Coaching Journal (3) – The tricky choice of a coach: Feelings or emotions?

At the 2012 ICF Global Conference, which took place at the beginning of October, in a pretty cold London, Brené Brown talked about two main subjects of her work as a dedicated researcher: guilt and shame. If you’re a coach, this might be the twisted place where you have to make the baffling choice.

The difference between the two – guilt and shame – is quite the same as that between emotions and feelings: feelings persist, while emotions are short-term based. They come and they go. For example, you are furious on someone, or feel thrilled. Guilt is related to something you’ve done, while shame is related to you as a person. It can be something you carry with you since childhood.

A coach digs up for feelings, which are very often buried deep or locked inside the unconscious part of memory, and bring them in the prefrontal cortex, the realm of the consciousness. Yet, it’s emotions that keep the key of the locked door. That’s why a coach will ask you: „how do you feel now, in this very moment?”

The work of a coach is to accompany and meet the client in the reality that his client feels. And everything ends with this great question: “what do you choose”? What happens is that the client chooses a new perspective. He feels the transitions towards possibility.

Understanding the difference between emotions and feelings helps you to acknowledge things about yourself and others. The place in the brain where emotions take place is activated much faster than that one where information is processed. First you feel, and then you think. For a coach, it’s essential to work on what’s there before the emotions come rushing through, the so-called emotional triggers.

But coached can’t go too far in the past, like therapists do, so when a clients is stuck in an emotional break-down you have to work on that emotion, letting him identify the trigger that got him there.

Anger, for example, is an emotional burst, while annoyance or grief can persist. My job as a coach is to find out what’s behind the anger. If you find out what determines your anger and discover the triggers, you have the possibility to realize that it might not be such a big deal. You could start working on accepting yourself just as you are or reduce your need of controlling things.

In coaching, the difference between emotions and feelings must be done from the very beginning, when contracting. When a client come in and says “I’ve got a problem with my boss and I want to work on this”, a coach should pay attention to the client’s tune. Coaches work on making changes. You start from a drama and reach a state where that drama can be solved. It is – as Alan Seale puts it – a transformational process.

Not figuring out what’s the deal with feelings and emotions might lead you to working on the problem, not on the person. But coaches aren’t problem solvers.