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Systemic Solutions for Mental Illness

Presented to: Gdansk Psychology Conference (Poland)

© Martyn Carruthers, 2001

Soulwork Systemic Coaching

I wish to thank the professors and students of Gdansk University for inviting me to your beautiful city. I hope that you will find this talk interesting, and that you attend the demonstrations of systemic coaching that I will present this evening.

Success in any field can be inhibited by behaviors and symptoms generically called mental illness. These symptoms can affect people of all ages, races, cultures and class. They range from acute, short-term distress to chronic, long-term impairment.

Acute, short-term symptoms are often associated with identifiable stressors. The most common symptoms result from physical stress, such as dehydration, infection or exposure to poisons, toxins or stimulants. Acute emotional stress may also result from overwork or a relationship change.

The symptoms of chronic stress may appear to be independent of identifiable stressors. Although attributed to genetic factors or biochemical imbalances, many symptoms of chronic mental illness appear to be associated with a person’s relationships and lifestyle.

Most people can solve their problems, even severe problems, without professional assistance. The steps by which most people naturally and spontaneously solve their own problems are the basis of Soulwork Systemic Coaching.

Soulwork offers an existential approach to life and death, freedom and bondage, responsibility and consequences. Soulwork searches for sense of life and deals with senselessness by exploring self-awareness as part of the totality of human existence.

Relationship Coaching offers systemic diagnosis for relationship behavior, and effective solutions for resolving many symptoms diagnosed as mental illnesses. Systemic diagnosis evaluates a person’s history, behavior and subjective experience – for example, time orientation, emotional structure and relationship matrix.

[ Stress Disorders ] [ Divorce and Children ] [ Parent Alienation ]

Systemic Coaching

Relationship Coaching, whether systemic or therapeutic, follows a similar sequence.
  • Evaluate and resolve any current crisis
  • Evaluate and resolve entanglements
  • Evaluate and resolve guilt issues, both direct and transferred
  • Dissolve conflicts and objections to success
  • Evaluate and change life patterns that prevent success
  • Stabilize an experience of integrity as a basis for life decisions
  • Evaluate and change relationship bonds as required
  • Evaluate and change emotional trauma as required
  • Evaluate and change mentors and role models as required

[ Soulwork Individual Coaching Flowchart ]

People who are unable to care for themselves may require institutional treatment. These people can be referred to appropriate health professionals for evaluation, psychometric testing and treatment.

About Mental Illness

Biological perspectives of mental disease describe mental illness as body processes, whereas psychological perspectives emphasize a person’s history and environment. Some people appear to inherit a vulnerability to mental illness.

We acknowledge that both psychobiology and environment play important roles. We perceive people as products of their genes, of their families and of their cultures. Our personal histories shape the manifestation of our genetic and biological factors.

A general coaching question is, "How do you want to make sense of your life?"

[ Schizophrenia ] [ Depression ] [ Anxiety ] [ Bipolar Disorder ]

Diagnosis of Mental Illness

Behaviors that violate societal rules are often perceived as signs of mental illness. However, behavior considered deviant or sick in one culture may be perceived as normal in another. Some states of consciousness that would be diagnosed as mental illness or psychosis in the West may be valued as essential human experiences in Eastern cultures.

At the end of a busy day - have you ever sat and gazed at a wall mindlessly? I have, and probably you have too. It's a normal reaction to stress. In addition, most people acknowledge periods when their ability to cope was limited by an emotional stress reaction to overwork or a crisis. Severe life crises are associated with mental health symptoms in otherwise healthy people.

What is the difference between normal and abnormal? The usual answer is that a normal person copes with abnormal conditions in a timely manner, whereas an abnormal person does not. A Soulwork perspective is that “normality” exists on a hierarchy of actualization. What is normal in one context is abnormal in another.

Many health professionals refer to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM IV) or the International Classification of Diseases (ICD). Both the DSM and ICD define mental illnesses by unique symptoms and characteristics. However, the described symptoms often overlap, differ from person to person, and people may simultaneously display more than one set of symptoms.

In Relationship Coaching, we ask what people want; we help people define their goals (goalwork) and which, if any, relationships may impede progress. We help people identify relevant life challenges in an appropriate sequence for resolution.

Soulwork coaches people to define healthy goals and to define the relationship conditions that allow those goals to be accomplished. Some mental and physical health problems seem to evaporate along the way, without specific intervention.

[ Developmental Disorders ] [ Personality Disorders ] [ Adjustment Disorders ]

Diagnosis & Subjective Experience

  • Personal history – mapping a “timeline” of personal and relationship events
  • Past representations – mapping the spatial matrix of important memories
  • Relationship maps – mapping the spatial matrix of significant relationships
  • Goalwork – mapping the spatial matrix of personal goals, expectations and beliefs
  • Dreamwork – mapping the metaphoric matrix of past, present and future

A person's nonverbal signals enrich their verbalized content, and may support or deny it. Soulwork includes noticing and consciously responding to unconsciously expressed communications.

We examine clients' relationships, history, goals and congruence, the benefits and consequences of continuing the client’s behaviors and of achieving the client’s goals, compared to three hierarchies:

  • Abstractions (incorporating the work of Dr Gregory Bateson)
  • Relationships (incorporating the work of Annegret Hallanzy)
  • Actualization (incorporating the work of Dr Clare Graves)

Often, a goal includes alleviating or controlling symptoms of physical, emotional or mental illness. Soulwork coaching offers long-term alleviation for people with the following symptoms of mental illness. Achieving the desired success marks the end of coaching!

People Diagnosed with Personality Disorders

  • People who demonstrate overwhelming narcissism
  • People who demonstrate poor impulse control, with troubled relationships
  • People who demonstrate inappropriate emotional responses

[ Personality Disorders ] [ Borderline Personality Disorder ]

People Diagnosed with Anxiety Disorders

  • People who report generalized fear, with rapid pulse and difficulty breathing
  • People who report fearfully reliving traumatic events
  • People who control fear through obsessive thoughts or compulsions

[ Anxiety Disorders ] [ Trauma & PTSD ]

People Diagnosed with Mood Disorders

  • People who report chronic sadness, hopelessness and worthlessness
  • People who report chronic mood swings, exaggerated self-importance and agitation
  • People who report chronic swings between manic and depressed behavior

[ Bipolar Disorder ]

People Diagnosed with Dissociative Disorders

  • People who show amnesia
  • People with distinct personalities that alternate in controlling behavior
  • People who report being detached from their bodies or minds

[ Schizophrenia and Identity Loss ]

People Diagnosed with Psychosomatic Disorders

  • People who report inexplicable physical symptoms
  • People who report blindness, deafness or seizures without a somatic cause
  • People who fear a disease and interpret any symptom as evidence of it

[ Psychosomatic Disorders ]

People Diagnosed with Substance-Related Disorders

  • People who report symptoms attributed to the effects of drug abuse, the side effects of medications, or exposure to toxic materials

[ Addictions ]

People Diagnosed with Eating Disorders

  • People who report fear of weight gain and avoid eating
  • People who report binge eating and self-induced vomiting
  • People who use drugs to prevent weight gain

[ Eating Disorders ]

Soulwork Systemic Coaching

Systemic Coaching can be used alone, or with other modalities. Clients can be encouraged to consult a physician or clinician regularly, and to benefit from a healthy diet, regular exercise, pure water, time with friends and walks in nature.

  • Coaching in health includes: nutrition, exercise, medication and emotional management. Although helping professionals have long recognized the importance of diet, exercise and drugs; behavioral, relationship and psychological factors are often ignored.
  • Coaching produces and supports healthy behavioral changes, such as diet, increasing physical activity, and increasing knowledge and skills.
  • Coaching provides many possibilities for improving relationships and emotional stability.
  • Coaching helps people live full lives. It promotes emotional well being and life activities (e.g., educational and vocational goals, recreational activities).
  • Coaching supports disease management and professional health care. It helps a patient and family cope with emotional distress and treat severe emotional problems.

In this talk, I outlined some of the potential of Soulwork systemic coaching, both as a form of individual coaching and as a complement to psychotherapy. Soulwork also includes complete formats for couple coaching, team coaching, family coaching and organizational coaching.

Relationship Coaching ... Systemic Coach Training

Do you want relationship coaching or systemic coach training? Do you want to coach people to resolve emotional and relationship challenges?

© Martyn Carruthers, 2001. All rights reserved.


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  • All material on this website is copyright © 2001-2006 by Martyn Carruthers. All rights reserved. Commercial use is prohibited. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium is permitted with the express written permission of Martyn Carruthers. This material may be freely linked to by other electronic text. For more information, contact Jan Sikorski at +48 (22) 733 0357