Mental Health Month: How coaching can support mental health and wellness
Oct 31, 2021
Mental health was once a subject rarely spoken about, where sometimes people were locked away and kept out of sight, because family or community disowned or didn’t know how to support people who were suffering from some form of mental illness, leaving many living under a veil of darkness. But now, it's being brought more and more into the frontline and into the light.
What is Mental Health Wellness and Why is it so Important?
Mental health wellness is often attributed to a positive state of emotional, psychological, social and physiological well-being in which an individual can use their cognitive and emotional capabilities to function and meet the demands of life in times of joy, ease and stress.
It doesn’t just mean feeling good all the time, because life also includes difficult and challenging times. Mental wellness includes the ability to navigate and regulate naturally produced chemicals during difficult life experiences without causing too much distress or impairment.
When we feel under stress, our body releases natural stress hormones to help us mobilise into new actions to overcome perceived danger. Hormones such as cortisol, which if we don’t take new actions and stay in a state of ongoing stress, can derail our body’s most important functions and can lead to a number of health problems such as anxiety, depression, memory and concentration problems, trouble sleeping, weight gain, digestion problems and so much more.
The Role of Coaching in Improving Mental Health
Coaching is one of the most effective ways to support mental health and wellbeing. This is because coaching supports people to identify what they want to experience more of, how to make those experiences come to life as well traverse times of challenge. A coach supports their client to build resilience, self-regulate and identify powerful learnings and ways or strategies to ‘walk through’ difficult times.
Coaching can help to boost quality of life, self confidence and self-esteem, and importantly, reduce stress and support mental health. It can also assist you to organise and bring order to all those swirling thoughts and anxieties and allow you to focus on what is truly important and meaningful to you: what you want to work on, improve, achieve... rather than the things that are other people's agendas, or what society says you should be doing.
Some of the benefits of coaching which supports mental health wellness include:
- Cultivating mindfulness
- Being more present (with yourself and with others)
- A greater understanding of how your mind and emotions work
- A clearer picture of what you want, instead of faint desires
- A roadmap of how to reach your goals
- Reducing stress and anxiety
- Boosting confidence, self-esteem, and quality of life
- Feeling more empowered and in control of your life
- Reframing thoughts (changing negatives into positives and changing the way you see things)
- Supporting you to realise when you're pushing too hard so you know it’s time to exercise some self-care instead of hitting the burnout stage
- Facilitating you with decision making (have you ever noticed that the act of finally deciding on something you’ve been putting off releases a ton of anguish?)
- Assisting you in achieving more clarity about your life, what you want to do and how to get there
- Working with you to establish good routines and exercises to strengthen your mental health
Improve Your Mental Health Wellness Today
If you would like to know how coaching can support you in improving your mental health wellness, please contact us today by clicking here.
Support Your Clients in Improving Their Mental Health Wellness
If you’re a coach who would like to learn how to support others in their mental wellness journey, click here to find out more about foundational and advanced professional coach training programmes.
Mental Health Nurse and founder of Keith's Closet (a free boutique for outgoing mental health patients) Keith Donnelly shares how learning the skills of coaching have supported his effectiveness both personally and professionally - through the challenges and opportunities that have arisen in recent times.
Listen to Empower World's Coaching and Leadership Podcast Episode 167 here.
Episode-167 can be found here:
Direct Link: https://bit.ly/37TTWTe
YouTube: https://youtu.be/AM0i57bTXqo
Stitcher: http://bit.ly/st-podcast-
Spotify: http://bit.ly/sp-podcast-
iTunes: http://bit.ly/EW-Podcast-
Listen to Empower World's Coaching and Leadership Podcast Episode 167 here.
Episode-167 can be found here:
Direct Link: https://bit.ly/37TTWTe
YouTube: https://youtu.be/AM0i57bTXqo
Stitcher: http://bit.ly/st-podcast-
Spotify: http://bit.ly/sp-podcast-
iTunes: http://bit.ly/EW-Podcast-
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