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It's easier for health professionals and most
patients to use drugs as a substitute for change.
Self-medication with alcohol or nicotine, or prescription
anti-depressants and stimulants, is easier than applying intelligence,
focus and analytical skills to complex relationship situations. Drugs
are also cheaper for the patient (in the short term) and more profitable
for the health professionals.
The long-term consequences and side-effects of
psychoactive drugs are unacceptable to an increasing number of professionals and
some patients.
What is Systemic Coaching?
Systemic coaching provides critical skills for assessing
and changing behavior - and the behavior of people in families
and in other important relationship systems. It is not psychotherapy,
psychiatry nor medicine - systemic coaching can help both patients and care givers.
Systemic coaching helps people gain insights and emotional stability that can provide many
benefits.
Systemic coaching assumes that illness and disease are functional, and provide benefits that outweigh the
disadvantages. This implies
that illness or diseases are not random and chaotic, rather that disease
can be perceived as communication. What does a disease say for you - that
you will not say?
[ Schizophrenia ] [ Insomnia
] [
Cancer ] [
Bipolar Disorder ] [
Mental Illness ]
Coaching & Disease Symptoms
Many diseases are diseases of
lifestyle, such as drug abuse and obesity; and their complications (e.g. heart disease,
cancers & adult-onset
diabetes.) Health Coaching can help people prevent disease, and
deal with disease symptoms, and can provide emotional support
during difficult times.
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Systemic diseases
interfere with the normal structure or function of a human
system. A systemic disease may manifest as toxic relationship conflicts,
codependence, symbiosis or relationship bonds.
Systemic coaching can help people improve
relationships - even during emotional stress or physical disease. |
Health Coaching and Health
Disease in a family can challenge all family
members. If you or a
member of your family has been diagnosed with serious disease, it will affect your
life. This page describes health and disease, lists common psychological complications
and describes ways of providing health coaching.
[
Origins of Soulwork ] [
Expert Modeling
]
Health Coaching
Good health is often described as an absence of pain or suffering.
We describe health as a state of physical
and mental wellbeing - a sense of integrity and wholeness - an experience of
connectedness that transcends physical sensations or emotions.
[ When Disease
Makes Sense ] [
Stress Disorders ] [
Parent Alienation ]
A therapeutic coach motivates, supports, identifies strengths and
exposes what holds you back. Health coaching helps you see your way, to discover the creative solutions you need to
achieve your goals. We provide a helping hand - or a helping foot!
Pain Free Living & Pain Coaching
Pain is as unpleasant sensory and
emotional experience caused by real or imaginary injury or damage to the
body. Pain warns of injury; and protects against further injury by motivating
withdrawal from the source of injury. Pain also leads to reduced activity,
which may enable injuries to heal.
Pain also has emotional, relationship or psychological components. Some people express
extreme discomfort from relatively minor injuries, while others express
little or no pain after a severe injury. Sometimes pain is present even
though no trauma is apparent, or after an injury has healed.
[
Fast Pain Control ] [
Long
Term Pain Relief ]
Birth is suffering; decay is suffering; death is suffering; sorrow, lamentation,
pain, grief, and despair, are suffering; not to get what one
desires, is suffering...
Buddha (About 500 BC) |
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Suffering
does not ennoble; it degrades. It makes men selfish, mean, petty and
suspicious. It absorbs them in small things ... it makes them less than
men.
Somerset Maugham (1874 - 1965) |
Psychological Effects of Medications
Discuss the psychological side-effects of your medications with a physician.
- Oral contraceptives can cause worsen depression
- Steroids can cause anxiety, depression, mood swings,
hallucinations
- Sleeping drugs can cause memory loss, confusion, difficulty
concentrating
- Decongestants and appetite suppressants cause anxiety
- Ulcer drugs can cause depression
[ Side
Effects of Prescription Drugs ]
Coaching & Mental Disease
Many health professionals use the Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM
IV) or the International Classification of Diseases
(ICD), which define mental illnesses by symptoms and characteristics.
However, the described symptoms often overlap, differ from person to person, and people may
simultaneously display more than one set of recognizable characteristics.
Systemic Coaching does not diagnose or
treat mental
illness. It explores what a person wants; and identifies relevant challenges or
blocks. We coach people to define healthy goals and to
overcome obstacles that prevent fulfillment of those goals.
[
Mental Illness ]
[ Schizophrenia ] [
Bipolar Disorder ] [ Depression ]
Coaching & Psychosomatic Disease
Psychosomatic disease refers to
- People who report inexplicable physical symptoms
- People who report blindness, deafness, paralysis or seizures without somatic cause
- People who fear a disease and interpret any symptom as evidence of
that disease
Systemic health coaching explores the benefits of symptoms, with a
view to maintaining the benefits in such ways that symptoms become redundant.
Many symptoms have benefits. Examples are:
-
The symptom prevents a person from doing something the person does not want to do
(E.g. “I cannot go to my hated job because I am sick.”)
-
The symptom causes a person
do something that the person wants to do, but, without the symptoms, would not
do (E.g. “I can only rest when I am ill.”)
-
The symptom causes another person to do something that he or she would not otherwise do (E.g. “My
partner is nice to me only when I show this symptom!”)
- The symptom is
accepted as punishment (E.g. “I deserve to have this problem!”)
Systemic Health Coaching explores the relationship benefits of disease. Is the
person more loved when sick? Does a disease hold a relationship together? Does
a disease provide punishment for perceived lack of justice? Common
emotional factors affecting disease patients are:
- Following medical instructions
- Relationships with family, friends and helping
professionals
- Managing emotions, beliefs and stress
Coaching & Medical Treatment
People who avoid prescribed medical treatments may have many
motivations.
- Disease symptoms may have benefits (see Psychosomatic Disease)
- Drug side effects may be feared
- The treatment may be perceived as damaging
- A person wants to die
NOTE: Consult your physician regarding the
applicability of any opinions or recommendations with respect to depression,
medical symptoms or medical conditions.
Soulwork provides effective coaching, coach training and mentorship.
Do you want to coach people to resolve emotional and relationship challenges? Copyright © Martyn Carruthers 2003,
2005,
all rights reserved Systemic
Coaching is designed for therapists and coaches, priests and ministers,
consultants and managers, advisors, counselors and doctors, psychologists,
psychotherapists and psychiatrists, clinicians, marriage therapists and family
counselors, personal coaches, personal development coaches and organizational
development coaches, business coaches, business consultants and OD consultants,
private and general practitioners, helping professionals, counselors and
leadership development, leadership trainers, facilitators and spiritual
counselors, HR managers, NLP practitioners, human resources specialists and
spiritual advisors, mentors, tutors and lawyers, representatives, teachers and
addiction
counselors, relationship counselors, personal trainers and fitness advisors,
nutrition counselors, holistic health practitioners and hypnotherapists,
politicians; advertisers, media experts and other professional hypnotists. |
