You may have heard of coaching before, such as with life coaches, but did you know there are also folks out there offering coaching for body-focused repetitive behaviours (BFRBs)? Maybe you’ve seen them across the internet and read their websites or social pages, but still aren’t sure about them. Maybe this is the first time hearing about this option for managing and addressing your BFRB at all.
That’s pretty much the reason for this blog: to provide an inside look at being a BFRB coach. As we mentioned in the previous blog, An Inside Look at BFRB Treatment Providers, it’s always important to do your research when it comes to considering the individuals you might work with for your BFRB. It could mean researching more about the coach themselves or the methods they’re offering to make an informed decision and ensure you have a good fit.
With this blog, there are several questions we’re looking to answer, such as what is coaching? How does it work? How can it help? Many of us know about traditional treatment providers, but coaching seems to be a little more on the fringes. In a world where treatment options in any sense for BFRBs are still farily new, that’s not surprising.
Sandra Kodsi, Skin Picking Coach, and Annette Pasternak, the Stop Skin Picking Coach, took the time to share their experiences and insights with being coaches to folks with BFRBs. Although both primarily work with people with dermatillomania, Pasternak has worked with other BFRBs and Kodsi hopes to in the future as well. This blog will be broken down into the following sections, and I encourage you to read through each of them to get a full overview of what coaching can look like.
- Defining Coaches
- Coach Training and Accreditation
- What to Expect When Working with a BFRB Coach
- The Coach Approach
- The Challenges that Come with BFRB Coaching
- The Highlights: How Can BFRB Coaching Help?
- Taking It From Here…
Let’s begin.
Defining Coaches
Think of how you might describe a coach in general. You probably think of someone with the knowledge to guide you, support you, and ultimately help you reach your goals. When it comes to being a BFRB coach, Kodsi and Pasternak describe it much in the same way, even though coaching practice might look different from coach to coach.
“A BFRB coach is someone professionally trained to help clients maximize their full potential and reach their desired results,” explains Kodsi.
She adds that a BFRB coach pushes their clients to identify goals while also holding them accountable to their progress and providing encouragement so the client can reach those goals they’ve identified. When it comes to BFRBs, those goals are typically to reduce or stop the behaviour.
Pasternak says, “I do this by providing support, education, and individualized recommendations based on some simple ‘detective work.’”
Overall, coaching is about working with the client to establish what they’d like to achieve and then working to formulate a plan on how to get the individual to that goal in a way that works for them.
Coach Training and Accreditation
When we’re looking for options to address our medical concerns, one thing that might come to mind is someone’s training and accreditation. That builds confidence that the person we’re considering trusting our struggles with has the professional backing to guide us towards what we want to achieve, whether it be stopping or reducing the picking, pulling, or biting. While there’s no specific training or accreditation for BFRB coaching, there are training courses and accreditation options for coaching in general.
Both Pasternak and Kodsi have undergone coaching courses. For Pasternak, she was a part of a nearly year-long health coaching course that encouraged participants to specialize for a health problem they experienced themselves, which is what led her to BFRBs, or more specifically in her case, skin picking coaching. Her certification comes from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition.
For Kodsi, she went through Quantum Coaching Academy and took the extra step of registering with the International Coaching Federation (ICF).
The ICF website highlights three possible credentials.
- Associate Certified Coach (60+ hours of training and 100+ hours of coaching experience)
- Professional Certified Coach (125+ hours of training and 500+ hours of coaching experience)
- Master Certified Coach (200+ hours of training and 2,500+ hours of coaching experience).
“Having an ICF recognized credential enhances your credibility and reassures potential clients that you are an experienced and professional coach,” Kodsi explains of this decision to register. “It demonstrates that you stand by a strong code of ethics and have a high knowledge and applied skill level of coaching tools.”
Kodsi is currently applying for the Professional Certified Coaching level. She explains that she does her coach training through Quantum Coaching Academy, which is recognized by ICF, and then submits the completion of training done there to the ICF for consideration with accreditation.
One thing both of these coaches highlighted is that each coach may have their own path in this kind of area. For instance, they may have other training, schooling, or credentials that make up their background and expertise, but there’s no one distinct set of credentials for being a coach. Pasternak points out as well that anyone could call themselves a coach, meaning that these sorts of certifications aren’t a requirement for coaching practice. This is worth keeping in mind if you’re considering working with a BFRB coach.
What to Expect When Working with a BFRB Coach
So you’ve chosen to work with a BFRB coach and have booked your appointment or consultation. Now what? As explained above, the coach will work with you to establish some foundational aspects, such as your goals, and then work with you to develop accountability and practices that can steer you toward them and better your situation.
“The process typically requires many steps,” Pasternak says. “In addition to strategies to directly prevent the behaviour in each circumstance in which it occurs, lifestyle changes may also be necessary, such as improving sleep, diet, and/or exercise. Stress reduction is crucial, too.”
She describes it as a matter of finding out what increases or exacerbates the BFRB, what decreases the behaviour, and then employing strategies to make habits out of the various things that help reduce or stop it.
For Kodsi, she says her role as a coach is to identify the why behind the BFRB, which can be achieved through things like understanding the client’s limiting beliefs, knowledge, and other ideas or challenges that have been “imprinted” on them. Once these areas are established, she can work with her client to come up with a plan of action to help them achieve the desired outcomes “through consciousness shifts, subconscious reprogramming, and holistic modifications.”
She also says she’s there for her clients by offering continued support and accountability, even between sessions, to facilitate success in their journey. It’s about ensuring clients are empowered with the skills they already have and the guidance to ensure they know how to use them.
The Coach Approach
That brings us to the next area of this conversion: the approach that BFRB coaches use to help their clients. As touched on above, things like nutrition, sleep patterns, lifestyle, and overall wellbeing factor into the approaches that coaches can take, as well as focusing on thought patterns and holistic methods, but they can pull from more traditional areas as well.
“The program I offer my clients is anchored on the science of neuroplasticity and neurobiology,” Kodsi notes.
Pasternak says she also coaches with techniques that are common to CBT, adding, “I draw on anything that works from any modality.”
However, Kodsi still doesn’t strictly identify with traditional scientific methods, highlighting how a quantum, spiritual, and holistic perspective set her apart. She says these areas can include connecting to our essences, cultivating awareness of belief systems, exploring how our experiences shape our mentality and nervous systems holistically, and lifestyle triggers. She sees this potentially unconventional method as an opportunity for those who haven’t found the success they’re looking for with traditional treatment options.
Ultimately, both Kodsi and Pasternak noted that their approach is tailored to the person their working with, and that their goal is to ensure that the client has the best guidance and treatment for their needs. That can mean coupling coaching with traditional treatment options, like therapy, or even going with therapy over coaching.
“Many of my clients see therapists as well. Sometimes therapists refer them to me for the picking specifically. Other times, I’ll suggest therapy if I feel a client’s needs are beyond what I’m able to provide,” Pasternak says.
Kodsi agrees, saying that it’s necessary for coaches to recognize when a client’s needs are beyond their scope.
“I have many potential clients whom I’ve turned down, recognizing therapy would be a better fit depending on their degree of mental illness,” she says. “I also encourage my client to continue the work that they are doing with their therapists as both approaches can work for the client’s maximum benefit synergistically.”
The Challenges that Come with BFRB Coaching
When it comes to BFRB coaching, there are a few different ways challenges can manifest, starting with the difficulty of stopping or reducing the picking, pulling, or biting behaviours themselves. Part of the coach’s job is to stick with you and work through these challenges.
“It’s important to know there is no ‘magic bullet,’” Pasternak says. “We tend to think there is one thing that’s going to make us stop, if only we could find out what it is.”
With the many steps and layers coaching uses to address BFRBs, it can take time to uncover what will help decrease or stop the behaviour. And, Pasternak notes, there’s also sometimes the part of a person that doesn’t want to stop the behaviour, so that can add another layer of challenge and is definitely something to address with the coaching as well.
Kodsi feels one of her greatest challenges as a coach comes from those who don’t see coaching as a legitimate option that can benefit people, especially those struggling with BFRBs.
The Highlights: How Can BFRB Coaching Help?
The benefits that come from working with a BFRB coach can be manifold, including no longer feeling alone with the picking, pulling, or biting behaviours. As was mentioned earlier, when going through the coach training, a person might be encouraged to focus in on an area they’re familiar with. Both Kodsi and Pasternak chose BFRBs because they have personal experience with skin picking, which gives them the opportunity to directly identify with the client.
“Simply speaking with someone who understands from experience what you’re going through [is a benefit],” Pasternak says. “The comfort and security you feel from that judgement-free interaction reduces shame and is healing in itself.”
Beyond that, both coaches note that clients have a moment where something clicks into place in relation to what they’ve learned while working with their coach.
“My favourite part is probably seeing someone light up in a session when they learn or experience an insight, a missing puzzle piece they know will make a big difference for them,” Pasternak says, adding that it’s also great when they share their improvements. “It can be life-changing.”
The happiness that a client feels in those moments translates to the coach as well. Pasternak and Kodsi both mention specifically the “transformation” that clients can undergo and how wonderful it is to be a part of that. Kodsi describes it as a “huge honour” that she wouldn’t trade.
Taking It From Here…
There you have it: an inside look into being a BFRB coach. Like with treatment providers, this is only something that scratches the surface, but I hope it’s given you some sense of this option for approaching your BFRB. Maybe you’ll find that this course of addressing BFRBs will be more effective for you. Maybe it’ll be a combination of both this and traditional treatment.
Whatever the case may be, our goal here at CBSN is to provide you with the resources and information to help you make informed decisions. There’s still much more we could discuss and look into when it comes to managing and addressing BFRBs, but hopefully this has given you the chance to learn more about working with a BFRB coach in particular.
As you can imagine, deciding which treatment path to take can take some serious thought and consideration into what you’re looking for, what your expectations are, and even what your budget is. Once again, we encourage everyone to do research and really think on these kinds of things to make an informed choice that works for you.
—