Life coaching and depression

There is a big difference between feeling low and unhappy and being clinically depressed. However, I believe that people can identify fairly accurately where they are on a sort of depression continuum with respect to their own life and experiences. It is here that I think life coaching can be an effective, positive intervention. For those people who can recognise symptoms of depression within themselves, compassionate life coaching can help them resist the pull towards deeper depression and help them move towards happiness and an improved quality of life.

Among the symptoms of depression are negative thoughts, low self-esteem and the inability to act positively. I think there is a role that effective, empathetic life coaching based on the whole person can play in helping people fight back against those symptoms and break through. Using methods based on cognitive psychology, a good coach can help clients examine and change their thinking patterns which can lead to powerful emotional and behavioural benefits. Very often people’s conclusions about themselves, their relationships with others and their options are based on faulty logic, poor inferences and overgeneralisations.

A coach can also help a client fight the feelings of inertia, lethargy and inaction by getting them to think about what is present in their life that drags them down and what’s missing from their lives in terms of joy. By simultaneously sloughing off some of the factors that cause dissatisfaction and stress and bringing in some activities that bring happiness and stimulation, many people find they can turn around depressive symptoms and get on with sorting out their life.