Therapeutic Coaching: how to take your skills to the next level

Not all training programmes are created equal. 

You can buy into a low-cost-quick-results course or you can invest in an accredited programme that gives you solid theory and practical skills. It depends what you want to achieve really. 

I once purchased an NLP Diploma and ended up with a copy of 'NLP for Dummies' and a few questions that I quickly realised I could look up in the index to retrieve the appropriate response. I estimated it would take me a couple of hours to complete. Needless to say, I returned it to sender pretty swiftly. 

Assessment week 

I’m assessing portfolios all this week. It takes me a long time to read the submissions fully and provide appropriate formative or summative feedback that acknowledges the time and money invested by my learners. It means I do get a bit behind sometimes (sorry) but I do think it's worth taking that bit of extra time. 

During Lockdown, I have also noticed a real trend towards learners using the programme for personal reflection and personal development too. This is why I tailor my feedback to make it bespoke for each submission so that students have something useful to them, both personally and professionally. 

Here’s a copy of a recent assessment with the kind permission of the recipient. It is anonymised: 

Susie, 

Many thanks for the submission of samples of your work. Your responses are thoughtful, reflective and insightful, illustrating your ability to connect thoughts and feelings with ease. 

The early TASKs gave a good summary of where you are personally and professionally. Congratulations on establishing your school counselling service. Many schools are resistant to allocating the funds. Hopefully this is changing. 

TASK 4 holds a message for many of our clients who feel awkward when they try out something new, like a breathing technique or the STOP System. Fortunately, breath work, mindfulness and mind management are all skills and, just like any other skill, can be improved with regularity of practice.  

By TASK 5 I had a sense of your frustration of being the filling in a kind of inter-generational sandwich; something many will empathise with. I wish you luck with your ongoing quest for peace. 

We are hard wired to approach pleasant feelings and pull away from unpleasant or uncomfortable feelings such as anger and frustration. They do have equal benefit, however, in communicating something designed to help us get our needs met. 

TASK 12 can jar with the notion of making assumptions and stereotypes. I thought your answers here were nicely observed. 

In TASK 19 you talk about being spread too thin which again illustrated the importance of self care and the luxury of time spent as we would choose to spend it. 

Family dynamics were nicely observed in TASK 20 and your experiences were clearly narrated. It did feel to me that the past might still be impacting your present to the point where something like the Rewind technique or EMDR might be useful in helping you put down some of the remaining burden and break any lingering pattern matches, although this may be something you have already explored. 

TASK 23 was well illustrated. The boiled down ‘essence of the problem’ I would say, is a breakdown in communication. The ‘essence of the solution’ would be reconnection. The focus of the work would be how that could be instigated and whether indeed there was any desire for that. 

TASK 28 was a good example of just how much of a priority safety is to the human brain and body and made me think about our recently discovered internal triage system as illustrated in the Deb Dana diagram attached and based on Porges’ useful work on Polyvagal Theory.

See: https://www.morlingonline.edu.au/pluginfile.php/154838/mod_page/content/28/The%20Personal%20Profile%20Map.pdf  

To challenge black or white thinking and encourage a ventral vagal state, the rational brain can be prompted to consider the worst case scenario, the best case scenario…and all of the grey areas in between. 

All in all Susie, you have made excellent progress with the programme, using it to explore your own thoughts and feelings as well as for professional development. The Fusion Model is an innovative new wave approach to integrated practice; based on the connection between human needs and the role of our emotions in prompting us to get those needs met. Hopefully you will find it a comfortable fit for your current working style. My hope is it will provide you with many more tools for your professional toolbox, helping you continue to extend and deepen your practice. 

The more professional skills we have, the more nuanced and context specific our work can be. This gives the opportunity to make interventions the best fit for your young clients and bespoke for their presenting needs, wherever they are on the continuum of wellbeing. 

Well done, you’ve made great progress. You do not have to make further submissions prior to completion unless there is something about which you would like advice or guidance. 

Lots of good luck with completion; I hope you enjoy the rest of the programme… 

Do you want to take your skills to the next level?  

Follow this link to purchase your Skills Workbook direct.

What is covered in the programme? 

The 70,000 word, 426 page work book covers a broad range of theory and skills. 

Module 1 

The Therapeutic Coaching Timeline

Professional evolution

The Therapeutic Coach: A new paradigm

The big experiment

What is therapeutic coaching? Is it different from counselling?  

About the NCFE accredited Therapeutic Coaching Diploma

Effective Therapy: Affordable training

  Module 2 

Work Book

Zen philosophy; an auspicious beginning

Setting SMART Goals

Self Reflection

Learning something new

Recognising emotions

Module 3 

Communication Micros Skills

S.O.L.E.R

Listen

Mirroring and reflection

Paraphrasing

Summarising

Open questions

Empathy

Carl Roger’s core conditions

About Carl Rogers

Look back, but don’t stare

  Module 4 

Human needs

Create a SAFE SPACE to get your emotional needs met:

The work life balance

Attunement and the therapeutic alliance

Accelerated rapport

Smile

Information Gathering: Using Clinical Measures and feedback

CORE 10

Taking an emotional needs ‘audit’

Actualising tendency versus learned helplessness

How to restoring hope

  Module 5 

A first session with a client

Placebo-nocebo

Confidentiality in therapeutic work

Positive expectation

SUDS scaling

  Module 6

  Dealing with anxiety and panic attacks

Fight or flight

Pattern matching

Thinking errors or cognitive distortions

Resilience and Base Stress

Diaphragmatic Breathing

The Observing Self and Meta awareness

Misuse of the Imagination

What else do I need to know?

  Module 7

  Setting therapeutic goals

The Magic Question

The Reticular Activating System (RAS)

RAS and focused attention

What are your Hobbies and Interests?

Developing metaphor therapeutically

  Module 8

  Psycho Education

Triune theory

Sleep

Pattern matching and neural pathways

Patterns of response

  Module 9

  Supervision and the helping professions

Referrals

Diversity: Celebrating Difference, Celebrating ‘Sameness’

Challenging the labels

HAPPINESSISNOWHERE

  Module 10

  STOP: GO Bridging the gap between counselling and coaching

Holistic Life Coaching

Ploughing new furrows: Counselling in a coaching context

Where are you on the wellbeing continuum?

React or respond?

Thought stopping

Neuroplasticity and the changing brain

Affirmations

  Module 11

  The STOP System

STOP and diaphragmatic breathing: How to test your own breathing

STOP and ‘Taking a Step Back’

STOP and the Observing Self

STOP and Emotional intelligence

STOP and interrupting old or habitual patterns

  Module 12

  The Wheel of Life

Case study: Geoff #1

Using the coaching wheel of life

Assessing and scaling life as it is

The life wheel protocol

  Module 13

Case study: Geoff #2

Wheel of life doc 1

A holistic view of the client

The preferred future

Story: What a bird should look like

Write it down-make it happen

  Module 14

  Case study: Geoff #3

Wheel of life doc 2

SMART goals

Case study: Geoff #4

SMART goals doc

  Module 15

  Visualisation

Describing guided imagery

Visualisation: a history

Meditation and mindfulness

Metaphor in guided imagery

  Module 16

  Case study: Geoff #5

Therapeutic time travel

From problem focused to solution focused

A progressive relaxation and bespoke visualisation for Geoff

  Conclusion

  Intelligence plus intuition equals ‘whole brain’ learning

The Ebbinghaus Curve of Forgetting

A privilege

  Appendix

TASK documents

Therapeutic stories

  Resources

  Therapeutic Coaching in practice

First session questionnaire

SAFE SPACE audit sheet

CORE 10 questions

Case study: Shelly

Case Study: David; coaching a client with M.E.

BACP ethical guidelines

Association for Coaching: coaching competencies

Articles Is the Therapeutic Coach a ‘brain mechanic?’

What do you do if you don't like your client?

Smile and the world smiles back.

The Top Five Regrets of the Dying

Swim towards the light.

A Nice Result

Better to do something imperfectly than nothing flawlessly

No need for my services?

The Super Organising Idea

All boxed up?

Working at the cutting edge

Epigenetics

Mapping the connectome

The gut microbiome

Polyvagal theory

The seven pillars of mindfulness

Mental health first aid

Order your workbook here

 Testimonials 

Founding Chair of BACP Coaching Linda Aspey

 In the field of coach-counsellor integration, Frances is a trailblazer' 

Health journalist and BACP Coaching Executive Specialist for Communication Sally Melissa-Brown healthjournalist.co.uk

 'Fusion teaches you a fast, effective way to diffuse stress and take control of your emotions. It's deceptively simple and includes lots of fun techniques and exercises which will appeal to children of all ages.'

Make Menopause Matter founder Diane Danzebrink:

 ‘I discovered Fusion therapeutic coaching when I needed it most. When personal circumstances left me with mental and emotional issues I was lucky enough to find Frances Masters. Fusion has quite literally changed my life!  

Having studied traditional counselling some years ago I was left feeling disappointed that I had not been taught how to help my clients move forward with their lives. I was so disillusioned I abandoned my dream of becoming a counsellor and followed an alternative career path.  

My personal Fusion experience provided a real ‘light bulb’ moment for me, this was what my counselling training had been missing and I went on to complete the diploma in Fusion therapeutic coaching. I am passionate about my work, having experienced the mental and emotional trauma of depression when I was least expecting it made me determined to use my experience to help others’

Principal Teaching Fellow, University of Southampton John Perry, MA, MA, MA, MSc, FHEA https://www.southampton.ac.uk/medicine/about/staff/jwp.page

 ‘Frances is an inspirational and engaging trainer. A highly-skilled facilitator, Frances is responsive to learners’ needs, flexible, good humoured and positive in her approach.

I whole-heartedly recommend both Frances and her approach to all who are committed to helping others to move in the direction of accomplishing their full creative and constructive potential.’