What I’ve realised over the last couple of weeks

I’ll start this post with the 4th coaching session I had with Nathan Castle last Friday. We started by figuring out that I was in two minds about what I wanted to unpack in the session; I wanted to talk about managing my impulse to ‘over-explain’ things to clients, but also to continue working on my goal-setting process with clients. We managed to discuss both. It started with an experiment proposed by Nathan where for 5 minutes we discussed my challenges with ‘over-explaining’ – this worked really well. We went for 7 minutes but by the end I came away with a new mantra I could use, to see if this helps me edge closer to containing my over-explaining. Nathan also raised two points that I hadn’t considered before, which were that giving a client more information doesn’t necessarily help their growth and that the role of psychoeducation is to provide a rationale for the approach taken in therapy. These were very powerful statements, they have helped me consider that I have probably been using psychoeducation beyond it’s usefulness; to a point of diminishing returns. Second, we continued to explore my goal-setting process. I demonstrated to Nathan how I’m currently going about goal-setting in sessions, by running through the process while he played the role of a client. It was nice to hear that I was on the right track, but Nathan helped me see a potential tweak to my approach. I was using a word document (as seen in this post) with clients to record their therapy goals and would dictate their goals into the document as they spoke. I learned that in doing that and scrolling around the document I could lose the emotional connection with the client. So we explored a revised version of my approach where I wouldn’t type the clients goals or scroll through the document, these changes helped the discussion feel tighter, smoother and kept the emotional power in talking about goals.

I decided to do a video explaining how I now go through goal-setting with clients, instead of typing my way through it. I’ve never recorded myself like this, so I’m still getting used to it, I hope it makes sense:

What I’ve managed to do since my last post

I came away from my coaching session buzzing, as I always do. It spurred me to think about my over-explaining in sessions. Then an analogy hit me: I started to think – what if therapy is like the client and I growing a plant together? The plant represents positive outcomes for the client or achieving their therapy goals, so a big healthy plant is want we want to end up with. What contributes to the plant growing to a healthy size? There’s three main leaves to the plant, 1. connection with the client (therapeutic relationship), 2. prioritising of the client’s goals (goal-setting), 3. the approach taken in sessions to meet those goals (method). So if all goes well, each session provides the positive outcomes plant with a little more water to grow and eventually it’s healthy enough for therapy to end. But what can stunt the plants growth? Then it hit me – my over-explaining is me overwatering the plant, which can stop the plant growing. If a client feels that the therapy isn’t helping the plant grow, then they’ll stop coming. Alternatively, some clients may feel that the most important leaves are not getting the right amount of water, so if that goes unnoticed, they will drop out.

I decided that I am happy right now with the soil I bring to each therapy session, in connecting with clients, setting goals and finding an approach that works. I need to shift my focus to what I think is a bigger issue right now, which is my tendency to over-water sessions with my over-explaining. It’s not to say that there’s nothing more I can do to enrich the soil, but I thought until I catch myself more often when overwatering, the plant is still at risk of stunted growth – no matter how rich the soil I provide is. This may be harsh on myself, this isn’t an issue in every session, but I think it’s where my largest skill gap lies. The over-explaining can impact a lot – emotional resonance, over-saturating the client with information (overwhelming), it takes up time, it can sap the energy from both myself and the client, it takes me away from listening, it can be confusing and can contributes to me rushing the end of a session.

When in doubt, ask the client

You can bet I didn’t just leave things with the analogy. To test my thoughts I started an experiment with my more established clients. In the experiment I explain to them the positive outcome plant analogy, including the role of over-watering and leaves of the plant not getting the right water. I explain the overwatering (over-explaining) as a product of my desire to be helpful and excitement in the concepts we talk about. As a part of the experiment I then give clients permission to tell me if there’s any over-watering in the sessions or if they think a part of the plant needs more water. I also tell them I will call these out if I notice them too. A part of the SRS debrief with client’s has become: “was there any over-watering in the session today?” or “is there anything in the sessions that need more water”? I can use this when discussing the overall SRS score, or particular SRS items (e.g. goals and topics).

It’s still early days so I’m yet to see if this analogy sticks, I hope it does, I can see how I could potentially use it in other ways. I’m hoping it helps clients provide more feedback, in thinking of a plant, instead of thinking of me personally, especially if the idea of telling me I that I’ve been talking too much is too scary, for fear that I will be hurt by the feedback. This has also been a good reminder that flexibility in my approach is so important with clients, as some have said they like how I explain things in detail, that it actually helps them think, piece things together they didn’t realise and provides a sense of structure. Perhaps what this will reveal is that some client’s like more explanation and some will want less, so my next challenge may be how to tell which clients prefer which approach?

Till next time and as always – thanks for reading.

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