RichaRd Blonna, E
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MaxiMizE YouR
coaching
EffEctivEnEss
with
accEptancE
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Skills to help your clients:
iMpRovE psYchological
•
flExiBilitY
gEt unstuck
•
achiEvE goals
•
livE a puRposEful,
•
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More than
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exercises
available
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Boost YouR lifE-coaching pRacticE
with
accEptancE
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As a life coach, you help people live purposeful lives that are driven by their deepest values. And although your clients may not have diagnosable mental health disorders, it’s likely that many of them encounter mental roadblocks such as fear, stress, anxiety, and worry that keep them from reaching their goals and developing their full potential.
Thousands of cognitive behavioral psychologists from around the world rely on a method called acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) to help their therapeutic cli-ents get “unstuck” from these barriers and improve their
level of functioning. In Maximize Your Coaching
Effectiveness with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, you’ll learn to help your coaching clients harness these powerful psychological techniques to identify their passions, set values-based professional and personal goals, and realize their full potential. By guiding your clients through ACT-based exercises in mindfulness training and values clarification, you’ll help them accept aspects of their situations that can’t be changed, coexist with fear and other painful emotions, and commit to taking the actions that will lead them to success.
RICHARd BLONNA, E
dd,
is a university professor and author in Hillsborough, NJ, who has integrated acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) principles and practices into his work as a teacher and nationally certified life coach, counselor, and health education specialist.Maximize your coaching
effectiveness by:
•
adapting poWERful
psYchological tEchniQuEs
to fit YouR lifE-coaching
pRacticE
•
lEaRning siMplE ExERcisEs
You can do With cliEnts to
hElp thEM gEt unstuck
•
gEtting tips foR assEssing
cliEnts, assigning
hoMEWoRk, and spaRking
Motivation
•
hElping cliEnts MastER
MindfulnEss to ovERcoME
fEaR, WoRRY, and
nationally certified life coach, counselor, and health education specialist. He has helped thousands of students and clients learn how to manage stress and other mental barriers and meet their life goals. He lives in Hillsborough, NJ.
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model clear and accessible. Not just a highly practical book, but also an interesting and entertaining read.”
— Russ Harris, author of The Happiness Trap and ACT Made Simple
“Blonna has done a superlative job of integrating the ACT principles and practices with coaching. I found the most valuable part was dealing with what Blonna calls the psycho-logically inflexible client. His tips for how to assist clients in getting ‘unstuck’ using values fusing are enlightening and powerful. I also greatly appreciate his mindfulness strategies and how they blend with his concrete and practical tools. His intake forms are essential for all practitioners. This book is a must-read for both coaches and counselors!”
— Lyn Kelley, PhD, LMFT, CPC, president of GROW Training Institute, Inc., continuing education and coach training organization
“This beautifully written and intensely practical book marries two unlikely bedfellows— a therapeutic approach (ACT) with the practice of life coaching. Guided by the author’s gentle, expert hand, it became clear to me that this marriage is like that of two soulmates, who together dance effortlessly, elevating one another to achieve a common purpose: a life that matters. This book delivers on the promise in its title. Full of practical exercises and evidence-based know-how, it is a must-read for life coaches who want to enrich their work and make a difference in the lives of those who are stuck and trying to find a way forward.”
— John P. Forsyth, PhD, professor of psychology and director of the anxiety disorders research program at the University of Albany - SUNY and author of
clear and concise description of ACT with his vast knowledge of coaching. Beyond those interested in coaching, anyone interested in using ACT for themselves or with others would benefit from reading this book.”
—Kevin L. Polk, PhD, author of Psychological Flexibility Training
“ACT seems destined to transform the coaching profession. The scientifically-based princi-ples of ACT are based on the psychology of normal people and fit the structure and purpose of coaching hand in glove. Readable, sensible, and comprehensive, this volume shows you exactly how to apply ACT to your coaching practice. If you work as a coach or are consider-ing doconsider-ing so, there is no better place to begin.”
— Steven C. Hayes, PhD, Foundation Professor at the University of Nevada and author of Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life
RichaRd Blonna, E
d
d
MaxiMizE YouR
coaching
EffEctivEnEss
with
accEptancE
&
coMMitMEnt
thERapY
New Harbinger Publications, Inc.covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering psychological, financial, legal, or other professional services. If expert assistance or counseling is needed, the services of a competent profes-sional should be sought.
Distributed in Canada by Raincoast Books Copyright © 2010 by Richard Blonna New Harbinger Publications, Inc. 5674 Shattuck Avenue
Oakland, CA 94609 www.newharbinger.com
“Strategy 39; Strength of Values” from VALUES CLARIFICATION by Dr. Sidney B. Simon, Dr. Leland W. Howe, and Dr. Howard Kirschenbaum. Copyright © 1995 by Dr. Sidney B. Simon, Dr. Leland W. Howe and Dr. Howard Kirschenbaum. By permission of Grand Central Publishing.
All Rights Reserved
Acquired by Tesilya Hanauer; Cover design by Amy Shoup; Edited by Nelda Street
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Blonna, Richard.
Maximize your coaching effectiveness with acceptance and commitment therapy / Richard Blonna. p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-57224-931-8 (pbk.) -- ISBN 978-1-57224-932-5 (pdf ebook) -- ISBN 978-1-60882-654-4 (epub ebook)
1. Personal coaching. 2. Motivation (Psychology) 3. Acceptance and commitment therapy. I. Title. BF637.P36.B58 2011
158’.3--dc22
Contents
Acknowledgments
viiIntroduction
1Chapter 1
ACT Coaching and Psychotherapy
7◆
Coaching: An Evolving Discipline◆
ACT Principles and Practices for Coaches◆
An ACT Model of Coaching◆
The Psychologically Inflexible Client◆
Making ReferralsChapter 2
What Is ACT?
21◆
The Acceptance Component of ACT◆
The Commitment Component of ACT◆
The Therapeutic Component of ACT◆
ACT Theory 101◆
Ten Common Thinking Traps◆
Defusing from Common Thinking TrapsChapter 3
Getting Stuck and How to Get Unstuck
41◆
Getting Stuck◆
Getting UnstuckChapter 4
Helping Clients Define Their Valued Directions
59◆
What Are Values?◆
Values Are the Mirrors of the Soul◆
Clarifying Values: A Four-Step Process◆
Values Clarification: An ACT-Based Framework◆
An ACT Perspective on Values◆
Fusing with ValuesChapter 5
Helping Clients Commit to Act by Setting Goals
83◆
A Purposeful Life◆
Setting Realistic Goals◆
Inflexibility and GoalsChapter 6
Helping Clients Be Present
101◆
What Is Mindfulness?◆
Basic Assumptions About Attention◆
Misdirected Attention: Not Paying Attention to the Present Moment◆
Multitasking◆
Practicing Everyday Mindfulness◆
Becoming More Mindful◆
Mindfulness MeditationChapter 7
Increasing Acceptance and Willingness by
Giving Up Control
121◆
What Can Be Controlled◆
What Can’t Be Controlled◆
Managing vs. Avoiding, Eliminating, or Controlling◆
Building Acceptance and WillingnessChapter 8
Integrating ACT into Your Coaching Practice
141◆
A Three-Part Model for Working with Clients◆
Becoming an ACT-Based Coach: A Six-Step Process◆
Some Final WordsAppendix A
Client Initial Interview Form
153Appendix B
Sample Informed Consent Form
157◆
Informed ConsentAcknowledgments
I’d like to thank everyone who has contributed to this book and to my evolution as an ACT coach. It’s certainly been a long, strange trip.
First, thanks to Lyn Kelley for introducing me to the field of coaching and for training me as a certified professional coach (CPC). Lyn opened my eyes to a new profession that perfectly fits who I am and what I want to do in the next phase of my life and professional work. She is a master motivator, who helped me chart a new course for my life that included writing this book. Thanks also to Frank Healy for his coaching supervision and encourage-ment during this project.
I am forever grateful to Trudy Boyle for introducing me to acceptance and commitment therapy and to the work of Steven Hayes. Without Trudy’s introduction to acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), I probably would have missed the third wave of cognitive behavioral therapy, instead of catching the tail end and enjoying part of the ride.
Next, I’d like to thank the ACT series editors, Georg H. Eifert, John P. Forsyth, Steven C. Hayes, and Robyn Walser, for the opportunity to write this book. By giving me the opportunity to introduce ACT principles and practices to the field of coaching, they exhib-ited a generosity and openness that is rare in the cloistered worlds of academia and psy-chotherapy. I thank them for opening their hearts and minds to this application of ACT. I hope it leads to even further dissemination of their work. I am humbled to have my name in print next to theirs and hope this book meets the high standards they have set for the ACT series. I’d also like to thank the “wild man” of ACT, Kevin Polk, for his caring and support and for teaching me ACT. I definitely would not be here without him.
Thanks to Linda Anderson Krech and Gregg Krech for their continued generosity and support. Their work at the ToDo Institute in Vermont continues to lead the way in bring-ing Japanese therapeutic principles and practices to helpers across the globe. Because their approach to working with clients complements ACT’s view of helping, I’ve integrated it into this book and into my work with students and clients.
Next, I want to thank Matt McKay, cofounder and publisher of New Harbinger Publications, for his continued support. Under his guidance, the ACT series of books has expanded in breadth and depth to become the definitive clearinghouse for acceptance and commitment therapy. By publishing this project and others, Matt has demonstrated open-ness to new applications of ACT, which keeps New Harbinger at the cutting edge of pub-lishing in psychotherapy and self-help.
New Harbinger has assembled a team of support staff that can only be described as top shelf. I have never worked with a better publishing team than Tesilya Hanauer, Kayla Sussell, Jess Beebe, Heather Garnos, Jean Blomquist, Melissa Valentine, Jesse Burson, Nelda Street, Jeannette Mann, Michele Waters, and Will DeRooy. From acquisition to the final edit, they guided this project and refined it every step of the way. I could never have produced such a fine book without their nurturing and caring. They were always there with encouragement and support as needed. Special thanks go to Amy Shoup and Tracy Carlson for their excellent design work. Amy continues to amaze me; her brilliance in cover design makes people just want to reach out and pick up the book. Tracy’s design of the interior of books is unmatched, making them easy on the eyes and a joy to read.
Thanks to my friend Ken Horvath for his insights and suggestions on the manuscript and on my writing struggles in general. I’d also like to thank him for being there when I needed a sounding board.
Besides for being my best friend and reviewer, thanks also to my wife, Heidi, for her unwavering support over the past two years as I finished this and three other books. She continues to give me the space and support I need to write, teach, and work with students and clients. Hopefully I can make it up to her by being a better bridge player and tennis partner.
Introduction
I am very excited about this book, because it is the only book targeting professional coaches that integrates acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) principles and practices with coaching. I’m sure that after reading it, you’ll see why ACT is such a natural fit for coaches and why I’m just as excited about it today as I was a few years ago, when I first learned about it.
A few years ago, I received an article from a friend of mine about a man named Steven Hayes, a professor at the University of Nevada–Reno. Hayes had undertaken a miraculous journey from the depths of despair and mental illness to founding a new form of psycho-therapy—called acceptance and commitment therapy—that was sweeping the nation and the world. Fascinated with the story of Steven Hayes and the development of ACT, I began to read everything I could on the subject.
As a result of my interest, I joined the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science (ACBS), the parent professional organization representing ACT researchers and practitio-ners around the world. ACBS is the clearinghouse for information and resources related to ACT, and through this association, I connected with Kevin Polk, a noted ACT trainer and psychotherapist working in Maine. Polk’s primary client population is veterans suffering from PTSD, an area I was very interested in. After my initial meeting with Polk, I knew I wanted to work with him to learn as much as I could about ACT. He exuded a passion for ACT, a down-to-earth training approach, and a dry sense of humor that seemed to be a good fit for me. I worked with Polk for over a year and got the training and professional
supervision I needed to apply basic ACT therapeutic principles in my work teaching and coaching clients and students.
An outgrowth of my work with Polk was my first ACT book, Stress Less, Live More: How
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Can Help You Live a Busy yet Balanced Life (Blonna,
2010). ACT so neatly fit the way I helped people manage their stress that I felt driven to write this book and knew I couldn’t rest until I did. As I wrote Stress Less, Live More, I soon realized that much of the material I was putting into words and directing at the general public also applied to coaches and their clients. I could see that the same ACT-based appli-cations I was developing for people suffering from stress could be tailored to coach clients who were stuck in a variety of issues and not making progress toward their personal and professional goals. I decided to put together a proposal for the current book and was lucky enough to get it approved.
As a college professor, writer, nationally certified professional coach (CPC), national cer-tified counselor (NCC), and cercer-tified health education specialist (CHES), my interdisciplin-ary background has afforded me the opportunity to develop a unique approach to working with clients. I’ve developed an eclectic method of coaching that integrates these various disciplines and blends traditional coaching methods with select Eastern and Western psy-chotherapeutic techniques, and hardy health habits, such as daily exercise and meditation.
While I am a nationally certified counselor, I am not a licensed therapist. At age fifty-five, I was in the process of making a career shift to become a licensed counselor when I discovered coaching, shifted gears, and started moving in that direction. While earning continuing-education credits for counseling, I attended a workshop on coaching by Lyn Kelley, a licensed therapist and coach. Halfway through the workshop, I realized I was more drawn to coaching than psychotherapy, because coaching seemed a much better fit for the kind of work I wanted to do and the client population I wanted to work with. I was so impressed with Kelley that I spent the next two years working with her to earn my certified professional coach (CPC) credential from the Grow Training Institute. Kelley is a dynamic coach and teacher who really helped me focus on how to integrate my knowledge, skills, and eclectic background into a unique approach to coaching.
One thing I want to make clear at the start of this book is that I have no intention of teaching you to become an ACT therapist or teaching you how to practice therapy. I am not licensed or able to do either. The word “therapy” may have already sent up a red flag in your mind, but this is not a book about psychotherapy. It’s a book about how to use prin-ciples and practices drawn from acceptance and commitment therapy to help your coach-ing clients get unstuck and meet their goals. There’s a big difference between coachcoach-ing and
providing therapy. As long as you are clear about your intentions and understand the limi-tations of your training and credentials, you can use practices drawn from a wide range of modalities to help your clients. Specifically, without being a therapist, you can use practices derived from ACT as long as you stick to working as a coach with clients who do not need psychotherapy.
Coaching theory and practice revolve around helping to motivate clients to achieve their goals and live purposeful lives driven by their values. Coaching theory assumes that clients are whole, functioning people who are looking to improve their lives. Coaches assume their clients know what’s best for themselves and are able to plan for the future and solve their own problems. If your clients are like mine, they often seek coaching help because they are stuck in a rut and are not making progress toward their goals. Though not dysfunctional, they are often suffering from anxiety, worry, stress, and a host of other problems in addition to being stuck. Every day, they struggle with unhelpful thoughts and painful emotions that contribute to their becoming psychologically inflexible, stuck in a rut, and unable to meet their goals.
ACT theory and practice revolves around helping clients develop greater psychological flexibility, improve their underlying psychopathology, and become unstuck. According to ACT theory, clients become psychologically inflexible due to six key factors:
◆
Attachment to the conceptualized self◆
Cognitive fusion◆
Dominance of outmoded scripts and learning◆
Experiential avoidance◆
Lack of clarity concerning values◆
Inaction, impulsivity, and rigidityDon’t let the ACT talk scare you. In chapters 1 and 3, I spend a lot of time explaining what these factors are and demonstrating how they apply to coaching. Later in the book, I describe how these same factors are the root of stress, worry, anxiety, and other pain and suffering that cause coaching clients to get stuck and stop progressing toward their goals.
ACT uses six core therapeutic processes to help clients develop greater psychological flexibility, get unstuck, and begin functioning again:
◆
Defining valued directions◆
Taking committed action◆
Seeing the self as context◆
Practicing acceptance◆
Using cognitive defusionI go over these therapeutic processes in detail in chapter 3 to show how you can modify them for your work with coaching clients.
While the presenting problems differ for clients seeking coaching compared to clients needing therapy, both share the common problem of being psychologically inflexible and stuck in a rut. The major difference is that coaching clients are still able to function (often at a very high level), despite their psychological inflexibility, while therapy clients are likely having difficulty functioning in at least one area. Just imagine the heights your clients could soar to if you could help them learn how to manage their troubling thoughts and painful emotions. Your clients would be able to not only reach their goals, but reach them in a much more effective and enjoyable manner. In essence, the process of working toward their goals would be as joyous as the outcome of reaching them.
You can modify and use all of the six core therapeutic processes associated with ACT to help your coaching clients get unstuck and meet their goals. I’ll use defining valued direc-tions as an example. One of the things that interested me about ACT from the very begin-ning was that it’s a form of therapy based on values. ACT revolves around helping clients live meaningful lives—in other words, lives that give them meaning because they revolve around their values. ACT begins with helping clients clarify their values. Defining valued directions involves helping clients clarify their values, set meaningful goals based on their values, and commit to working toward those goals while living with the unhelpful thoughts, outdated personal scripts, disturbing mental images, and negative emotions that often serve as barriers to taking action.
Coaches may not call it the same thing, but all forms of coaching involve helping clients define their valued directions. Coaches could benefit from learning the ACT principles and practices related to values clarification, because they are linked to solid research and a strong theoretical framework, the latter of which links defining valued directions to the other core therapeutic processes of ACT and shows how the pieces work together. I am a big fan of strong theoretical frameworks; without a strong framework, just like a building without a
solid foundation, any approach you use with clients will be shaky and in danger of falling apart. Many coaches use an eclectic mix of techniques that are not linked to any research-based theoretical framework, which sometimes makes coaching more art than science and could result in making all of your efforts with some clients come tumbling down. Coaches and their clients would benefit tremendously from an approach that’s grounded in a solid theoretical framework, such as the six core therapeutic processes of ACT.
Another core therapeutic process of ACT that should resonate with coaches is taking committed action. The commitment part of ACT is based on helping clients commit to taking action toward goals that mesh with their values, which is very difficult for them to do when they are held back by painful emotions and troubling thoughts. ACT teaches clients how to be willing to take action while living with these troubling thoughts and painful emo-tions. Learning to be willing is a major part of ACT therapy.
A big part of coaching is helping motivate clients to take committed action. You’ve prob-ably heard a thousand times from clients how difficult it is to take action because of their doubts, fears, worries, and anxiety. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to explain to them why they feel these things and how you can help them manage these troubling thoughts and painful emotions? Wouldn’t it be even nicer to know that your explanations are based on solid, evidence-based research? When you understand the theoretical framework of ACT that links acceptance and commitment to the core therapeutic processes, you can maximize your effectiveness in helping your clients move forward and meet their goals.
Many of the forms and exercises in this book are available at this New Harbinger website: http://9318.nhpubs.com.
When you see this computer mouse next to a form or exercise, you will know that you can find a copy at the website.
You might find that you don’t need all of the forms or exercises, or that you don’t need to cover all of the practices described in this book with all of your clients. That’s up to you. You know your clients and your own interests and limitations better than anyone.
I hope you enjoy reading this book and learning about ACT, whether or not you choose to make ACT a part of your work with your clients.
ACT Coaching and
Psychotherapy
What does it mean to be an ACT coach? What distinguishes an ACT coach from other life coaches and psychotherapists? An ACT coach is someone who understands, practices, and uses ACT principles to help clients move forward and engage in purposeful behavior that’s congruent with their values and helps them meet their goals. Clients often have troubling thoughts and painful emotions that make this process difficult. The more flexible clients are in managing their troubling thoughts and painful emotions, the more likely they are to continue moving forward and making progress at meeting their goals and living a life that’s consistent with their values. The more rigid and controlling clients are in managing these troubling thoughts and painful emotions, the more likely they are to become overwhelmed by them, get stuck, and find it very difficult to make progress toward their goals.
ACT calls this scenario psychological inflexibility and has developed a model that identi-fies six factors that contribute to this inflexibility and to getting stuck. I will only briefly mention the six factors here but will go over them in more detail in the coming chapters:
◆
Attachment to the conceptualized self◆
Cognitive fusion◆
Experiential avoidance◆
Lack of clarity concerning values◆
Inaction, impulsivity, and rigidityAgain, don’t let the psychotherapeutic feel of these words scare you. Later, I’ll go over them in detail and show you how to explain these factors to your clients. For now I’d just like you to accept the fact that these factors originate in the mind, and result when clients confuse what their minds create (thoughts, emotions, images, scripts) with actual things they can experience with their five senses.
To demonstrate what I mean, I’d like you to do the following: Gather the ingredients needed to mix your favorite drink. Choose your favorite glass, add ice, and mix the drink. It can be alcoholic or not. Now hold the glass up to the light and observe the color and consistency of the mixture. Feel the weight of the glass in your hand. Now close your eyes and notice the aroma of the drink. Hear the ice cubes clink on the side of the glass. Take a sip of the drink and roll the liquid around your mouth while swallowing slowly. Put the drink down and close your eyes. Now I want you to just think about the drink. Don’t take a sip; just think about it. What are your thoughts about the drink? Are your thoughts about the drink the same thing as actually drinking it? In chapter 3 I’ll show you how to use this example with your clients as a formal in-session exercise.
Clients often confuse their thoughts about something with the actual experience. Sometimes this leads to their getting stuck. In other words, instead of living their lives, clients get stuck in what’s going on in their minds. In this book I’ll teach you ACT tech-niques for helping clients understand when the activity of their minds is helpful or unhelp-ful in meeting their goals.
You don’t have to be a psychotherapist to use ACT principles and practices to help your clients get unstuck. You can integrate the principles and practices into your coaching work with clients to help them get unstuck and to help them continue moving forward to achieve their goals and live the lives they dream about.
In keeping with the ACT tradition, I strongly suggest that you complete all of the exer-cises in this book, which will help you in two ways: it will help you understand how all of the processes work, and you will be able to convey the impact of the exercises because you will have experienced them firsthand.
Before I talk about what it means to be an ACT coach, let’s take a quick look at the similarities and differences between coaches and therapists and between the clients they work with.
COACHING: AN EVOLVING DISCIPLINE
Life coaching seems to be the next step in the evolution of traditional psychotherapy. Just as counselors and clinical social workers have struggled to define their practices and distinguish what they do from clinical psychology, life coaches have fought to create their niche among helping professionals. Coaching has not made traditional therapy extinct. Traditional psy-chotherapy still serves those clients with diagnosable mental illnesses who are in need of clinical services. Coaching fills a need for clients seeking professional help in living a more purposeful life and achieving their potential. Patrick Williams (2007) identifies four major areas that clearly delineate the differences between coaching and psychotherapy:
◆
Purpose◆
Focus◆
Nature of the client–helper relationship◆
Solicitation of clientsLet’s take a closer look at these four areas. Keep in mind, however, that there’s a lot of variation between the way these areas are reflected in ACT and other forms of psychother-apy. I’ll identify where ACT breaks from other forms of psychotherapy in the four areas.
Purpose
The purpose of coaching is to help clients actualize their full potential and lead pur-poseful and meaningful lives. Coaching is based on the premise that clients have the innate ability to develop a plan to do so, but often need help and guidance in working out the details. Coaching does not assume that clients are broken and need fixing. Coaches work with clients who have not been diagnosed with mental illnesses and who can function at a satisfactory level. By helping clients clarify their values, set goals and objectives, and remove
barriers, coaches help clients get beyond functioning at a merely satisfactory level so they can excel. Rather than viewing clients as broken and in need of fixing, coaches see them as stuck and in need of help in getting unstuck.
The purpose of psychotherapy is to help clients with mental disorders who are not func-tioning at a satisfactory level return to normal funcfunc-tioning. Such disorders meet the criteria specified in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR) (APA, 2000). In essence, the mental disorder interferes with the client’s ability to work, parent, interact with others, function in social settings, and so forth. ACT therapists also work with clients who have diagnosed mental disorders, but these therapists share the view of coaches that clients are stuck, not broken. ACT therapists focus on helping clients accept their troubling thoughts and painful emotions rather than try to fix them.
Focus on the Future
Coaching is future oriented. Clients come to coaches because they have hopes, dreams, and goals they want to meet. They are looking forward to moving to a better place and want help getting there. Though functioning on at least an adequate level, they want more out of their jobs, their relationships, their lives. In many cases, coaching clients are high achievers who are functioning well in many aspects of their lives but sometimes get stuck in a rut and need help getting out of it. Helping them get unstuck usually involves looking into the future and talking about where they want to be and what’s standing in their way.
Coaches rarely spend a lot of time looking at the past to try to figure out where clients went wrong. While coaches help clients draw strength from their past failures and suc-cesses, they do not focus much of their energy on analyzing why clients are stuck or dis-satisfied with their present lives. After a short assessment of this material, coaches start helping clients lay out a path to get to where they want to be. ACT therapists take a similar approach in that they do not spend a lot of time dealing with the past and are not concerned with trying to figure out where things went wrong. They focus on the present and on helping clients take action that’s congruent with their values while accepting troubling thoughts and painful emotions.
Although most other forms of traditional psychotherapy also help clients look to the future, they try to get to the root of problems by looking backward and examining the historical precedents that led to the present dysfunction. Clients come to psychotherapy with problematic symptoms, are diagnosed with disorders, and work with therapists to fix these problems. Therapists usually approach these problems by talking at length to clients
about the history of their symptoms, the extent and duration of their suffering, and any past attempts to fix their problems. Therapists spend a lot of time discussing the past with clients in hopes of giving them insights into the origin of their problems.
Nature of the Client–Helper Relationship
Coaches are facilitators who view clients as equals and as whole people who don’t need fixing. Coaches assume that clients already possess the resources and ability to increase their level of functioning and meet their goals. The coaching process unlocks those resources and unleashes clients’ abilities to use them. This is why there are fewer formal boundar-ies between coaches and their clients than there are between psychotherapists and their clients. Traditional psychotherapy is grounded on the establishment of formal boundaries and professional distance between client and therapist. Most psychotherapists are trained to maintain a level of professionalism that usually is transmitted by conveying a friendly but somewhat detached persona. Clients usually view traditional therapists as experts who will show them how to fix their problems and get better, so it’s harder for them to view their therapists as equals in the treatment process.
Soliciting Clients
Coaches are free to seek clients in whatever fashion works. It’s easier for coaches than for psychotherapists to market their services, because what they have to offer clients does not revolve around problems or mental illnesses. For example, coaches could host a lecture or open house and freely talk about their services and unique approach to working with clients. Anyone attending an open house could be there for a variety of reasons. A person would not have to have a problem or illness to attend, learn more about the subject and the coach, and decide whether working with that coach would be a good fit. Now imagine if a therapist who was trying to attract new clients offered a lecture for the general public on depression. It would be much more difficult for those suffering from depression to sign up, attend, and ask questions without feeling subjected to stigmatization. It would be very dif-ficult for the therapist sponsoring the event to interact with people in the audience without fear of violating their confidentiality or embarrassing them.
While there are other differences between psychotherapy and coaching, the four areas just discussed lay out the basic parameters for the two practices. The area of overlap that serves as the guiding framework for this book is that both coaching and psychotherapy
clients suffer from emotional distress to the extent that it makes them less psychologically flexible, causes them to get stuck, and makes it harder for them to meet their goals and dreams. It isn’t that both sets of clients don’t suffer; everyone suffers. What differs between the two types of clients is the level of functioning. Psychotherapy clients have disorders that disrupt normal functioning to such an extent that they meet the criteria established by the
DSM-IV, while coaching clients do not. There is a fine line between the two, and
establish-ing clinical diagnoses is as much art as science.
In the remainder of this chapter, I’ll examine how coaches can use ACT principles and practices to help their coaching clients get unstuck and move forward.
ACT PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICES
FOR COACHES
Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) is a form of psychotherapy whose principles and
practices are linked to cognitive behavioral therapy and relational frame theory. Though originally designed to help clients who have diagnosable mental illnesses, ACT’s principles and practices have been adapted to help clients who are stressed and suffering from milder forms of anxiety and worry (but do not meet the DSM-IV criteria). In general, ACT prin-ciples and practices can be applied to anyone who is stuck as a result of psychological inflex-ibility and attempts to control, rather than accept, troubling thoughts and painful emotions. I’ve used ACT principles and practices in my own life as well as in my coaching practice.
The starting point for integrating ACT into your coaching work is differentiating between using ACT principles and practices and being an ACT therapist. As already discussed, you don’t have to be an ACT psychotherapist to use ACT principles and practices in your work. As long as you understand your limitations as a coach and differentiate between using ACT principles and practices and performing ACT therapy, you are on solid legal and ethical ground. In the last section of this chapter, I provide guidelines for how to refer clients who need psychotherapy or other services that you cannot morally, ethically, or legally provide.
AN ACT MODEL OF COACHING
As mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, ACT identifies six factors that contribute to psychological inflexibility and getting stuck (attachment to the conceptualized self, cogni-tive fusion, and so on). As mentioned in the introduction, ACT therapy revolves around six
core therapeutic processes used to help clients overcome the factors that contributed to their psychological inflexibility. Thee processes are:
◆
Being present◆
Defining valued directions◆
Taking committed action◆
Seeing the self as context◆
Practicing acceptance◆
Using cognitive defusionBeing present is synonymous with paying attention, increasing focus, and becoming more mindful. Mindfulness training involves helping clients become more aware of what’s going on in their minds and bodies as well as their environments. Coaches can use mindful-ness training to help clients become more aware of their thinking, feeling, and behaving, and note how this either helps or hinders their efforts to meet their goals.
Defining a client’s valued directions revolves around clarifying the person’s values, which is a four-step process:
1. Identify values. 2. Rank values.
3. Make others aware of values. 4. Act on values.
Coaches can use this process of values clarification to help clients set meaningful goals based on their values.
Practicing acceptance revolves around accepting the way the mind works in generating thoughts and feelings, and giving up trying to control troubling thoughts and painful emo-tions. It works hand in hand with taking committed action. When clients take committed action, they are willing to move forward while living with their troubling thoughts and painful emotions, rather than feeling that they must eliminate them before they can act.
Seeing the self as context and using cognitive defusion also work together. When clients take a self-as-context view, rather than be their thoughts and feelings, they become observers
of them. Being the thoughts and feelings is referred to as taking a self-as-content view, the opposite of the self-as-context perspective. I’ll describe this in greater detail in chapter 2. Using cognitive defusion is the process of reversing the self-as-content view. When clients defuse, they break their overattachment to unhelpful thoughts and feelings.
These therapeutic processes help clients 1) develop greater psychological flexibility by becoming more accepting of their pain and suffering and more willing to take action that’s congruent with their values; 2) learn how to live with their troubling thoughts and painful emotions instead of trying to control them; and 3) accept the way their minds work rather than fight it.
Coaches could benefit from learning ACT principles and practices related to these ther-apeutic processes, as well as from understanding the theoretical framework that links defin-ing valued directions to the other core therapeutic processes of ACT. As mentioned before, many coaches use an eclectic mix of techniques that are not linked to any research-based theoretical framework, so they would benefit from grounding some of these techniques in a solid theoretical framework, such as ACT’s six core therapeutic processes.
THE PSYCHOLOGICALLY INFLEXIBLE
CLIENT
Like psychotherapy clients, your coaching clients often get stuck because of their psychologi-cal inflexibility. You’ve probably seen that many of your high-achieving coaching clients are a little high strung, stressed out, one dimensional, unyielding, aggressive, and uncompromis-ing. While these and other traits do not necessarily represent undiagnosed mental disor-ders, they might reflect the psychological inflexibility that holds people back from being all they can be. Let me use a stressed-out client named Lynette as an example.
Lynette’s Story
Lynette is a former student and client. I’ve changed her name and a couple of other characteristics to maintain her confidentiality but retained all of the key aspects of her case to illustrate how I used ACT to help her.
A high achiever, Lynette recently returned to college full-time at age thirty-five to finish her bachelor’s degree in business with a focus on management. She sees this as a stepping-stone to earning her MBA and attaining a high-level management position in a
large corporate travel agency. She earned an associate’s degree in travel agency management fifteen years ago and has already had a successful ten-year career as an agent and owner of her own small travel agency. Besides attending college full-time, Lynette still manages her agency while being a mother, a wife, and a homemaker. Lynette is an intelligent, energetic, highly organized, and hardworking woman.
On paper it looks as if she is successfully juggling her various roles, but in person, she’s a train wreck waiting to happen, because she’s stuck in her troubling thoughts and painful emotions about being a “superwoman.” Lynette has a personal script and mental image of herself as being able to not only manage all of these roles but do them all perfectly. She still clings to the same standards she set for each of these roles individually, even though now she’s involved in all of these roles simultaneously. Her mind’s standards for perfection might have worked for her in the past, when she was involved in only one or two of these roles at a time (for example, being a worker and a single person maintaining an apartment), but expecting to be able to meet the same standards of perfection while engaging in all her roles simultaneously is not only unrealistic but stressful. Lynette is threatened by her inability to be perfect in all her roles and feels unable to cope with being less than perfect.
Lynette is not mentally ill; that is, she does not have a disorder that falls within the parameters of any of the DSM-IV diagnostic criteria. However, she is exhausted, unhappy, anxious, and worried, and she can’t fall asleep without sleeping pills. She feels stuck because she has created a personal script and mental image of a perfect life for herself but sees it as falling apart and doesn’t know how to reorganize her goals and priorities to continue moving forward.
I tell her I won’t spend a lot of time discussing her past but will talk a little about how her past experiences factor into how she views the present and thinks about the future. Specifically, I explain an ACT view of how her mind works when it’s stuck and how it takes unhelpful information from her past and projects it into the future. I also explain that, rather than try to control, avoid, or eliminate these unhelpful thoughts and feelings about the past, present, and future, I will teach her how to accept these things and move forward in her life. I briefly explain how ACT research shows that ruminating over trou-bling thoughts and painful emotions actually makes them worse (see chapter 2 for a clear explanation of this).
The next thing I do is help Lynette examine and clarify her values, which helps her examine her goal of earning her bachelor’s degree in light of what she truly values most in life, which she identifies as education, family, and career-growth opportunities. We rank her values and find that having a perfect house and workplace are the least important things
to her. We also discuss how her goal of earning her degree represents a broad, long-term outcome and how she needs to set short-term, measurable objectives that can help her track her progress toward her goal. She decides that being a college student facilitates setting up quarterly goals, since school revolves around the quarter system. The last things we discuss related to her goals are the criteria she establishes for success, specifically, trying to do everything perfectly. She agrees that she can no longer do everything perfectly, because she simply does not have the time. She even admits that she can accept some things as being less than perfect (the cleanliness of her house, for one). Lynette understands that her mind sends her outdated visual images and personal scripts (collections of thoughts) about her standards for perfection and that she’s stuck trying to adhere to them, when in fact they are no longer helpful to her in meeting her goals.
I explain to Lynette that she must be vigilant in paying attention to what her mind tells her about her goals, objectives, and standards for perfection. I explain that to do this, she needs to become more mindful, and I teach her how to practice mindfulness, both as a formal meditative experience and as part of her everyday practices, like eating, cleaning, and caring for her dog.
Since Lynette is not afraid to commit to doing the work, the commitment part of ACT is simple. The hardest thing for her to understand is the notion of committing to act despite the presence of troubling thoughts and painful emotions. Once she understands how trying to control, avoid, or eliminate such thoughts and emotions actually makes them worse, she accepts that she can move forward while carrying her troublesome thoughts and painful feelings along for the ride.
We spend the rest of the time talking about specific relaxation strategies and lifestyle changes related to managing her stress. She really likes diaphragmatic breathing and visu-alization, and she even goes so far as to write and record her own visualization script that revolves around a relaxing day floating on a raft in a mountain lake. She also starts to take control of her time more efficiently by using a cleaning service to care for her house; she manages to negotiate a good deal with the same service that cleans her office. Rather than try to micromanage her travel agency, she decides to hire an office manager to essentially run the place on the days she’s in school. Little by little, she begins to take control of her time and spend it more on the things she really values than on activities that are a source of stress.
Lynette earns her undergraduate degree and enrolls in an online MBA program that affords her the greatest flexibility while providing a high-quality academic experience. When I last speak with her, she feels better and enjoys her life while steadily progressing toward
her newest goal of earning her MBA. She explains that the work we have done together has helped her move forward and meet her goals while staying true to her values. She feels that she has learned how to accept her unhelpful thoughts about work, cleaning, and being a “superwoman.” She also is willing to live with the guilt she sometimes feels about paying someone to clean her house and about delegating some of her work-related tasks to others, because she realizes she values her time with her family more than cleaning and minor work tasks.
MAKING REFERRALS
Sometimes, as much as you would like to work with a client, you know that the person’s needs and your abilities are not a good fit. When this happens, you are morally, ethically, and legally obligated to refer these clients to someone who can best serve them. In some cases the person needs help in areas where you lack expertise. In other cases you realize the client probably has a mental disorder that requires the help of a licensed therapist. The best way for you to avoid potential legal and ethical violations is to refer clients for additional help when their needs exceed your experience, abilities, and credentials.
A key criterion for helping you decide when to refer clients to a therapist is when you suspect that the barriers they have to achieving their goals are mental disorders falling within the parameters established by the aforementioned DSM-IV (APA, 2000). You don’t need to be a therapist to understand this reference book, nor do you need to master every nuance of it. However, you do need to be familiar enough with it to use it as a guide when you suspect your clients have needs that are beyond your abilities to help them with.
If you have a face-to-face practice, it would be helpful for you to develop a close working relationship with local area therapists. Not only are they good people to whom to refer clients in need of additional help, they will also serve as a good source of clients for you. If you have a virtual, or online, practice, you can help clients use the Internet to identify licensed professional counselors in their area.
EXERCISE: How to Make a Referral
There are four key steps to making a referral: 1. Identify a client in need.
2. Talk to the client about referrals. 3. Make the referral.
4. Follow up.
Identify a client in need.
The following indicators suggest a client needs a referral:1. During the initial intake assessment, you realize:
◆
The client’s needs, barriers, or goals are more suited for some other form of counseling than coaching, or even for psychotherapy.◆
The client is hesitant to discuss her needs with you.◆
The client seems utterly hopeless or helpless.◆
The client talks about ending his life.◆
The client asks for information or help that’s outside or beyond your range of knowledge, expertise, or training.2. After working with the client for one or more sessions, you realize:
◆
Any of the issues discussed in step 1 is relevant.◆
You feel you do not have the ability to help the person.◆
The client describes changes in recent behavior that indicate a risk of suicide (for example, a dramatic drop in school or work performance, poor atten-dance at school or work that’s not due to physical illness, and dramatic changes in physical appearance and hygiene).Talk to the client about referrals.
Following are tips for talking to a client about referrals: 1. Explain to the client that you are very concerned about her welfare: “I want youto know that after hearing your story, I am very concerned about your mental and physical well-being.”
2. Describe what you have observed about changes in your client’s behavior, lan-guage, and grooming:
◆
“Your performance and attendance at school or work have really taken a turn for the worse lately.”◆
“You seem to feel very helpless and view your situation as hopeless.”◆
“You mentioned you’ve considered suicide, and I am obligated by law and my professional code of ethics to refer you to someone who can help you with this problem.”3. Describe your inability to help your client and why it’s unethical for you to con-tinue working with him: “Based on what you’ve told me, I feel I can’t really give you the help you need. Because your needs are beyond the scope of what I can offer you as a coach, I am bound by my professional code of ethics to refer you to someone who can give you the kind of help you need. I hope you understand.” 4. Describe how this referral is a normal part of coaching:
◆
“It’s normal for coaches to refer their clients for additional help when they experience what you have been experiencing. Many of my clients in your situation have found it very helpful to speak with a psychotherapist.”◆
“Now that you’ve tried talking to me and it hasn’t helped, it might be time to speak with someone else who might be able to help you.”Make the referral.
Here are the steps involved in making a referral:1. Explain to your client that you are not allowed to make the actual appointment for her but can walk her through it from your office.
2. Offer to help your client make the phone call while he is with you.
3. If the referral is to a therapist in your office building or complex, offer to walk your client over and wait while the appointment is made.
4. If your client wishes to receive the referral at another time, coach her through it by using role-playing and give the client as much contact information as pos-sible (for example, the correct telephone number, contact person, hours, and fee structure).
Follow up.
Here are the steps to following up with your client:1. Explain to your client that you are not allowed to call the person you referred him to without his consent.
2. Explain to your client that you expect her to follow through and make the refer-ral appointment because it’s in her best interest to do so.
3. Ask your client to call you after making the referral appointment.
4. Tell your client that if he does not call you to confirm that he made the appoint-ment, you will call him to see how he’s doing.
If you follow these guidelines, you should be on solid moral, ethical, and legal ground regarding how you handle referrals and care for your clients’ welfare.
In the next chapter I’ll introduce ACT and discuss how it works so you can begin to understand how to integrate its theories and practices into your coaching practice.
What Is ACT?
Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) is a form of psychotherapy based on behavioral theory and, more specifically, relational frame theory (RFT) (Hayes, Barnes-Holmes, & Roche, 2001). The two main processes of ACT include mindfulness and behavioral change. Each has both theoretical and applied dimensions that can be very useful for you in helping your clients stay true to their values as they take steps to meet their goals. ACT is based on helping clients live lives that are consistent with their values and chosen goals.
THE ACCEPTANCE COMPONENT OF ACT
Acceptance has four aspects:
◆
Mindfulness◆
Accepting that thoughts and emotions can be helpful or unhelpful in taking action congruent with values◆
Accepting what can’t be controlled (thoughts, emotions, personal scripts, and mental images)◆
Accepting what can be controlled (behavior and physical environment) Let’s take a quick look at each of these aspects.A thread that runs through every aspect of ACT, mindfulness means paying attention to each moment, and being more aware of the internal (thoughts, feelings, body sensations) and external (immediate physical environment) events that are going on. Becoming more mindful is an important skill that can benefit your clients in many aspects of their personal and professional lives. Devoted to mindfulness, chapter 6 is chock full of helpful exercises for clients.
To understand how thoughts and emotions can be helpful or unhelpful in taking action that’s congruent with their values, clients first need to clarify their values. This is such an important aspect of ACT that I’ve devoted chapter 4 to the subject. Therein, I spend a lot of time talking about values and how to teach your coaching clients how to identify and clarify their values. I also describe a few values-clarification exercises you can use with your coach-ing clients to help them start thinkcoach-ing about their values and how they relate to their goals. Accepting what can’t be controlled is a key element of ACT. One of the things that attracted me to ACT in the first place was the research on which the therapy is built. Rather than being based on speculation or mysticism, ACT is based on solid empirical research that studies the relationship among language, emotions, and behavior—research showing that focusing attention and self-talk on trying to control, avoid, or eliminate painful thoughts and feelings can actually increase suffering (Hayes, Strosahl, & Wilson, 1999; Eifert & Heffner, 2003). This is contrary to the prevailing underlying beliefs of most forms of Western psychotherapy. As a coach, however, you will probably find it a perfectly reason-able research outcome, because you do not have the historical bias of training as a therapist. As a coach you don’t dwell on your clients’ painful thoughts and emotions; you help clients take them as a given and move forward.
ACT recognizes that pain and suffering are part of life and can be valuable teachers. Unfortunately, many people have the elimination of all pain and suffering as their primary focus in life, moving from one fad to the next in their quest for a pain-free life. Russ Harris (2007), a physician and leading ACT writer, trainer, and therapist, calls this the “happi-ness trap,” the misguided belief that one can control, avoid, or eliminate all pain and suf-fering. Over the years, I’ve found that many of my clients and students actually cite this as their goal in life. While this goal sounds good initially, it is counterproductive and actually increases suffering, because it’s an impossible goal to achieve.
But clients can control their behavior and certain aspects of their physical environments (the jobs they choose, where they live, and so on). While clients can’t control the thoughts, feelings, personal scripts, and mental images that occur almost nonstop in their minds, they can control how they act in relation to them. For example, just because your client
feels angry doesn’t mean he has to punch the next person who looks at him the wrong way. Just because your client feels sexy doesn’t mean she will seduce the person who shares her cubicle at work.
I’ll go into more detail regarding some of these components of acceptance later in this chapter, when I discuss ACT theory in a little more detail. Bear with me in this chapter, because although a little technical, it lays the foundation for the rest of the book, which is chock full of exercises you can use with your clients that apply the principles discussed here.
THE COMMITMENT COMPONENT OF ACT
Commitment is a major part of coaching. Getting clients to commit to taking action that’s consistent with their goals is a foundation of coaching. Also a big part of ACT, commitment revolves around helping people persist with actions that are consistent with their values and goals. When you commit to something, you pledge to yourself to follow through with your plans. I’ve devoted all of chapter 5 to the topic of commitment. It will teach you what you need to know about helping clients stick to their goals and plans while living with their pain and suffering. Commitment training shows clients they don’t have to control, avoid, or eliminate their painful thoughts and feelings to move forward and get on with their lives. Clients often perceive pain and suffering as barriers to their efforts to move forward. ACT teaches them to avoid confusing pain and suffering with real barriers they need to attend to. As long as clients realize it’s normal to have painful thoughts and feelings and to suffer, they’ll feel able to cope with these issues and continue working on their goals. ACT teaches them that the best way to decrease pain and suffering is to accept it rather than try to avoid, control, or eliminate it.
THE THERAPEUTIC COMPONENT OF ACT
The therapeutic part of ACT is based on helping clients develop greater psychological flex-ibility. ACT theory proposes that for a variety of reasons (which I’ll go into later), people lose their psychological flexibility and get stuck. When clients get stuck, they can’t move forward, grow as individuals, and realize their goals and dreams. ACT therapy consists of using different techniques to help clients get unstuck and become more psychologically flex-ible. As a form of cognitive behavioral therapy, ACT is grounded in the belief that thoughts and self-talk play a major role in psychological flexibility or inflexibility.
A very pragmatic form of psychotherapy, ACT looks at the usefulness of thoughts, emo-tions, and behavior in specific situations or contexts, in relation to taking values-congruent action and meeting goals. To help determine what’s useful and what isn’t, ACT proposes that you have clients answer the following question: Are these thoughts and feelings helping me
act in ways that are consistent with my values and goals? If the answer is yes, the thoughts and
feelings are helpful. If the answer is no, they are not helpful with taking values-congruent action. Both helpful and unhelpful thoughts and feelings are accepted equally. Clients can learn how to take action despite the presence of unhelpful thoughts and feelings.
For example, imagine that one of your clients is a writer who is having negative thoughts and painful feelings in response to her editor’s comments on the first draft of her manu-script. She tells herself, I’ll never be able to finish this book. I’m a terrible writer. I really don’t
understand some of the concepts I’m writing about. She also feels anxious (churning stomach,
muscle tension, nervous energy, shallow breathing) when she sits down to write. You explain to her that these thoughts and feelings are normal for all writers and that they do not have to stop her from sitting down and writing. To demonstrate this, you ask her to bring to your next session a copy of one of the chapters she’s working on, for instance on a flash drive. You have her load the chapter on your computer and ask her to sit at your desk and get ready to write. As she sits, you ask her what her mind is telling her about her writing and what sensations she is feeling in her body. You explain to her that it’s okay to think and feel these things, then ask her to address one of the changes her editor has suggested. You watch her struggle, and eventually she writes something down. When she is done, you ask her to stop and note that despite her pain and suffering, she was able to sit down and write. Though it wasn’t easy, she was able to do it, and it represents taking action that’s congruent with what she values (writing). You explain to her that in time, the pain and suffering she experiences when she rewrites her manuscript can lessen if she accepts it and writes, rather than try to avoid feeling it.
ACT THEORY 101
ACT theory revolves around four key concepts:
◆
The brain is a 24/7 thinking machine.◆
Current thinking and feeling are filtered through past frames of reference.◆
Thinking can’t be controlled, but behavior in response to it can be.It’s essential to understand these concepts in order to grasp the notion of psychological inflexibility and getting stuck.
The Mind as a 24/7 Thinking Machine
ACT research has found that the mind is a 24/7 thinking machine, working nonstop at churning out thoughts and feelings. Like a computer that runs continually, the mind con-stantly processes information and is capable of running multiple programs at the same time. Instead of word processing, spreadsheets, or other computer programs, the mind’s programs are thoughts, emotions, mental images, and personal scripts. Like the operating system and other programs on a computer’s hard drive, the mind’s programs run in the background without our even realizing they’re on. For example, as you read this page, your mind is also listening to sounds in your environment, processing sensory input (changes in lighting, temperature, smell, and so forth), and even daydreaming without your even being aware of it. Your mind never stops; you couldn’t turn it off even if you wanted to.
Like viruses that invade a computer and cause it to freeze, illogical thinking and negative self-talk can invade the mind’s programs, slow down its processing, and cause it to freeze up (like a computer processor), get stuck, and function improperly. You’ve probably noticed, for example, that when you’re really stressed out, you just can’t seem to think clearly, you feel jittery and tongue-tied, and sometimes your mind just shuts down. The same thing happens to your clients when their minds get stuck in unhelpful thoughts, personal scripts, mental images, and emotions.
While you’re no doubt familiar with thoughts, emotions, and mental images, let me take a moment to define what personal scripts are. Personal scripts are like scenes in a movie, which in this case is your client’s life, and each script is the dialogue related to a scene and how it’s supposed to play out within the context of the entire movie. Just as you have per-sonal scripts about everything from your career as a coach to where you will go on vacation next month, so do your clients. They have scripts related to the goals they have set and their perceived ability or inability to achieve them.
Personal scripts, like thoughts, emotions, and mental images, are based in part on the past (what ACT calls past relational frames). As a coach, your job is not to go back and delve into your client’s past and spend lots of time talking about this. Rather, your job is to focus on the future and help your clients achieve their goals. Fortunately, you do not need to delve into the past to use ACT practices to help your clients get unstuck. In the next chapter I
