There are several reasons why people rely on coaching. It can boil down to a desire to develop certain qualities, like leadership skills. The need to reflect on your way of life or to connect with yourself. The desire to make more conscious decisions. Sometimes, people are confronted with concrete issues, such as difficulties with hierarchy, conflicts with colleagues, recurring relationship issues, the fear of failure or not living up to people’s expectations or constant criticism from others.
The basis of many of these issues can be found in (often dysfunctional) relationship patterns: relationships with others but also with yourself. These patterns are partly subconscious and non-rational and are founded in your life’s history, your biography. After all, our biography determines who we become and how we function in our current lives to a large extent, both at work and at home. Insights into these patterns and our biography’s influence, ‘the echo of the past in the present’, can help us to solve these problems, change our behaviour and create opportunities.
Consulting a coach on these topics can create a lot of freedom. A coaching process offers the necessary space to get to know your own motives, connect the dots, remove blockages, communicate more effectively, improve relationships, increase autonomy and make more conscious decisions. Basically: it is the opportunity to take life back into your own hands.
Saskia de Maat uses psychoanalytic and systemic perspective in her coaching practice. The start of the coaching always involves a Biographical Interview. The coaching process focuses on analysing and recognising patterns together, with a view to understanding them in the context of the past and improving your life in the present. This is done in a safe and non-judgemental atmosphere.
