Self-Therapy Journey as an Adjunct to Coaching


Self-Therapy Journey (STJ) is an interactive online tool for personal growth that integrates well with many different approaches to coaching. 

If you are currently working with a personal or executive coach, this page discusses the various ways that STJ can be a useful adjunct to this work. 

Healthy Capacities and Homework Practices

STJ provides a framework for identifying your “signature strengths,” which can be drawn on in service of your coaching goals. The healthy capacities are a natural way of looking at these strengths. This fits well with the positive focus of coaching.

For example, after you collaborate with your coach in identifying those capacities that you are strongest in, the coach might say, “Let’s do some brainstorming. How can your Assertiveness Capacity support your goal of being more visible at work? And how can your Work Confidence Capacity support your next steps?”

STJ helps you to recognize which healthy capacities you need to cultivate or enhance in order to reach your goals. It is fairly easy to translate a specific goal into the capacity needed to get there.  

STJ can help you identify emotional issues that may be interfering with reaching your coaching goals. You can learn about your current behaviors, feelings, and thoughts that are limiting your options. Then you can use STJ to move past these obstacles and develop the capacities that will allow you to achieve your desired outcomes. STJ is particularly good at helping you to create homework practices to activate these capacities in particular situations in your life.

For example, suppose Diane has the goal of getting a job. She needs to find job possibilities and be successful in job interviews or conversations with companies that might hire her as a consultant. She discovers that she needs to develop her Social Confidence Capacity so that she can network with people in her field in order to make connections that might lead to job opportunities. This capacity will also help her in job interviews to confidently explain her skills and capacities and how they could benefit a particular organization.

Diane can use STJ to develop and activate her Social Confidence Capacity. She can also use it to work through her Self-Effacing Pattern that blocks her Social Confidence and to create a homework practice to enhance her Social Confidence in job interviews.

False Beliefs and Wisdoms

Each pattern is based on one or more false beliefs. For example, the Controlling Pattern involves being too invested in running the show and dominating other people, such as by micromanaging. This pattern includes false beliefs like the following:
  • I can only be safe if I am in charge of situations.
  • I can only get what I want if I am in control.
  • Other people can’t be trusted to handle things well, so I must be in charge.
  • I have the right to dominate people and get my way.
There is much more to the Controlling Pattern, but this is a quick way to summarize the important dysfunctional beliefs that may be involved.

Furthermore, each capacity has a wisdom, which more accurately expresses how things really work. The capacity that is needed to transform the Controlling Pattern is the Cooperation Capacity. The wisdom of the Cooperation Capacity is as follows:
  • In most situations, I can be safe without being in control.
  • By asserting myself, I can often get what I want without being in control.
  • I can be discriminating about when I can trust other people to be competent, so I don’t always have to be in charge.
  • Everyone has the right to have input into what happens in a situation. No one has the right to dominate.
STJ helps you to recognize your versions of the false beliefs for any given pattern, see through them, and embrace the wisdom of the corresponding healthy capacity.

Quizzes

You can take quizzes which provide scores for each of your patterns. This is especially useful in helping you understand which of your patterns are preventing you from reaching your goals. You can also take quizzes which help you to understand which healthy capacities would be useful for you to develop. This can then guide your coaching work.

To access the quizzes, go to Quiz Central.

Coaching Sessions and STJ Sessions

In a coaching session, you may identify a pattern that is blocking your progress or a capacity that would help you reach your goals. You can then work on this pattern or capacity on your own between sessions using STJ. This empowers you and gives you a greater sense of being in charge of your own work. And because of the structured nature of STJ, it keeps track of everything you do, so you can know exactly what you have done and where to go next.

Clients can also use STJ to work on issues they are interested in, and then come back to your coach  for any help you need.

STJ is especially useful if you can't afford to see your coach every week. You can work on yourself in those weeks when you don't have a coaching session, and in this way enhance the effectiveness of your coaching.