Have you ever thought about talking to someone about a problem in your life? Have you ever thought about asking for support, to help you prioritise your dreams into achievable goals? It can feel mightily difficult to open up and be vulnerable with a stranger. This article focuses on 30 benefits of counselling and coaching, and how they can help you overcome various difficulties that life can offer. Let me start by giving a brief overview of counselling and coaching.
Counselling and coaching are both tools used to help solve issues and problems that an individual may be faced with. Counselling focuses on the processing of emotions and trauma that can otherwise affect day-to-day function. Whilst coaching tends to focus on aiding a client to balance all aspects of their life, by making realistic and achievable goals in areas of life that they are lacking.
15 Benefits of Counselling
1. Improved communication with others
Both counselling and coaching can aid with communication. They can help the recipient understand what they are trying to say, the intent of what they’re saying and compare that to what they say in various situations. This helps the individual gain clarity on how to communicate more clearly.
2. Desensitise traumas that affect your day-to-day
Counselling can aid in uncovering traumas from an individual’s past. Without guidance, it can be difficult to process these traumas thus affecting someone’s day to day life. With the help of counselling, an individual can process a trauma which in turn desensitises the trauma for the individual.
3. Aid recovery from depression
Depression can be caused by various circumstances in life e.g. loss of a loved one, a break-up, or life not living up to expectations. For someone faced with depression, speaking to a counsellor can allow that individual to face his depressive emotions. This may support the healing process.
4. Identify and work through anxiety symptoms & triggers
Anxiety can be a tricky emotion for us to deal with. It can cause a range of issues, from social anxiety to the inability to express oneself. Counselling allows an individual to understand the fears that trigger anxiety. Counselling provides an environment for an individual to face their fears which in turn works through their given anxiety.
5. Not as dependent on medication
Medication can be provided when an individual’s mental and emotional well-being is affecting their routine. Talking therapy provided in counselling can assist with medication, with the person given a space to share their thoughts, behaviours and feelings. This may provide a secondary source of healing that allows the person to reduce their intake or dependency on medication.
6. Improve your existing relationships
Counselling provides the space for you to be face to face with insecurities, issues and problems that affect your relationships. Through the experience of counselling, you may learn how to avoid putting strain on existing relationships. This in turn will allow your existing relationships to flourish.
7. Clarity of what behaviours affect your well-being
Well-being is affected by a range of things, your behaviour is one of them. Counselling allows you to have introspection on yourself, and understand what behaviours are affecting your well-being both positively and negatively. This allows you to gain clarity on what you should continue to do and what behaviours you can work on stopping.
8. Work through suicidal thoughts and emotions
Suicidal thoughts can be crippling for any individual who faces them and often can result in the individual not feeling comfortable sharing them. Counselling can provide a space for someone to work through these thoughts and emotions, understand why they are happening and ultimately help the individual put safeguards in place.
9. Improving the control of your emotions
Emotions are things we all face and people have many ways of dealing with them. Ultimately, feeling them is important as no one wants to project and take them out of those around them. Counselling can allow you to understand your emotions more, so they don’t control your behaviours as much.
10. Reduction in substance misuse
Substance misuse can be commonly used to provide an escape for an individual. For some people, this allows them to deal with the emotions they are faced with in a day-to-day setting. Counselling allows you to address the reasons for using substances and helps you find other outlets for your emotions. This can help reduce misusing the substance and aid recovery in addiction.
11. A good counsellor can help you move forward
Life can sometimes be a rollercoaster. Sometimes, you can’t move past the situations that you have faced. Moving forward may seem impossible and perhaps you may not know how to do that. However, a good counsellor will allow you to deal with the situation at hand, and eventually teach you the tools you need to move forward.
12. Counselling gives you time and space to work through your problems
Some issues can be complex and therefore require time and space to be able to solve them correctly. Although you may feel competent to solve your problems, counselling provides you with a safe space to be able to bounce different thought processes around without judgement. Helping you to be patient whilst solving these issues yourself.
13. You can gain a fresh perspective on problems and issues
There’s a saying that if you apply the same thinking to an issue, you will get the same results. This is where counselling and coaching are applicable. Being able to talk to someone that you don’t know gives you a fresh perspective on your problems and issues. This may provide you with the ‘aha’ moment that allows you to move past your given obstacle.
14. Counselling provides a safe, non-judgemental and respectful environment
Sharing with your support network is important, it allows you to open up and be vulnerable to those nearest to you. However, you may not feel comfortable sharing everything with them. Counselling provides a safe environment where you can share anything and know that is kept within confidentiality. It is also essential for the counsellor to remain non-judgemental, so you feel respected and comfortable.
15. Safe outlet to vent about issues that you’re struggling to get past
Like anything in life, there are going to be obstacles that you are stuck at. Issues that persist daily and feel like they are not going away anytime soon. Counselling and coaching provide outlets for you to be able to vent about your troubles with any given issue. This is crucial, as sometimes a good vent to someone outside your support network is necessary.
15 Benefits of Coaching
16. You can regain well-being and balance in your life
Coaching can aid you in restoring balance in your life. With many coaches, your fulfilment is put at the heart of their work. This means they help you identify which areas of life you are not maximising and give you goals and tasks focused on regaining balance. This impacts your well-being and helps you become more fulfilled.
17. Removal of habits that do not serve you anymore
It is known that there are habits that can aid you with health, relationships, focus etc. and there those habits can be classified as self-destructive. Coaching helps you understand which habits to keep and which to leave behind. This will help you keep habits that serve a real purpose rather than those that can be damaging.
18. Guidance in finding purpose
Purpose is probably the word of the 21st century. Every millennial is looking to find purpose in their daily jobs, and thus be doing purposeful work. Coaches can help guide you to your purpose. The conversations you have with a good coach will enable you to realise what fulfils you, and where you should be focusing your attention.
19. Greater self-acceptance
Acceptance in life is a key emotion that we should all strive for. It helps us defeat the victim mentality, and allows us to eventually accept any given circumstance. Coaching is a great tool to help individuals develop this mindset. The 1-on-1 sessions focus on building real strength from within, that allows you to accept what goes on around you.
20. Learning effective skills that can be applied throughout life
Coaching and counselling provide tools that allow you to become more adaptable, understanding, better at communicating and many more. These skills once learnt, stay with you for life. Therefore, when you are faced with a similar issue at another point in life, you now have a toolkit of skills to choose from.
21. Increased engagement in work
Engagement at work can come and go from time to time. Some weeks you may be feeling super productive and others you may see a downfall in motivation. Coaching can aid you in setting realistic goals at work, so you can see a steady rise in motivation over a longer period.
22. Increase engagement in all aspects of life
Similar to the point before, at times it is only natural that we lose motivation. Whether it is in our relationships, family & friends, hobbies etc., we can sometimes find ourselves putting in less effort than we used to. Coaching can help you find the source of your lack of motivation and aid you to put counter-measures in place to increase engagement.
23. Deeper commitment to learning
Learning is key to all areas of development. Our relationship with learning can easily be tainted based on how we felt about education during our schooling. Coaching, adds a new twist to learning, helping the individual to focus on learning relevant topics that help you achieve a balanced lifestyle. This allows you to have a better relationship and a deeper commitment to learning.
24. Encourages asking yourself difficult questions around your journey
Being comfortable can result in a lack of spark, lack of motivation and a rise of fear within you. A key aspect of coaching is how coaches/mentors encourage you to ask more difficult questions about your intentions. This prompts self-questioning and eventually allows you to make relevant changes if you see benefits in breaking from outdated thinking patterns.
25. Understand motivations for historical life decisions
In life, we all have made a range of decisions, whether we see them as good or bad. By the time you have a coach, you would’ve made a certain amount of decisions. This means you can work with an impartial party and understand key motivations for making certain decisions, allowing you to gain clarity on whether these motivations still serve you or not.
26. Clarity around your direction in life
Direction is always a funny topic in life; at a certain point in life, we may feel like we’re working towards a vision that has been carefully planned out. Other times we may feel completely lost. Coaching can help you understand the intentions behind your direction or help you plan your direction. Helping you organise your mind so you can pinpoint your pathway forward.
27. Define short-term and long-term goals
No matter what you think you want in life, it is always helpful to break them down into short-term and long-term goals. Coaching provides an avenue to organise your thoughts and help create short-term and long-term goals. With a coach, it may even be easier to set realistic goals, especially if you often expect too much or too little from yourself.
28. Build realistic steps towards your goals
Goals can be seen as achievements on the road to your “ideal” life. However, they can often be overwhelming especially when you’re confused about how to achieve them. Coaching can provide a space where you can build the necessary steps from where you are to achieving goals that you have set.
29. Understand how to get the best out of yourself
You may feel you already get the best out of yourself. However, having introspection via coaching can aid you to understand what drives you internally. Gaining clarity on your drivers, means you understand the key motivators to getting yourself going which in turn can lead to real motivation that comes from within.
30. Better communication with yourself
Coaching can also help you gain clarity on the best way you can speak and communicate with yourself. This benefit can arise when you can share your inner dialogue with your coach and break it down. The analysis that comes from this will help you understand what your preferred communication style is and how you can make adjustments.
Conclusion
As we conclude the benefits of both counselling and coaching, it’s clear that they have many advantages to offer any individual at any point in life.
Ultimately it’s about being ready to accept help. For many of us, it’s difficult to accept our limitations.
However, once we do, we are ready to introspect into ourselves and break patterns of behaviour that do not serve us anymore.
Do you believe you could have a helping hand with some emotions that are too overwhelming to deal with alone?
Are there dreams that you believe you could accomplish, but are overwhelmed when thinking about where to start?
Humans are and always will be interdependent beings. We are stronger together.
Click here to find out more about Self Love Clinic’s coaching and counselling sessions, for more ways you can be supported on a journey of self-love!
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