Existential Coaching

Expanding a horizon that you don’t yet see

Existential coaching is a motivational, directional and exploratory service. Rooted in existential philosophy, this coaching style encourages clients to explore how early beliefs, experiences, and unconscious patterns shape their current perspectives & actions and helping them to restructure their lives towards a goal or a dream by identifying their values and perceptions of life by trying to understand their world within its context.

Key Points of Existential Coaching

The focus of existential coaching: In existential coaching, the focus is on the individual’s unique journey. Through reflective exploration, clients can recognize the beliefs, assumptions, and narratives that may limit their potential for change and growth. This approach fosters self-awareness and encourages individuals to see life’s transitions and challenges as opportunities for greater autonomy, adaptability, and resilience.
Challenging assumptions: Coaches help clients challenge preconceived notions, limiting beliefs, and societal norms that may hinder personal growth and authenticity.
Exploring existential themes: The touch of existential philosophy is reflected back to the area of coaching by indicating existential themes that are coming from client’s narrative. These themes can be various, can come from the transitions and change, can come through struggles, can adress endings, beginnings and some qualities that are necessary for an authentic life.

The goal of coaching

Ultimately, existential coaching is about cultivating a more open, courageous, and adaptable way of being—one that honors each individual’s personal values and aspirations, creating a life of greater authenticity and fulfillment in which we can coexist, love and thrive together as ourselves.

Challenging the goal itself

Important part of the coaching dialogue involves challenging the goals that are initially brought to the session by the client. The aim of testing the goals is to identify the needs and desires that are operating at the background. This is partially because some desires that we have are not our own and can be a product of subconcious patterns of behaviour. Some goals that we have can be a product of secondary gains. The shortest route is the route towards ourselves therefore an existential coach looks for supporting goals that can potentially target the integrated identity.

Identifying patterns and barriers

Coaches help clients to identify patterns of thinking, behavior, and belief that may be limiting or hindering their personal growth and fulfillment. A coach would look for overcoming or coexisting with the barrier (making a choice of the attitude) and continue walking and building up towards a direction.

Support and accountability

Throughout the coaching journey, a coach provides support, encouragement, and feedback to help clients to stay focused and motivated. They also hold clients accountable for taking steps towards their goals and living authentically.

The distinction between coaching and therapy

Therapy is a space that requires attentiveness and has a quality of being with the client. This does not erase the existence of the therapist or leaves the client alone with their struggles. Therapist’s responsiblity is daring to be with a difficult situation and discomforts of life. A therapist does that with no other aim than bringing light and connection to the room. Together with the client they expand the territories of the existence and look for some existential aspects of life at the here and now and in the therapeutic relationship. Working existentially there cannot be a direction in a therapy space.

A coach structures a direction towards a goal that is brought to the room by the client. A therapy space can be a space to hold trauma and be emotionally charged from time to time. It is the duty of the therapist to hold this field and transform it in its capacity together with the client. This is an interiorly active process and in the external world can look quite passive. However coaching space requires more active energy that is to be directed to the space outside of the therapy room and requires a resolute attitude. This may not match with the needs of a client for instance who requires emotional support and cannot facilitate and build up a major change in their lives at that moment. Coaching is for clients who have emotional resiliency, space, energy, resouces, time and attentiveness in their lives, who are not easily emotionally activated and willing to physically construct a new dimension in their realities by trying to understand their true selves with curiosity and courage. This is quite an active process and a transition in itself. This aspect of coaching requires demonstrating a certain capacity to renovate and may not be suitable for everyone in every stage in life. Because sometimes we just want to be where we are and sit and contemplate on what we have. For that time-being that can be enough. Due to this comparison between coaching and therapy, as still as it can get, therapy is for everyone.