Life Coaching and Trauma
Michael Randle
LIFC 501-B01
August 10, 2022
Introduction
Trauma-Informed Coaching is the practice of understanding the presence of trauma in a coach-
client relationship and how to use it as a guide for resilience and solution-forward resolution. The
depth of information and skill to ‘hold’ a space for profound coaching work is what gives
Trauma-Informed Coaching its nuance and strength. Trauma-Informed Coaches have training in
client regulation, brain-body connection, behavioral reaction, different types of traumas, leading
causes, and subsequent symptoms. They have learned the proper channels for referral and the
growing relationship between clinical professionals, therapists, and coaches. To become a
Trauma-Informed Coach, one must have authenticity, strong values, and beliefs that are not
limiting or suppress working in this area. They will have learned methods to help ‘regulate’ the
nervous system, discard shame and guilt through powerful questions, and recognize and promote
wellness as it starts to develop.
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The intensity of our training to become a Trauma-Informed Coach can stimulate difficult
emotional situations. This training was developed to train coaches and is not a substitute for
personal therapy. Moving the Human Spirit (MTHS) reserves the right to deny acceptance to an
applicant and may withdraw a participant from the program at any time if a participant’s
behavior, attitude, or views negatively impact the quality of the training program or the other
participants. MTHS Facilitators and their assistances will assess the suitability of participants for
the program during the first five training sessions. Participants will receive a full refund minus an
administration fee if requested to leave during the first five sessions of the program.
Life coaching provides a unique way of handling traumatic experiences. For the past decade,
most people have relied on psychologists or psychotherapists to help manage their trauma.
However, the acceptance of life coaching in society creates an alternative for many trauma
patients. Successful coaching sessions take into perspective the environment, goals, and
socialites to assist trauma clients. This study explores the use of life coaching as an alternative
means of addressing trauma in society. It commences by describing the role of life coaches. The
study goes on to define trauma. Also, a 3-phased trauma control and management framework is
described and how it fits as a guideline or roadmap of managing trauma from a life coaching
perspective.
Life Coaching and Trauma
Life coaches play a significant role in helping others. Traditionally, the role of life coaches was
labelled as insignificant and more focus was placed on psychologists and other-related registered
and legally recognized professionals. Although life coaches are yet to be legally recognized in
the country, their role has exponentially increased over the last decade. Today, life coaches are
tasked with the responsibility of dealing with issues of their clients on an individual basis and
come up with reliable strategies to manage them. Psychologists are some of the few
professionals tasked with the mandate of handling trauma patients (Missouridou,
2017).However, today trauma clients can be handled by life coaches. Traumatic experiences are
emotionally demanding and cause people to feel disoriented, demotivated, and emote regularly
(Dash & Chavali, 2018). In this case, the role of life coaching is to offer an avenue to deal with
the traumatic experiences by first understanding the needs of the clients. The purpose of this
study is to explore how life coaching can play a critical role in the identification, prevention, and
management of traumatic experiences.
Life Coaching
In the 1990s, Leonard created the first formal coaching program and its principles and
framework were guided by the humanistic psychology, executive coaching, human potential
movement, and the cognitive behavioral psychology (Iqbal & Hakaraia, 2017). Life coaching is
relatively new and lacks the professionalism and evidence-based practices that other practices
like psychology enjoy. However, its popularity has immensely grown over the last decade. From
legal perspective, life coaching does not suffice as a practice in the country, but more people are
increasingly seeking the services of life coaches.
What’s a Trauma Informed Coach?
This is a great question and one I am asked often! Plainly put, I’m a Life Coach who has been
trained & certified to be Trauma Informed., Adopting trauma informed practices is a newer
standard of operating within many “helping professions.” Specialty Trauma Informed trainings
and certifications are now available to teachers, nurses, police officers, corrections officers,
social workers, yoga instructors, caregivers, health coaches, medical professionals, and many
more. Being trauma informed simply allows professionals to recognize the prevalence of
personal trauma in the histories and lives of the people they serve.
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What’s the difference between a Trauma Informed Coach (TIC) & a traditional Therapist?
Therapists are the front line workers of mental health care. They operate under a medical model
of care, whereas Coaches operate under a support model. Therapists work with and treat
trauma.,Trauma Informed Coaches, do not treat trauma. They are simply aware of all of the
nuances of working with clients who have experienced trauma.
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Trauma Informed Coaching is the practice of understanding the presence of past trauma in a
client’s present-day experience, and how to use it as a guide for resilience and solution-forward
coaching strategies.,
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Often, people will need therapy, as well as a coach to support them in between sessions. Other
times, clients have a baseline of working with the trauma, but need further support to make
positive changes in the present. Here’s a brief list of what coaches can and cannot do.
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WHAT I DO AS A TRAUMA INFORMED COACH:
Trauma Informed Coaches anchor their work in the present, not the past. They focus on
the client’s current life and how trauma is affecting them today. Their aim is to utilize
coaching strategies to help their client build up their strengths, healthy beliefs, and
positive coping strategies rather than just extinguishing “negative” behaviors and beliefs.
Coaches serve as guides, mentors, and support. They may provide education about
trauma and recovery, or set recovery goals, but they always operate in a client led
manner.
WHAT I DO NOT DO AS A COACH:
Coaches do not prescribe or give advice about medication.
Coaches do not treat, diagnose, or assess their client’s mental health.
Coaches do not work outside their scope of competence - coaches do not work with
clients who are at risk of self harm or harming others.
Therapy vs. TIC Continued:
SPECILIZATION
Trauma Informed Coaches often focus on specific modalities and have very focused areas of
training. As a coach who specializes in complex and developmental trauma, nervous system
regulation (polyvagal trained), and bottom-up modalities (somatic and body-based interventions
which employ brain-body connection), I spend the majority of my educational time training in
those areas., In comparison, a therapist most often has a broader spectrum of disciplines they are
educated in, which are usually anchored in a top-down approach (working through the scope of
cognition, thoughts and the mind).
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ACCESS
Most of the time, access to your therapist is limited to appointments. Many coaches allow access
to them by email or text in between sessions for further support.
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COLLABORATION
Coaches understand that just as trauma can be complex, so too can be healing. Rarely does one
form of recovery work resolve the effects of trauma. Clients often need a collaboration of
methods, such as talk therapy, EMDR, art therapy, life coaching, somatic experiencing, etc.,With
this in mind, coaches often encourage a team approach to working with clients. Furthermore,
Trauma Informed Coaches are non-clinical. They do not treat or diagnose clients. Therefore, they
have an ethical responsibility to refer their clients to the proper resources when the support they
need is outside of the coaching wheelhouse.,
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What is the difference between a Trauma Informed Coach and a Life Coach or other type
of coach?
My Trauma Informed Coaching Certification with,Moving the Human Spirit,(the only ICF
accredited Trauma Informed Coaching Certification process in the world) is a commitment I’ve
made to continuing my education and training in the area of Trauma Informed Coaching. This
two-part Certification provides a comprehensive trauma informed education on the topics of:
client regulation, brain-body connection, behavioral reaction, different types of trauma, leading
causes, and their subsequent symptoms. It also provides, accountability, supervision, required
completion of coaching triads with mentors, passing tests, and more, so that my clients can feel
secure in the coaching work we do together.
On my journey as a coach, stress management practitioner, trauma survivor, and DEI expert, I’ve
become convinced that trauma informed coaching is better coaching,for everyone. Here are the
four reasons.
Trauma isn’t just acute trauma – a single horrible incident that happened in the
past, like a physical assault or serious bodily injury.,Trauma also occurs through
neglect, inappropriate boundaries, lack of emotional or psychological safety, betrayal,
abandonment and chronic unmet needs. Trauma also takes the form of high “allostatic
load” – the “death by a thousand cuts” of ongoing stress. Trauma accumulates in the body
from ongoing stressful experiences like navigating the world in a black, brown, female-
presenting or queer body; enduring constant overwork and exhaustion; suffering chronic
low wages or income insecurity; residing in a nation lacking a social safety net for
serious illness or elderhood; or living through a pandemic.
A trauma-informed coach understands how trauma might contribute to a coachee’s
challenges,and,superpowers, how trauma can show up in a coachee’s behavior, and what the root
cause of, those behaviors might be.
Nearly(everyone(has a trauma history. My favorite definition of trauma is simply “too
much, too fast.” Given that trauma includes more than just acute trauma, it’s more a
question of,how much, rather than whether, a person has experienced trauma. Many
organizational leaders and corporate employees shrink from the notion that they might be
trauma survivors, but that very response is a trauma response. Some of the most
traumatized people I’ve worked with over the last few years are middle managers in toxic
organizations operating under inhumane expectations in crumbling industries. Their
denial of their trauma is what allows them to continue to (sort of) function in those
environments.
A trauma-informed coach understands,and normalizes,the coachee’s experience as common, and
as(a healthy response,to unhealthy or threatening circumstances.
We can’t think or talk our way out of trauma, because trauma lives in the nervous
system outside the brain.,Like all other species’ bodies, our human bodies are brilliantly
designed to keep us safe in a variety of life-threatening scenarios. Our bodies detect and
respond to perceived threats constantly,,even outside of our conscious awareness and
permission! The only way to “downregulate” and settle our bodies, once the threat
response has been activated, is to discharge the energy through the body. This is true
even if the threat passed decades earlier, or wasn’t entirely “real” to begin with.
A trauma-informed coach possesses an advanced ability to co-create safety and trust with a
coachee, the superior ability to navigate their,own,trauma responses, and the skill to avoid
triggering a destructive trauma response in a coachee.
A trauma-informed lens is necessary to engage in any DEI (diversity, equity and
inclusion) work,(whether one-on-one coaching, team development or broader
organizational change. In addition to the above-listed sources of trauma, there’s not a
human in the “modern” world that doesn’t also carry trauma from our common history of
conquest, colonialization, slavery, genocide, war, rape and dehumanization based on the
bodies we inhabit or the circumstances in which we find ourselves. Also, as one of the
most social species on Earth, human teams exhibit behaviors that are often misunderstood
or mishandled without an understanding of how humans respond to threat in groups –
especially threats coming from those with greater power.
A trauma-informed coach applies their knowledge of the ethological, historical and socio-
ecological context of trauma to support the well-being of coachees and groups – especially those,
with black, brown, female, queer, young , and other underrepresented identities.
Trauma-informed coaching is better coaching – especially now. A trauma-informed coach is
better equipped to meet a coachee where they are, in the fullness of that person’s experience and
context. A trauma-informed coach possesses an additional lens through which to perceive a
coachee’s behavior, and a more developed skillset with which to help the client (and themselves)
navigate trauma history, and the reality of the various worlds they inhabit.
