Guiding purpose
The overall guiding purpose of this book is to present to the reader a doable, flexible, adaptive, and integrated coaching psychology approach that has the potential to assist our understanding of how coaching psychology might be of service to the unique lived experience of individuals with a diagnosis of mental illness in our society, in particular Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). GLOW 11 (goals for living, options for wellness) refers to a recent coaching psychology interaction in an Irish context with individuals with a diagnosis of BPD (who had previously participated in a Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) programme facilitated by a Clinical Psychology team in an Adult Mental Health service, and who had been behaviourally stable for the previous 12 months). It will no doubt be evident as the reader travels through this book that the actual coaching interactions with participants in GLOW11 as coachees did not overly if at all, focus on strategies for goal-formulation and became much more concerned with supporting individuals towards clarity about what a life worth living meant to each.
We (the authors) also want to draw attention to and explore concepts of mental health, in particular mental illness, not only in the traditional clinical context of the psychiatric service system, but in the broader and more primary context of societal and corporate assumptions expectations, pressures, and demands regarding the âgood life.â
We also want to invite, if not challenge, the world of coaching psychology to reflect on our ethical and professional responsibilities in the context of a world where certainty and knowing is fast becoming past tense. Einzig (2017) writes that coaches would do well to follow our own advice to pause, step back, take stock and reflect on the role of coaching at this time, where we face into âa perfect storm of crises â ecological, economic, social, and psycho-spiritual â is affecting us all on a global levelâ and that âcoaches need to develop the depth, mindset and skills founded in strong values that will help reset the moral compassâ (p. 6).
In our challenge, we include traditional normative thinking and psychiatric âcertaintiesâ about BPD and other forms of diagnosed mental illness. The stigmas about mental ill-health remain firmly ensconced within many aspects of contemporary culture. Einzig (2017) writes that âwith an emphasis on performance, positivity and strengths, coaches may deliberately or inadvertently deter their clients from appearing down.â Talking about states of depressed mood, loss of interest or pleasure in life, and generalised anxiety is not welcomed in the workplace, so we dissemble â âfineâ is the expected response to âhow are you?â (pp. 121/1220). In the GLOW 11 coaching psychology intervention, when participants were asked at the beginning of a session âhow are you?â happily but not without challenge to the coaching psychologist, the response was always honest, courageous and real! Consequently, when Einzig (2017) states that âwe live now in a world that favours the light over the dark, upbeat optimism over scepticism, extroverts over introverts and action over reflectionâ with little patience âwith sadness, doubt, failure, ambivalence or despairâ (p. 122), we can invite you, the reader, to suspend your assumptions and beliefs if you have an interest in bringing coaching psychology to the lived subjective experience of persons with BPD.
Beginnings
The genesis of this book emerged in the course of reflective conversations over time between the authors. These conversations, several of them recorded, occurred in the context of developing ideas that eventually translated into GLOW11 and later into this book.
As each author began to experience a sense of trust, psychological safety, and emotional containment with the other, our conversations âstrayedâ into a mutual sharing about our own struggles with mental health at various points in life. Implicit in this was sharing and reflecting on the narratives, assumptions, expectations, and beliefs about self that each of us carried forward from childhood families and communities of origin in Ireland. This sharing helped to open up a reflective interpersonal space where we helped one another to linger and go deeper into subjective lived experience, memories, impact and âmuddling throughâ the fog and sometimes darkness arising from mental health challenges along the way. Stelter (2019) writes âTo be able to linger in dialogue, one has to move away from a narrow goal focus by exploring meaning and values and thus seek a deeper understanding of oneself and oneâs worldâ (p. 44). As we lingered in our dialogue about our own lived experiences, we also discovered an energising curiosity about the importance of understanding the lived experience of the individuals with BPD participating in GLOW11. The idea of writing this book thus emerged as something like the right thing to do. The reader can decide for her- or himself whether writing the book was indeed the right thing to do, at this time!
In the context of this book and our coaching psychology work with individuals with BPD, the authors identify with a definition of coaching psychology as being by its nature ârelational and dialogic, where two or more people discover new meaning and co-create new thinking and ways of being and doing in the world between themâ (Hawkins & Turner, 2020, p. 1). This definition in being neither limiting nor prescriptive, helps to open a space for considering and reflecting on some of the ways in which the subjective experience of mental illness and our current society are in our view interdependent. In the context of the lived experience of individuals with a diagnosis of BPD, the authors have a particular interest in and concerns about the impacts of the fast-evolving nature of change in current society, the anxiety-provoking threats implicit in climate change and the insidious nature of structural economic and social inequality which pushes increasing numbers of individuals towards marginalisation and alienation. People experiencing mental distress and BPD are likely to be especially vulnerable in this context. In building coaching relationships with individuals with BPD, we frequently had direct experience of and felt challenged by their âdanceâ between hope and despair (Wright, 2016) and admiration for their courage and resilience.
The book describes and explores some of the current constructive and energising tensions in thinking, research and approach with regard to our understanding of the lived experience of mental illness and BPD, in particular the paradigm shift from the concept of clinical recovery towards a personal or psychological recovery.
Every new development in the application of coaching psychology asks important questions about the current assumptions underpinning practice. GLOW11 is a new development in the field of coaching/coaching psychology and therefore challenges coaching practitioners, academics, and trainers to develop a critical reflective stance to question the norms and assumptions of coaching (Western, 2012). We believe that this is particularly important as regards assumptions about coaching and people experiencing significant mental distress.
A coaching psychology approach to mental illness and BPD
Cavicchia and Gilbert (2019) write that while existing definitions of coaching tend to be quite general and conceptual, this offers opportunities for coaches âto develop a unique approach to coaching based on their own personalities, training, histories and life experience, all interacting with these corresponding aspects and unique requirements in their different clients and their contextsâ (p. 6). Having participated in the planning and implementation of GLOW11 and engaged in ongoing critical reflection and learning subsequently, this book is an attempt to describe a unique experience of bringing coaching psychology to people with a diagnosis of BPD. In the book, we offer reflection and learning from GLOW11 in the hope of contributing to constructive conversation about the possibilities and challenges of coaching psychology interacting with the lived experience of people with BPD in particular. Here we are also cognisant of the impact of words and language that can be distinctive of different disciplines and professions. Rhodes (2020), writing about the language that tends to be the norm in clinical psychology, states âthese forms of language seek to differentiate the clinician from the client, amplifying polarities. The clinician is objective, the client is the object. The clinician is mentally healthy, the client mentally ill. We both become objectsâ (p. 2). When considering mental illness/mental distress, coaching psychology is not immune to what might be called the pitfalls of normative thinking and uses of normative language, namely an âusâ and âthemâ silo approach of ânon-clinicalâ and âclinicalâ groupings. As coaching psychology diversifies, drawing from rich multiple sources to create new genres, our conviction arising from GLOW11 is that it is timely to critically reflect on our assumptions and beliefs about mental illness/mental distress. Einzig (2017) asks âbut suppose we allowed ourselves to entertain a different view of depression, sadness and anxiety from the polarised and pathologized view held by the Western medical model?â (p. 123). Coaching psychology, if it is to be and remain culturally and socially relevant needs to offer something more to people suffering from significant mental distress, such as BPD, than taking refuge in the ever-increasing classifications of DSM that is resulting in an ever-increasing pathologizing of human experience in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world (VUCA).
While in this book we lean away from adherence to universal or all-embracing definitions of coaching psychology, there are particular âdefinitionsâ that resonate with us in the context of our experience of GLOW11 and which we view as helpful to discussion. For example, Hawkins and Turner (2020) in the context of systemic coaching describe coaching as a collaborative and dialogical inquiry between two people, âexploring how the coachee can learn and develop in relation to the worlds they are embedded within, in a way that creates positive benefit for them and all the nested systems of which they are partâ (p. 28). Einzig (2017) refers to coaches taking a view of people, elements, and actions âas not only interconnected but interdependent and are willing to engage with the extreme complexity of our ageâ (p. 46). Western (2012) refers to four critical frames to analyse coaching â emancipation (ethics, liberation, autonomy, and justice: coaching to help create the âgood societyâ; depth analysis (revealing hidden dynamics in individuals, organisations and the social field); looking awry (bringing desire and disruption to observation and understanding); and network analysis (network coaching, connectivity, interdependence, emergence) (pp. 34/35). Stelter (2019) refers to an increasing realisation in his work how important it is for the coach âto be a fellow human being and a co-creative partner in the dialogueâ and that âcoaching should not be limited to a performance-oriented and goal-driven agendaâ (p. 3). In particular, Cavicchia and Gilbertâs (2019) reference to an integrative-relational orientation speaks in important ways to the necessity of taking a moment-by-moment perspective in the GLOW11 one-to-one coaching sessions. They highlight also that coaching boundaries are expanding to allow for greater appreciation of the importance of meaning making, wellbeing, complexity, and systemic perspectives. At the same time, just as every new or novel perspective appears in coaching psychology and enters the discourse to become normative, there is the need to continue to playfully experiment. Marsha Linehan (2020) the developer of Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) as a behavioural skills programme for people with BPD refers to a Zen phrase â beginnerâs mind â meaning âthat every single moment is the very first experience you have had of that moment. Every new moment is a beginning ⊠Beginnerâs mind is the recognition of thisâ (pp. 275/276). Linehan (2020) adds that initially in her deliberations on BPD she analysed everything, seeking the meaning of everything, rather than a radical acceptance that âeverything just isâ (p. 276). Certainly, for us GLOW11 required an attitude and approach of beginnerâs mind! There were no coaching models to guide us on the way. In this book we do not present a coaching model. We present a jigsaw of reflections, insights, discoveries about the self in coaching psychology, and appreciation and gratitude for the people we were privileged to meet, from whom we learned the necessary coexistence of suffering and hope. We are also struck that the vast majority of attempts to define coaching/coaching psychology, including those referenced above, are specific to organisational, executive and leadership contexts. To date, there appears to be very little discussion of coaching psychology in non-organisational contexts. GLOW11 operated in a transitional space of individuals with BPD seeking to emerge from mental health services and build connections with community life.
Given the very particular life experiences of each participant in GLOW11, with a preponderance of emotional pain and trauma experiences implicit in their respective ârecoveryâ journeys, the importance of creating and sustaining a âholding environmentâ in coaching sessions was of critical importance. Lee (2018), citing Winnicott, 1965), refers to the âholding environmentâ as a physical and in particular a psychological space âin which coachees feel safe enough to be open with their thoughts and feelings; to be able to share their anxieties, frustrations, aspirations and deepest hopesâ (p. 4/5). The importance of coaching psychologists having both the inclination and capacity to provide a âholding environmentâ in coaching sessions is perhaps self-evident generally, however its importance in the work of GLOW11 was critical. Western (2012) draws upon psychoanalytic theory and practice in applying the concepts of âpaternalâ and âmaternalâ ...