Research Paper: Divorce Coaching For Women

These questions will linger in a client’s mind almost every day after separation.  By asking these questions, the client will have an excellent opportunity to do some deep reflection which can lay the foundation for personal transformation.  A coach can use this opportunity to help the client find her true self, explore her strengths, locate her career dreams, unravel her potential and reach her highest self.  In this process, the coach is a strategic partner and a cheer leader.  A coach can serve as a sounding board and provide a safe environment for idea brainstorming.

In Stage 4, when the client is ready for more forward looking action planning, a coach can help the client with goal setting activities.  The task of starting or relaunching a renewed life can be quite daunting to most women going through divorce.  A coach can use tools to help break the big goals into smaller tasks.  The key element in this stage’s coaching is empathetically cheerleading.  Hold the light in the tunnel and assist the client to keep faith for the future.  One can anticipate plenty of setbacks and challenges during this process.  Self doubt will creep in at any moment.  A coach needs to provide lots of reassurance to keep client’s eyes on the target.  With enough patience, the client will evolve into a escalated spirit a with renewed life force.  She will be inspired to live a transformed life.

What are the tools a coach can use to facilitate transformation?

During these four stages, a coach needs to be sensitive to catch some coachable moments when client shows readiness to change.  The ICA learning module has a tool called “Are You Coachable?” Here are the key five questions to gauge whether a client is ready[6]:

When a coach sees the signs that the client has demonstrate readiness to change, the following tools can be used during the coaching process:

Powerful Questions to clarify her identity and her life purpose, such as:

Visualizing exercise to bring out the ideal life

This exercise is for client to look beyond the current chaos and envision her ideal physical environment, her career, finances, relationships, health, fun, recreation, and other goals and dreams she would like to have in her life.  Creating a vision board can be a fun way to bring out client’s ideal life.

Reframing

Reframing is looking at an event or an experience from a different viewpoint and choosing an empowering perspective, rather than continuing to exist in a disempowering state.  The client is encouraged to interpret the divorce from an empowering angle, so to give a different meaning to the event.  With reframing, the client gains the power of looking at the experience from a perspective that serves her life purpose, which serves as the motive for positive changes in her life.

Affirmations – the new self talk

Coming from the ups and downs of emotional rollercoaster, affirmations are great tools to strengthen a client’s belief that things will get better and better from now on. When that belief becomes a deep conviction, things will begin to happen.  Here are some examples of affirmations that were extrapolated from Nenninger (2010):

Conclusion

People learn the most about themselves while they are going through the darkest hours.  Adverse events present opportunities for growth which doesn’t ordinarily happen in everyday life.  During divorce coaching, a coach needs to recognize this golden opportunity for life transformation and moves beyond “grief coaching” to something more inspiring.  When clients come to coaching at a moment feeling they are at the bottom of the valley, they all possess the potential to climb to the top of the mountain and reach the stars of their life dream.  Divorce is not an end – it is only the beginning if the client allows it to become the catalyst she needs to recreate her life.  Coaching is a wonderful resource a client can rely on when walking the long and lonely divorce journey.  A coach is the person who will hold her hands and witness the wonderful life transformation unfolding.   All coaches need to be aware and ready to inspire this personal revolution from the client.

References

Ford, Debbie (2006) Spiritual Divorce: Divorce as a Catalyst for an Extraordinary Life, HarperCollins e-books

Nenninger, Nicole (2010) Transforming Divorce: How to Get Back on Track and Create a Life you Love, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

Williams, Geoff (Sept 19, 2012) Divorce Coach: 3 Things A Divorce Coach Can Do For You, Reuters

Amatruda,  Katie (December 29^th, 2011) Four Stages Of Divorce: Break-up, Breakdown, Breakthrough and Breakover, The Huffington Post

International Coach Academy Learning Module one Resources, Are You Coachable?

http://www.separation.ca/pdfs/divorcefacts.pdf

[1] Spiritual Divorce Debbie Ford 2006