6 questions to ask in your coaching session that can help clients overcome self-doubt

6 questions to ask in your coaching session that can help clients overcome self-doubt

Motivational interviewing is a powerful tool to help clients actively lead their own health and wellness journey.

When you ask your customers questions, you not only learn more about them, but you also create a safe space for them to reflect on past and current experiencesHealth behavior.

One of the most powerful and effective results of motivational interviewing is the power it has to help clients overcome doubt. Doubt is a common experience among people who have a desire to adopt a new health behavior or change an existing one, but are aware of the personal and environmental challenges that may arise in doing so.

In this article, we give you six question prompts you can use to engage your client in a discussion that will help them overcome self-doubt.

What is Motivational Interviewing?

Motivational interviewing is a technique where you create a safe space for customers to tell you about their experiences, opinions, knowledge and desires. Not only does the coach become aware of his clients' unique experiences and challenges, but clients are given space to express their priorities and goals more specifically and connect with deep motivating factors behind current and desired behaviors.

During motivational interviews, you ask your clients open questions about their current health behavior; why they developed these behaviors; whether, how and why they thought about changing it; and many other topics. When you don't judge when they respond, they feel validated and heard, and this creates a sense of trust in the coach-client relationship.

If appropriate, you can ask customers if they would like to hear about the information you have before offering it freely. When coaches ask for permission and encourage reflection, this can greatly influence clients' openness to information that may be useful to them.

You can find out more about itmotivational interviewing, including core principles and core competencies, here.

The role of doubt in some health behavior change frameworks

Health behavior change frameworks are extremely useful for understanding how people adopt and maintain healthy behaviors that are conducive to well-being. They are also useful in helping us think about factors that prevent people from moving from one stage of behavior change to another that brings them closer to sustainably adopting a new health practice.

Remember that self-doubt is just one type of doubt that can prevent people from changing their health behaviors after realizing the desire to do so. Other types of doubt may include a lack of trust in a healthcare provider and/or whether environmental factors allow the person to change their health behaviors.

The role of doubt in the transtheoretical model of behavior change

The transtheoretical model was developed by Prochaska and DiClemente with the aim of summarizing the unifying factors of several behavior change theories. The transtheoretical stages of the change model, depicted below and described in detail in the full Health Behavior Change Theories blog, are summarized into five main stages:

Pre-contemplation contemplation preparation action maintenance

An individual's movement along the five stages is viewed as progress toward the desired change. At any stage, a person may revert to an earlier stage.

Why may a person relapse or fail to move on to the next stage of health behavior change? There are several reasons including:

Lack of social support Lack of access to health services Change in priorities Change in health goals Change in health status Change or underestimation of the power of social, environmental and psychological determinants of health

Self-doubt is considered one of the psychological or cognitive determinants of health. Health coaches play an important role in understanding and supporting clientschange their way of thinkingwhich can hinder their progress from one stage to another.

The role of doubt in the health belief model of behavior change

The Health Belief Model is one of the most widely used health behavior change frameworks. It is also one of the oldest in Western society, which is why it has numerous studies supporting its use.

The Health Belief Model focuses on the psychological determinants of health behavior change. Psychological determinants include:

Perceived susceptibility to developing a health condition Perceived severity of the health condition Perceived usefulness of actions to prevent or reduce the risk of the current disease Perceived barriers to taking action Evidence of actions or events that motivate a person to do something else Efficacy or confidence in a person's ability to act

The psychological determinants are interconnected and shaped by trauma. Below is the diagram that explains how the various psychological factors interact according to the Health Belief Model.

Self-efficacy is the opposite of self-doubt. So when health coaches want to help clients overcome self-doubt, they should aim to improve clients' sense of self-efficacy.

Characteristics of self-doubt

Beata Souders, a doctoral student in psychology, identifies several characteristics that people with self-doubt or lack of self-efficacy may exhibit.

These include:

Avoiding challenges for fear of failure Believing they are unable to change or accomplish complicated tasks Focusing on adversity and past mistakes as character traits or personal weaknesses Lack of commitment

6 motivational interview question prompts to help clients overcome self-doubt

Note: Remember the principles of to followmotivational interviewingif you use these question prompts in your practice.

Can you tell me about a time when you made a change in your life?

When your clients go to a health coaching session with you, they may assume that you will only talk about progress toward their health goals. If a person has self-doubt about their ability to change their health behaviors, they may have a hard time remembering that they are capable of changing.

Shifting the focus from contentious health behaviors to positive past experiences can not only improve mood, but also provides your clients with an opportunity to reflect on situations in which they were able to overcome adversity.

Some follow-up questions you may want to ask are:

What do you think made this situation different from other moments when you faced adversity? Can you think of another situation where you wanted to change something and did it? Can you think of a situation where a change was unexpected but you enjoyed the result?

What personal strengths do you have that will help you achieve your health goals?

It's possible that your client will respond that they don't have the skills they need to achieve their health goals. In this case, you may not want to talk about health goals for a few minutes because they may feel particularly vulnerable or doubtful at that moment. Instead, you can ask them to think about a professional or personal goal they have achieved in the past. If they are having difficulty thinking of something, you can give some examples, such as: Such as graduating from high school or college, getting a certificate, getting a job, buying a house, or getting your taxes in order.

Then ask them to identify their personal strengths that enabled them to achieve this goal. If they still have difficulty expressing their strengths, you can ask for permission to share your client's strengths based on the information they shared with you. Some adjectives you may want to use include:

Self-confident, committed, hard-working, organized, focused, strong, resilient, trustworthy, determined, confident, convinced, courageous, composed, assertive

You can ask whether they agree with these descriptors and explain how their past actions reveal these characteristics. Next, you can explore whether these characteristics can be applied to achieving their health goals and even visualize what it would look like if they did.

What encourages and inspires you?

You can focus this question on your health goals, but not necessarily. If you choose to apply it to your client's health goals, it will help highlight the perceived benefits and action cues of the Health Belief Model.

First, some clients may find it helpful to talk more broadly about what encourages and inspires them and to explore those elements. Then you can ask them if they think the people, feelings, or items mentioned are relevant to their health behaviors and goals.

You may also want to ask if they are interested in changing their health goals so that they are more clearly aligned with what encourages and inspires them.

What can you gain from a change?

This question helps clients reflect on the perceived benefits of changing their health behaviors. One of the benefits of this question is that customers often don't see the benefit until the end goal is achieved. If appropriate, you can offer information about how incremental changes can provide benefits.

For example, if your customer wants to meet the minimumPhysical Activity Guidelines(30 minutes of moderate exercise a day, five days a week) as part of a strategy to lower their high blood pressure, with their permission, you can tell them that even a few minutes of exercise a day will benefit their heart health.

Not only do these conversations provide a safe space to discuss progress and setbacks, but they also help clients put aside an all-or-nothing mentality and be proud and forgiving of themselves.

Who could support you in this transition?

The role of social support in overcoming self-doubt is often overlooked. Humans are naturally social creatures who thrive in close-knit groups. Social support may or may not include family members. These can be friends, colleagues or people from self-help groups.

Your client may even specifically view you as someone whose support they seek to make a health change. If this is the case or your client is having trouble finding people they can rely on, offer your full support and ask them what that should look like.

However, remember to reinforce your professional boundaries so that youDon't experience burnout.

What can we work on together so you can feel the progress I've seen?

Before asking this question, ask your client if they are comfortable with you making an observation about their progress.

With their permission, provide a specific observation or example of the progress you perceive and recall characteristics related to self-efficacy.

Here is an example of how you might use this question:

Since we first met, I've noticed that you have [make a positive observation about their progress]. This shows great [mention traits or characteristics]. How can we work together to change your goals and help you appreciate the progress I've seen?

The purpose of this question is to re-evaluate your client's coaching plan or health goals. You may find that the goals they originally set with you were unrealistic. Effectiveness to achieve health behavior goals and maintain positive health behaviors over the long term.

Main takeaways

Self-doubt is a common problem when people want to make changes in every aspect of their lives. When it comes to health behavior, the health coach is the primary expert to help clients overcome self-doubt and other cognitive barriers to positive health behavior change.

Motivational interviewing techniques are a way to examine the various components that influence health beliefs that influence how individuals make progress toward health behavior change. When the question arises...

... more about that in the next part.
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