How Can a Grief Coach Help?
As your coach, I help you to reconnect with your strengths, your coping strategies and the relationships, activities and inner resources that give your life meaning. I make no assumptions about what you feel, think or want. Rather, I come to our sessions with an open mind and an ear deeply tuned to the one person who knows best how to get your life moving again: you. Together, we explore your feelings, your strengths, your untapped capabilities, and the thoughts that may be slowing your healing. In tandem, we help you identify — then take — the steps that will restore momentum to your life.
Won’t This Impede My Grieving Process?
Bereavement researchers no longer believe there is a “five-stage grief cycle.” Instead, modern research shows that most mourners are resilient, oscillating between feelings of sorrow and pleasure even from the earliest weeks of loss. It is natural, in other words, to experience happiness and sadness at the same time; to look forward with hope even as you look backward to reflect and grieve. Coaching reinforces this resilience by helping you to forge a positive vision for the future.
How Does Coaching Differ From Therapy?
Classic therapy is an archaelogical dig that looks backward to help you understand how you got to this moment. Coaching is an architectural blueprint that looks to the future to help you create something new. Taken from the word “stagecoach,” coaching is designed to take you from one point to the next. You pick the destination, then in partnership with your coach you move from where you are now to where you want to be.