Coaching Practiced

10 Anxiety and the coaching relationship: How to recognise the signs and what to do next

Kasia Szymanska

Abstract

This paper addresses how to recognise and manage symptoms of anxiety in the coaching relationship.

Keywords

anxiety, symptoms, strategies, panic, specific phobia, social phobia and Generalised Anxiety Disorder.

Original publication details: Szymanska, K. (2007, August). Anxiety and the coaching relationship: How to recognise the signs and what to do next. The Coaching Psychologist, 3(2), 85–89. Reproduced with permission of The British Psychological Society.

The second in the series on coaching psychology and mental health issues, this paper focuses on anxiety. From a clinical perspective, anxiety is a generic term which encompasses a number of related disorders as formalised in the DSM-IV-TR. These include panic disorder, specific phobia, social phobia, Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD), Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), Acute Stress Disorder (AST) and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and health anxiety.

This paper will address the symptoms of the first four disorders, panic, specific phobia, social phobia and GAD and focuses on a selection of strategies coaching psychologists can adopt to support clients in managing their symptoms.

Anxiety is a familiar component of the coaching relationship. Clients can present with milder forms of anxiety contextualised within their presenting issues such as increased levels of worrying, concern or physiological symptoms ...