Use Awareness as a Coping Tool
(Coping with the uneasiness)
There is no person on earth who does come across a certain hardship/uneasiness/difficulty that they will not need to cope throughout their lives. Although the types and levels of those problems vary in range and scope, the following situations seem to be the most common:
- Job loss
- Divorce/Break-ups
- Financial Stress/Financial Shortages/Bankruptcy
- Any sort of illness (including Mental & Physical)
- Loneliness
- Any sort of failure
- Unfamiliarity (with jobs-places-people…etc.)
- Relocations (workplaces, geographies, neighborhoods…etc.)
Whether these come to us expected or unexpected, these problems especially differ in terms of being short-lived (acute, in other words) or being ongoing and repeating.
What might be repeating?
- Problem relationship (marriage, partnerships, friendships)
- Money Issues (lacks, losses, shortages)
- Career issues (being laid off, leaving jobs, constant job search)
- Cycles of loneliness
- Depressive Mood
- Anxiety and Worry
- And more…
Even at a very preliminary level
, to be able to identify the nature of our problem is a very critical first step towards tackling it. And yes, we may not think it is necessary or even useful to identify a problem that repeats or not. As an example, if a problem repeats, there is a different type of awareness work that needs to be done vs. if that problem occurs the first time and just once.What do the statistics tell us?
More than 40% of adults in the US either avoid or do not know how to deal with stressful situations (Statista 2018).
In terms of Job loss, in a study conducted with unemployed individuals, only 5.7% of the participants did not have depressive symptoms and unemployed people with high anxiety and depression scores have developed maladaptive coping strategies such as substance use, self-blaming, or denial (Navarro-Abal et al., 2018).
Anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in the U.S., affecting 40 million adults in the United States age 18 and older, or 18.1% of the population every year. But approximately 40% those suffering receive treatment or seek outside help (Anxiety and Depression Association in America-WHO & National Institute of Mental Health numbers).
In 2019, there were an estimated 51.5 million adults in the United States with Any type of Mental Illness (AMI). This number represented 20.6% of all U.S. adults.
An estimated 17.3 million adults in the United States had at least one major depressive episode. This number represented 7.1% of all U.S. adults. The prevalence of adults with a major depressive episode was highest among individuals aged 18-25 (13.1%). Approximately 35% of adults with major depressive episode did not receive treatment (National Institute of Mental Health).
A study, published by the National Institute of Health (2020), found that there are significant correlations between financial stress, interpersonal stress, and psychological distress and well-being. A substantial number of adults in the United States between the ages of 21 and 62 felt anxiety and stress (60%) about their personal finances well before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new published report.
Where this all leads us…Some scientific evidence
Whatever the nature of the problem might be, there is a lot of research indicating that there are many ways to cope with certain types and levels of problems. The ways in which we might cope with these problems certainly differ especially considering the effectiveness and efficiency of our coping mechanisms.
Overall, a lot of individuals report that they find at least one source of coping support to deal with a related problem. And majority of them report that source to be an external one (see for an example related to adolescents’ self-injury problems Berger, Hasking, and Martin, 2017) otherwise they do not believe in their internal capacity to deal with certain adversities. And a considerable number of individuals do not believe their level of awareness would be contributing to the effectiveness and efficiency of their own coping mechanisms.
So how do we start using awareness as a coping tool through coaching?
Coaching is a one-on-one practice that involves personal change and transformation with a specific goal in mind. In more formal terms, coaching is a form of development in which an experienced person, called a coach, supports a learner or a client in achieving a specific personal or professional goal by providing training and guidance. The learner is sometimes called a coachee (Wikipedia).
Although coaching to date has been mostly associated with improving one’s performance and reaching one’s set goals in life, coaching could imply a grander process that might also involve goals related to prevention, manifestation and/or coping. The important thing to remember about coaching is that it involves learning. And learning could be about anything a person wants.
Here at Group of Change we are focusing our attention on providing coaching practice and service that involves coping. What would a person like to cope with in his/her life? Anything that we mentioned above, such as things that are related to anxiety, depression, job loss…etc. And coping focused coaching is significant mainly because there is obviously no one who would not want to cope with any kind of adversities in their lives.
To be able to use our awareness as a coping tool through coaching, we follow the basic steps below:
- Awareness of what is, what was, including what has been repeating
- Analyzing the roots of the problem and the related experience of uneasiness (both internal and external)
- Understanding and removing one’s awareness blocks pertaining to coping goals
- Start learning and using awareness tips towards one’s coping goals
- Incorporate day-to-day awareness to one’s life in a natural way so as to cope with the uneasy.
This way, we are able to bring Coping goals to our Coaching Focus. It mainly is a learning process. So, what do we learn really?
- First, we start learning about ourselves (our invisible and visible components)
- As we start learning about ourselves, we start seeing the links
- We learn about our awareness blocks and how to remove those for coping
- We learn to use some basic awareness tips for coping purposes.
Whatever our coping goal might be, coaching with a certain focus will help us to learn our past, present and therefore help shape our future with a more conscious state of mind.
Our coaching process will require our coachee to start using awareness as a coping tool by being aware of:
- Thoughts
- Feelings
- Behaviors
- Repeating Patterns (repeating problems, difficulties, adversities)
- Whole self from a certain time perspective (Past-Present-Future)
So, how long would a coping-focused coaching take? Months, years, may be? No, not really. As with any of our coaching practice, we have the following packages that involve a limited number of sessions:
- 3 sessions (preliminary coping focus): Here we identify the coping focus including why a certain problem might be especially difficult to solve for a certain individual. There may be few opportunities to see the removal of awareness blocks. This package is mostly about understanding one’s thoughts-feelings and behaviors pertaining to a certain coping goal.
- 6 sessions (removal of awareness blocks focus): Here it is not only possible to identify how one’s awareness of past and present could have contributed to the coping difficulties, but also to be able to see what one’s awareness blocks might be and to learn how to remove them to enhance one’s awareness further therefore to be able to get ready to fully apply some effective awareness tips.
- 12 sessions (removal of awareness blocks and harnessing effective awareness tips): With this ultimate package of coaching practice, identifying, understanding, and applying of all awareness goals will be possible with clear and tangible results obtained through complete removal of awareness blocks and application of related awareness tips towards any specific coping goal.
If you are one of those who would like to start using their awareness as a coping tool, book your session today by emailing us: coaching@groupofchange.com