, unless they are specifically trained in working with named disorders. Remember as a coach, to stay within your scope of practice. It is better to leave diagnosis to those qualified in this area, and instead work with the client as a person, rather than a disorder. Even if someone discloses an already diagnosed condition to you during coaching, aim to stay focused on what they are telling you.

Try to disregard any preconceptions you may have around how that condition might typically present itself. This helps you maintain authentic, person-led care, as well as keep your mind open and curious. In terms of your own emotional wellbeing, treating the person, not their disorder can mean that you gain a deeper understanding of their issues, and of your own reactions to them, without having concerns over whether or not you are prejudging them or putting what you know about their condition ahead of their lived experiences in your own mind.

  • Ecology

This point is all about thinking about the wider effects disclosed trauma could have on the client and their networks, as well as you and yours. Rather than looking at nature and the environment, ecology in coaching terms considers the consequences of actions and how to handle them[6]. A vital aspect of ecology in coaching is working on boundaries. Not only helping a client identify and respect theirs, but putting your own in place. As already mentioned, taking work ‘home’ with you can be harmful to emotional wellbeing and should be avoided, or counter-balanced by appropriate self-care wherever possible.

  • Direction

Finally, the GROUNDED acronym ends with ‘direction’, or helping your clients and yourself move forward after a disclosure of trauma. This could be moving forward together, or helping your client find the right resources to help them work through their trauma or distress before continuing their work with you another time. For you, it is all about finding a way to move forward from the disclosed trauma and any memories or responses it triggers in you. This can be done in a number of ways, from daily grounding and nurturing exercises to seeking emotional coaching or counselling yourself.

If you’re interested in learning more about how to protect your emotional wellbeing and retain a GROUNDED state while coaching people with disclosed trauma, please get in touch with me to see how I can help.

[1] Source: The Trauma-Informed Coach, Joanna Harper, published 2022, p4

[2] Source: The Trauma-Informed Coach, Joanna Harper, published 2022, pp9-14

[3] Source: The Trauma-Informed Coach, Joanna Harper, published 2022, pp165-6

[4] Source: https://positivepsychology.com/emotion-regulation/. Accessed 27 February 2024

[5] Source: https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/understanding-the-stress-response. Accessed 27 February 2024

[6] Source: https://www.theapcinternational.org/what-has-ecology-got-to-do-with-coaching. Accessed 28 February 2024