HEALING THE PERSON

Who needs therapy? What is it that distinguishes a therapy client from a coaching client? These are the questions that we ask at the beginning of every Coach Training and especially when training Meta-Coaching for ACMC credentials.

What distinguishes the population who needs psychotherapy from coaching are the following: The person is not okay in him or herself. The person is not living in the present, but living in the past (mentally and emotionally that’s where the person expends his/her energy). The person is hurt or wounded or traumatized by something and that hurt is seemingly still occurring. The person just wants peace, harmony, equilibrium, the reduction of stresses and tensions. The person has low ego-strength for facing the challenges and problems of life.

By way of contrast the population that is fit for becoming a coaching client is as follows: Is okay in self and wants to fully develop and be one’s very best self. Is in the present and wants to be fully in the present and creating an even brighter future. Is in the present and has resolved the problems that occurred in the past. Wants challenge, wants dis-equilibriuim, and wants to stretch and step up to be his or her very best self. Has the ego-strength for taking on challenges and thriving in problems, seeing problems as opportunities for being creative.

Not-okay, not here, hurting, and without ego-strength—these are the typical characteristics of people who need therapy. So the first task is to enable the person to become okay. Actually to move far beyond just being okay, to being unconditionally valuable and feeling dignity, respect, love, and care for one self. This is what Abraham Maslow wrote in Toward a Psychology of Being (1968) regarding this need to heal the self: “No psychological health is possible unless this essential core of the person is fundamentally accepted, loved, and respected by others and by himself.” (p. 196) “Self-actualization– “all definitions accept or imply, (a) acceptance and expression of the inner core or self, i.e., actualization of these latent capacities, and potentialities, ‘full functioning,’ availability of the human and personal essence. (b) They all imply minimal presence of ill health, neurosis, psychosis, or loss or diminution of the basic human and personal capacities.” (p. 197)

The problem with a hurt, especially in the first years of life, is that we tend to draw false conclusions from it and build limiting beliefs about our value. We draw the conclusion that we are not okay, and then operate from that perspective. Then as a limiting belief, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

We take the hurt (wound, trauma) as evidence that there is something wrong with us. Then by not handling it well, we then draw another conclusion, not only are we not okay in our person, but we are incompetence and unable to handle things. This sets in play more limiting beliefs— I’m stuck, this is the way I am, nobody will like me, I’m stupid, there’s something wrong with me but I don’t know what, etc.

Then what many people do is take the event that hurt them and keep replaying it over and over in their minds. Of course, that keeps generating and re-generating the negative emotions, and by trying to finish the “unfinished business” they perpetuate it. Then, when it doesn’t get resolved, they keep proving over and over to themselves that there is something inherently wrong with them. They have wrongly concluded that their “self” is the problem. “I’m the problem; there’s something wrong with me.”

Now in NLP and Neuro-Semantics we do not believe that. They are not the problem. If they have a problem, if they are experiencing a problem in their thinking, emoting, speaking, behaving, and relating, then their meanings (or frames) is the problem. The real problem is the kind of thinking that they have used to create limiting and even distorted meanings and beliefs. That’s the real problem. If I did that kind of thinking—drawing those conclusions, creating those kinds of beliefs, I would have the same problems. So when therapy focuses on healing the person, it focuses on setting new frames of meaning that enables the essential core of the person so one fundamentally accepts, loves, and respects oneself.

Carl Rogers is now famous for his formulation of the solution— bring to the client unconditional positive regard. By esteeming the person to be worthwhile, lovable, and valuable unconditionally we set a frame that allows one to be grounded and centered in oneself with nothing to prove and everything to express. This self-esteeming is the key. The Jewish and Christian (and I think Moslem) faiths do this by asserting that one is created in the image and likeness of God. Talk about self-value! If your essence is a reflection of the divine, how much more value or worth do you want? Humanistic psychology gets to it by asserting that what you are is different from what you do. We don’t rate people— we rate behaviors. This differentiates self-esteem from self-confidence.

This establishes the person – behavior distinction of NLP and Neuro-Semantics. You as a person, as a human being, are unconditionally valuable and to be accepted— no conditions. There’s no way to rate that. What you can do, your skills, competencies, the value that you can contribute in a certain skill, business, sport, social context, etc. is conditional. This is a matter of your confidence to do something and can grow or deteriorate.

A person needs therapy to the extent that he or she has de-valued oneself, dis-esteemed self, and taken a hurt and concluded (falsely) that he is not valuable, that she is not worthwhile. The problem was created by rating one’s self as conditional upon something– being smart, pretty, strong, fast, able to make money, etc. The solution is to reverse that problem. The solution is to unconditionally value, accept, and appreciate the person. For many this begins when a therapist brings this attitude to them. To the healing of persons— may there be more love!