Trauma informed coaching

“Garland of Flowers, Suspended Between Two Animal Skulls, A Dragonfly Above” by Michaelina Wautier

When your client enters the coaching space, he or she comes with all the experiences, traumas, joys, achievements, disappointments, and longings that make the full human being sitting before you. There will be all of the behavior patterns and coping strategies the client has developed to help her make decisions and live her life. As coaches, we must be well-versed in trauma informed care and the effects of attachment wounds as we navigate the coaching relationship and container with clients.

The coaching space or container is a concept borrowed from several folks (CJ Jung, likening the therapeutic process to an alchemical container or crucible; DW Winnicott,influential psychoanalyst and pediatrician who articulated the concept of the holding environment, and various coach training programs) to describe a space that is contained, safe, energized, and focused on the moment-to-moment experience of the client. When clients enter the coaching container, they are their most vulnerable so its vital to understand how past wounds show up and what they might look like.

" Trauma Informed Care is a framework that involves understanding, recognizing, and responding to the effects of all types of trauma. Trauma Informed Care also emphasizes physical, psychological and emotional safety for both consumers and providers, and helps survivors rebuild a sense of control and empowerment." ~The Trauma Informed Care Project

This means that when a client comes to us for help with something big or small and shows resistance to change, or procrastinates, or engages in some other behavior that makes us question his or her readiness, having an awareness of previous trauma helps us know what to do next. People engage in behaviors all the time that are essentially coping strategies for dealing with effects of a trauma.

As an example, a client may drink too much as a way to cope with post-traumatic stress related to an assault. The drinking gets in the way of the client's goal of improving her productivity. If, as coaches and guides, we do not (1) create a safe container and (2) come from a trauma-informed perspective, we may follow the wrong path. We may assume the drinking is the problem and focus on helping her eliminate that, without fully grasping how the client uses the drinking. In doing so, we delay the client's shift into greater productivity.

When we come from an informed perspective, we seek out the hidden reasons for the behavior, ask permission to address those, and never blame or judge the client for behaviors that have helped her survive and cope with difficult and traumatic events.

Clients don't come to coaching for healing from trauma, but clients who have experienced trauma do come to us for coaching. We need to recognize them and come to the coaching container as informed professionals. We must see our clients through multiple lenses--one of them needs to be a trauma-informed lens.