The Client‘s Past
Occupying oneself with the client’s biographical past is often a sign that the counselling should be described as therapy, whilst coaching and other formats actually occupy themselves with the present situation of the client. Unfortunately, this is not very helpful for coaching. Why?
Independent from the issues which the client brings into counselling, one must discover how they ensure their inability to react to the present situation satisfactorily, i.e. they are not able to feel comfortable in it. If, in the present, they are able to appropriately and freely decide all eight guiding processes, they will find a suitable answer through their action or their experience. If this is not the case, then internal schemata are activated which have formed in the past, and are influencing, interfering with or distorting the present day. Therefore, the past is important when it determines the present (and thus is not in the past!). If the activated schemata are not conscious of the interaction with the present situation, then the experience is not ascribed to themselves, but rather, to the (external) reality: not “I will tell myself that it is risky for me to engage just for myself, because I believe that the world is the way I once experienced it in the past!”, but “I find my boss holds a grudge, and therefore I would rather hold my tongue!” This form of ascribing the responsibility to the environment and not to oneself, is dysfunctional with regard to the requirements of the situation. In order to decide to perceive the responsibility differently, it requires an engagement with an old, but effective inner pattern, in psychotherapy, just as in coaching or in supervision.