Home Page

Think and plan! Relationship and emotional management is important during downturns and recessions. Our recession coaching can increase your adaptability and flexibility. Don't let financial distress pull you into emotional recession. You are not alone - we can help you.

Survival Coaching ... Financial Maturity ... Financial Coaching

Coaching in a Crisis

A recession is a difficult time for most people. How can you survive economic recession while avoiding emotional recession? First, stop hurting or punishing yourself! Stop sabotaging your recovery, your health and your relationships! Change your reactions to the recession now (and seek help if you have felt stressed for a week or more). The longer you wait - the worse it can get.

Bear markets fall. We can help you recession-proof your career and family and avoid financial difficulties. We can coach you as you secure your current position, find alternate work before you become desperate, and build an independent income that can profit during a downturn or slump.

During a recession there are widespread job cuts, which impacts household spending, consumer demand, manufacturing and investment. Many people feel devastated and lost. Most people become more cautious - attempting to limit their expenses and save as much as possible. This deepens the decline, which causes more caution ... less spending ... and so on. You may lose motivation ... a depression may feel close.

Our recession coaching helps people to change their unpleasant emotional reactions, limiting beliefs and stress. We coach people to change stress-related obsessions and compulsions. If even one member of a family, team or organization changes dysfunctional patterns, other members of that relationship system can move towards health. Welcome to systemic coaching!

Our coaching includes the work of Murray Bowen, who developed natural systems theories about the interaction of variables in human relationships. These systemic variables predict and produce behaviour; including physical and emotional responses. These same variables can predict and produce both chronic disease and long-term success. We coach systemic change.

The families and organizations who prepared for a recession will likely come out of it in healthy and strong. They will have a better time during a recession because of their planning. Those who ignored the risk of recession but reacted quickly when the downturn began will do better than those who live on hope and prayer, and still don’t recognize how serious the problems are. If and when they do react, it may be too late to do anything except hope for charity or pray for state aid.

Don't give your family, employer or team members reason to question your loyalty or allegiance. During a layoff, employers will first terminate employees who are often late, who disturb others or who are not team players. You may wish you had started recession coaching a year ago ... but it's not too late!

Control Stress: Checklist for Change

Are you a recession victim or a recession survivor? Neuroscience predicts that prolonged stress damages your brain, cardiovascular and immune systems. If you feel recession stress, or if you are in danger of it, we can coach you to manage stress, increase your resiliency – and to create, test, troubleshoot and follow well thought out plans.

• Do you know what to do?
• Do you only try to do what worked before?
• Do you see the problems and potential consequences?
• Do you try to treat the symptoms rather than the underlying problem?

If you try to fix relationships in troubled times, you are likely to:

• build resistance (to your arrogance)
• waste time trying to analyze people
• avoid clarity about your own motivation and goals
• be irritated if people don't appreciate your efforts

If we coach your family, team or organization, we help you:

• explore the who, what, when, where, and how
• observe and relate to members in all parts of the system
• investigate system traumas, myths, patterns, rules & bonds
• resolve incongruence between identity, values, beliefs, behaviour and environment

Recession Coaching - Communication

You still have all the resources that you had before the challenging times. We can help you remember and intentionally use them.

When we spend time with family or team members in their own setting, we quickly become aware of their communication habits. When we meet people alone, or by telephone, we are less likely to observe their habits. Hence we prefer to coach a family or organization on a one-to-one basis and in groups.

1. We can develop personal relationships with each member
2. We can contact peripheral members, to gather information to gain perspective
3. We may, with permission, explore perspectives of ex-members

Cut-off members of a family, team or organization are often people who broke the rules and were kicked out. Excluded people can give important feedback about the unwritten rules. (As contacting excluded members can upset current members, we first ask their permission.)

Rich or Poor?

Unless you live in a saturated market there are probably alternate positions available. What can you do to "recession proof" your work? Keep your eyes and ears open. Ask your manager, CEO or company owner how things are going and if the organization is stable. Don't just ask if there is anything you can do to help ... suggest what you can do that can benefit the whole family, team or organization.

Many people do not suffer in a recession. They can become richer if they take advantage of opportunities that poor people cannot see. We can coach you through these volatile times.

If you hear rumours about cutbacks and layoffs, explore what is true ... don't pass along gossip, however scary. How you ask questions or offer advice may trigger emotional responses. If emotional reactions seem out of proportion to your words, then our systemic diagnosis can identify the underlying emotional causes and as a basis for finding appropriate and effective solutions.

1. After we observe dysfunctional patterns, we can help change them
2. We help you predict the responses to expect, and control your stress
3. We help you communicate your thoughts and feelings in skilful and helpful ways
4. If possible, we initiate the beginnings and endings of talks, phone calls and meetings.

Systemic Recession Coaching

We can take a position in your family, team or organization ... we become guests of your system.

1. We find balance between observing abstract values and specific actions; between observing internal process and external behaviour; and between being serious and humorous.
2. We remain emotionally poised
:


• arrange one-to-one coaching as well as group meetings
• avoid believing criticism about absent people
• avoid taking sides
  
  
3. If we find relationship triangles (see conflicts & triangulation):



• Communicate with people who are important to the senior members
• Communicate with people with more or less authority than those present
• Communicate with people who have been cut off from the system



4. Withheld secrets and hidden agendas form boundaries between secret keepers and naive members that foster and perpetuate anger and hatred.
5. We remain aware of your feelings ... anxiety, sorrow and anger can warn you that you may be getting sucked into transferences or other systemic communication loops.
6. We try to use anniversaries, lay-offs and deaths to contact excluded members.
7. We are aware of the systemic forces that follow the loss of a member, and how members of a system try to compensate for the missing or dead person.

Love in a Recession

Love has many synonyms, such as respect, acceptance, caring and encouragement. Healthy people can choose to act lovingly during times of stress and anxiety. Our systemic coaching can help organizations, families or teams deal with stress and manage confusion:

• control reactions to other people's actions
• express emotions peacefully and assess reactions
• tolerate discomfort during your development and learning

Recession-Proofing

1. Are you flexible enough to change?
2. Are the causes controllable or uncontrollable?
3. Are the sources of your problems internal or external?
4. Are the problems or consequences permanent or temporary? (Declaring problems or consequences to be temporary can be dangerous. What is your evidence?)

You may be laid off or go bankrupt - prepare for the worst. Even in a recession, there are opportunities and some people will do well. We coach people to survive and thrive. Some steps of our strategy are:

1. build a sense of urgency (with courage, not fear)
2. help leaders or parents build quality relationships
3. recognize deficiencies, set goals and make plans
4. develop visions, goals and strategies with all members
5. encourage participation and cooperation to clean up the mess

Survive a recession - invest in systemic, leadership and emotional coaching. Do you want to dissolve success blocks and relationship issues? Do you want to understand what makes sense in a recession and control worries about economic collapse? You need not feel alone.

Would you like to benefit from our experience?

Copyright © Martyn Carruthers 2008-2010 All rights reserved.

Copyright © Martyn Carruthers 1996-2010 All rights reserved. Soulwork Systemic Coaching was primarily developed by Martyn Carruthers. We coach and train people to define and achieve goals, to resolve emotional blocks and to improve relationships. This information is for your general knowledge only. Please consult a physician about medical conditions and before changing any medical treatment. You must get Martyn's written permission to post or publish his work.