Life Coaching in Addiction Counseling: How to get the Most from the 12 Steps
(from Counselor Magazine, December 2002, Counselormagazine.com)
By Dr. Patrick Williams, Ed.D., Psychologist, Master Certified Coach

The focus of addiction counseling has always been to keep the client clean and sober, and restore some sense of functionality.  It is about preventing relapse and providing a place of structure and safety to protect the person's sobriety.  In this context, the 12-Step Program has literally saved countless thousands of lives.  But what happens after the 12^th step? 

Life Coaching can take the addictive personality beyond the 12^th step, into a future place of gratifying productiveness ' the reality of achieved goals and successes which might ordinarily remain unmet.  Unachieved goals and unrealized potential are a threat to the addictive client's sober future.  They keep him or her locked into an endless cycle of running no'destination laps on the need-to-stay-sober treadmill.  Life Coaching can break this unproductive cycle and spin the client off into a place of realized dreams, where the focus is on the wonderful possible future, instead of the destructive past.

For many addictive clients, the 12-Step Program itself can become addictive.  One of my associates told the story of a colleague currently addicted to 12-Step Programs.  For 20 years she has joined and rejoined 12-Step self-help groups, always keeping herself in a 'broken' mode, in need of fixing.  For this person, and many more like her, there is no 'post' addiction victory.  Life becomes a broken record, caught endlessly in the loop of therapy and self-help programs, never realizing what life can hold beyond the addiction.  All of life is consumed with the need merely to maintain, never to reach and achieve.  The fear of falling off the wagon sometimes keeps the wagon from going anywhere new, exciting and fulfilling. 

Don't misunderstand.  As a therapist turned coach, I completely understand the need for conventional therapy for the person seeking release from addictions.  The therapist's work is critical for recovery.  But this work is necessarily caught up in relapse prevention, working through pain and past reasons for the addiction, holding the client accountable, anticipating and dealing with the myriad of problems that will occur in every addictive person's recovery and charting and overseeing the desired course of treatment to ensure a functional life in spite of the addiction.  Addiction is treated as a diagnosable illness with medical and clinical models.  It looks at the past in order to gain some functioning present.  I am not suggesting therapy be replaced or modified, but, rather, complemented and completed through life coaching.

Psychotherapy generally deals with emotional and behavioral problems and disruptive situations ' such as addictions - and seeks to bring the client to normal function by focusing on his dysfunction. This context can keep the person in constant recovery, which unconsciously imposes a limit on discovering and creating a fulfilling, purposeful life. In contrast, life coaching generally deals with functional persons who want to move toward higher function ' and achieve excellence while creating an extraordinary life. Coaching is a process similar to solution-focused techniques that many therapists use for less serious psycho-emotional problems and life stresses, yet goes beyond just solving problems by creating instead of fixing. 

Life Coaching

The basic philosophy behind life coaching is that we humans have immeasurable resources of energy, wisdom, ability and genius waiting to be set in motion. We can create the life we want faster and more easily by having a coach who helps us utilize our resources to facilitate change and realize our potential.  When you empower a person and show him what he can do ' instead of focusing on what he can't do (weakness) ' you can improve his overall mental health and life in general dramatically.  This is the logical and most creative step beyond the 12^th Step of addiction therapy.

Life coaching focuses on helping people who already have a measure of 'success' in their lives, but who want to bridge the gap between where they are and where they want to be in their profession and their personal life.  This 'measure of success' for the addictive client is his or her sobriety, and a stabilized place of safety.  With coaching, this safe place becomes a place of expectation and amazing potential, instead of mere functioning.

A life coach is much like a trainer who helps an athlete win the 'gold medal' ' not just be in the race. Life coaches help their clients design the life they want, bring out their clients' own brilliance and resources so that they can achieve excellence and create purposeful, extraordinary lives.   Coaching answers the question of 'now what?' that recovering addictive clients ask when nearing that 12^th Step.

When Are They Ready?

When is the addictive patient in therapy ready for life coaching?  Every patient will present uniquely different and individual needs for a personalized therapy program, and every potential life coaching client will likewise be ready for this coaching step at various places along the therapy path.  For every addictive patient, that place will be different, and uniquely theirs.  The trained therapist is the best one able to determine the moment in recovery when life coaching can either supplement the 12-Step process or continue it beyond the 12^th Step.  It is helpful to understand the major differences between therapy and coaching in order to best determine what combination of these practices would be suitable to particular clients.  There are three broad categories that offer distinctions between therapy and coaching: (but, you can use coaching skills even during treatment'a Coaching relationship is more defined and long term)

The Past versus the Future

Traditional therapy deals with the patient's past, particularly how it applies to their current addiction.  The therapist's role is to bring the client to an adequate present and reasonable level of functioning, considering the addiction.  In contrast, the coach works with an individual who is already adequately functioning (state of sobriety) to move them to a higher and more satisfying future level of functionality. 

'Fixing' versus Co-Creating

In the clinical therapy practice, the client comes with a presenting problem, in this case an addiction.  In your therapy model for this client, you undertake the strategies you have been trained to use in the process of healing, including patient diagnosis and treatment plans.  The client's perspective in all of this is that you will 'fix' them.  Coaching is not about fixing.  It is about creating.  The assumption in life coaching is that by working together the client will have greater success in planning, setting goals, and creating the life of his or her dreams.  The therapist facilitates the fixing, and the coach facilitates the co-creation of a fulfilling life beyond the addiction.

Professional versus Collegial

During the initial treatment stages of addiction therapy, the therapist wears the hat of professional ' the expert with all the answers.  The power, from the client's perspective at least, rests with the therapist.  Therapy sessions are quite often intense and sometimes difficult.  Conventional therapy often involves a power differential between professional and client. The coaching relationship is one built on more equal footing, like an active partnership.  A successful life coaching relationship is collegial.  Coaching recognizes that clients have the knowledge and the solutions; the coach simply helps unlock the client's own brilliance.  Coaching sessions are very typically open, often friendly, casual and even light. 

Filling Up the Hole

All therapists know that in order for addiction therapy to be long lasting and permanently successful, something must fill the hole that exists once the addictive substance has been removed.  Life coaching can help the client fill this hole with productive alternatives which, in fact, will quite possibly allow them to reach potentials previously unattained and may have been responsible for the addiction in the first place.

A transition occurs in the person's life as they experience a change from therapy to coaching.  Therapy is centered in pathology, process, history and the exploration of the inner world.  It focuses on solutions for specific 'problems.'  As the move is made to coaching, however, the client begins to experience a broad focus on the whole person, not just the addiction.  The orientation is on outcomes and action, moving from the inner world of therapy to the outer realities and possibilities of life.  The therapist asks 'why?'  The coach asks 'what do you want?' and 'how?'  The post addictive client moves from being a patient with an illness to a partner with a bright, and attainable, future.  As the patient of therapy transitions to the coaching client, the hole left by the removal of the addiction is filled with new possibilities for success, and a way to achieve them.

What's Next?

The advent of the coaching profession has changed the post-addiction outlook for those people who have reached a place of sobriety and are looking to create lives of fulfillment and promise beyond the plateau of maintenance.  If you are a therapist, you have considerable options in exploring the possibilities of utilizing life coaching for your patients.  For the therapist looking for coach training, there are resources listed at the end of this article.  Some therapists have even moved out of the therapy profession altogether into full time life coaching.  Their former training and education as therapists make them coaches with unique skills and background, able to co-create productive lives with their clients, as well as receiving their own fulfillment in supporting others to live the life of their dreams.  For others, investigating the resources available in professional life coaching, and learning how to determine the appropriate time for the transition of their patients from therapy to coaching with another professional will be an invaluable asset to their addictive patients.  However you choose to incorporate life coaching into your therapy practice, this option is the logical next step for your addictive patients.  It will take them beyond the 12^th Step into a life of new and continuing successes.

Resources

If you are interested in adding coaching to your practice, consider the Institute for Life Coach Training, specifically training therapists and aligned helping professionals only, at www.lifecoachtraining.com

For those looking for more information about coaching in general, for training options and professional life coaches, contact the International Coach Federation (ICF) (Phone:  888-423-

3131, E-mail:  icfoffice@coachfederation.org, or visit their website at www.coachfederation.org

Dr. Williams has also co-authored with Deborah C. Davis a newly released book titled 'Therapist as Life Coach:  Transforming Your Practice' published by W. W. Norton and Company.