Anyone can experience anxiety. It can range from mild, manageable symptoms to severe, debilitating attacks. No matter where you fall on the spectrum of intensity of anxiety, it’s never, ever fun to feel it! Anxiety is a natural response to stress and can serve as a warning sign of potential danger, but excessive anxiety can interfere with daily life and relationships. So, what can you do about it? A lot of people try self-help strategies such as breathing techniques and meditation. Research shows that these kinds of things can help! It can also be helpful to seek additional support from a life coach when you are experiencing mild to moderate levels of anxiety and you want to make a plan for how to best cope. Working with a National Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach can be particularly effective as we are credentialed by the National Board for Health and Wellness Coaching and practice in line with their rigorous standards.
When anxiety is high, it can impact your daily functioning and interfere with your quality of life. Therapy can be very effective. Life coaching is not the same as therapy. Therapy usually focuses on painful, past situations that are impacting a person’s life in such a way that they experience some level of functional impairment. Typically, the client has a mental health diagnosis, and the goal is to help the person decrease the symptoms of that diagnosis while increasing their coping skills. Often this includes discussing past events at length. In contrast, coaching helps clients who are functioning well in their lives overall optimize their potential and reach their goals. The focus is on the future, not the past. The interaction between you and your coach is active and collaborative: you set the agenda and lead the way. It’s important to say that life coaches are typically not mental health professionals with extensive training in anxiety (though I happen to be).
So how might a life coach help you cope with your anxiety? There are lots of things that life coaching can do to help individuals with anxiety!
- It can help you develop strategies to cope with your anxiety. My style in particular is to use evidence-based tools to save you time and money by increasing the accuracy and efficiency of your coaching services.
- It can help you clearly define your core values, which can help you feel a sense of calm and clarity about your life and what you want to do with it.
- It can help you make a realistic plan for how to reach your goals. Breaking up your big goals into smaller chunks is shown to be an effective way to make good progress while regulating your anxiety.
- It can also help you plan for the obstacles you will likely face when making life changes. This is an important step, as evidence suggests that planning ahead for obstacles can really help you overcome them.
So, what are you waiting for? Maybe it’s time to hire a life coach! If you’re looking for more information about how to go about this, check out my ‘The Best Way to Hire a Life Coach’ blog. A life coach can be a valuable addition to a comprehensive anxiety management plan!