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Recently, I told a friend she had adopted counselor-voice when talking to me. Later, I took time to reflect on what I meant by that. Voice Therapy, founded by Robert Forestone, gives language or spoken words to negative thought patterns that make up the foundation of maladaptive behavior. I refer to therapies that use the voice as a guiding force as Talk Therapy, with counselors falling under that category.
I’ve been a coach all of my adult life. Coaching requires active listening skills, performance assessment, and setting training steps for outcome achievement. Though not therapy by any means, I did use my voice for motivational and focusing purposes. Coach-voice has many similarities to counselor-voice, and since I’ve recently retired from coaching and have been transitioning out of a coaching mindset, I decided to review how I came to hear my coach-voice as a way of understanding counselor-voice better.
A key ingredient in coaching is telling others what to do—giving them steps to follow, laying out training systems, including warm-ups, practice, performance application, and cool down. My first step in my transition was to listen to what I told others to do. I gathered up all the “you shoulds,” “do this,” “have you tried,” and the many ways I had of telling others how to best live their lives. It was all meant to be helpful, based on many years of experience. Except, friendly conversation is not a place for coaching, and acquaintances let me know they didn’t appreciate my efforts to show them the right way. My first step was to flip all the…
