In a period of time when there are numerous people becoming coaches, you’re probably thinking how can coaching actually help in managing pain?
Well, lets firstly let’s look into what a coach is:
A coach is essentially someone who helps a coachee (i.e. client) unlock their potential to achieve maximum performance and achieve their goals. Coaching involves the belief that the individual has the answers to their own problems within them.
Now secondly, if you are suffering from pain, you most likely have tried most treatments out there and still may not be satisfied (probably a reason you’re reading this). I understand, pain is complicated and pain is DIFFERENT for everyone.
Thus, the purpose of a coach is to work WITH YOU to find the best possible management plan and treatment FOR YOU.
Having now worked as a coach and physiotherapist helping clients with Chronic pain, I have listed 5 ways below on how coaching can help you:
1) Self-awareness
Self-awareness is a key aspect when it comes to managing Chronic Pain because there are often deep underlying beliefs that people have which may often be negative and drive many of your behaviours. For example, you may feel your pain makes you “not good enough” to do certain activities. However, this may actually not be true. It would be my job as a coach to help dismantle these beliefs and help you feel more empowered to do everything you can to live your best life.
Furthermore, stress can also trigger you to feel pain and suffer more. Some of this stress may be related to underlying beliefs such as feeling unsupported by families or feeling like you can’t help your family due to your pain. Due to this, better understanding your pain and the beliefs around your pain can help educate you and leave you empowered to manage it better and not rely on external sources.
Another key aspect of self-awareness is understanding your values. Through coaching, we can identify your values understand your main motivating factors in life, and create meaningful goals for you (for more info download my pain guide).
2) Active listening and understanding
This sounds quite straight forward but it’s a game-changer. People experiencing chronic pain often undergo feelings of being misunderstood, frustrated, and disappointed from family members and even healthcare professionals who fail to support them appropriately. This is where talking to someone who actually understands their pain and someone who can give real-life examples of other people going through similar situations of pain, can make them feel understood and help them accept their pain and not feel like they are “overreacting” or that they can’t ask for help.
When Chronic pain patients are around people who don’t understand their pain, this can make it harder and make es them suffer more. Hence when speaking to someone who understands their pain, it will allow them to feel reassured and help facilitate the journey towards accepting their pain. Acceptance is a key element to really managing your pain and being more self-empowered in your management.
Through active listening, it also allows me as a coach to understand your perception and beliefs around pain and help the process of finding the correct management tools for you.
3) Blindspots
Blind spots are aspects of personalities that may be obvious to everyone but ourselves. These aspects may be beliefs or behaviors that drive our day-to-day actions but we aren’t aware of them—hence we are unconscious of doing them.
Coaches are trained to help identify these unconscious beliefs and help you realise what there are. This can help change your beliefs (especially if they’re not helpful towards pain) and help you change your behaviors.
An example maybe if you are avoiding certain activities due to your fear of eliciting pain. You may even not be conscious you are doing it at all and hence a coach can help identify this. The coach can help you gradually do that activity with confidence (this is called graded exposure- see my pain guide book for more information).
4) Accountability
This speaks for itself, we all function better when we have someone watching over us and guiding us. Someone to call us out on our excuses and make sure we are doing everything as best as possible.
When it comes to Chronic Pain this can be useful to ensure you are doing what you can to manage your pain and not becoming more negative. Coaching can help teach tools to help you keep calm, positive, and motivated.
By keeping you accountable you can ultimately accelerate the process of your learning, growth, and recovery.
5) Strategy and Tools to build confidence
Using my experience and expertise as a coach and physiotherapist I can provide you with specific models and toolkits to help you manage your pain.
There are various tools from identifying empowering goals and self-limiting beliefs, helping you value health and prioritize your health and also structure your day to ensure you do not become overstressed.
As a coach, I can help you understand the importance of acceptance and why this can be important to help you understand your pain and moving forward so you don’t feel stuck because of your pain.
This means you do not have to struggle alone and will be given available tools to navigate through the hardships of Chronic Pain.
These are just a few of the benefits of working with a coach when you are in pain. My ultimate goal for you from coaching is to utilize coaching tools alongside physiotherapy, to empower individuals struggling with physical pain or injuries to develop a greater mind and body awareness so that they can manage their pain, anxiety, and fears with more confidence and feel hopeful about living a life of freedom again.
If you are interested in working with me or learning more about Pain coaching then drop me a message via jagunath@r-d-physio.co.uk.
Also, check out my recent video about the stigmas around chronic pain- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xdKYsJmKPY&t=8s