Mark is a pastor with 15 years experience as founding and senior pastor of two church startups. He is currently the director of recoveryremixed.com, an organization devoted to applying the timeless wisdom of recovery to today’s challenges.

Check out the links on this website for more information about these offerings, as well as background material about Mark. Even though this website is in a blog form, it’s not regularly updated. For more timely information, check out the two blogs that Mark writes:

• lastingleaders.com

• sexual-sanity.com

What recovery coaching is NOT

Let’s first address what coaching isn’t. It is not:

• Therapy. Well-trained coaches are very aware of the line between therapy and coaching and are careful to honor that line and refer out to therapists when indicated.
• A replacement for primary treatment, a 12-Step program, or clinical care.
• A substitute for or the equivalent of a “sober companion” or “sober coach.”
• For anyone still actively involved with their substance of choice.
• About affirmations, positive thinking, or platitudes.

What recovery coaching IS

Now let’s look at what coaching is and how it is useful in the recovery process.

High-quality coaching is:

• Focused on the future. While an understanding of the client’s past is important, the recovery coaching process is intended to help the client envision and go about creating a positive future. For some clients this means crafting a comprehensive “life plan.” For others, coaching is focused on specific themes, gaps in personal development, or how to navigate effectively the re-entry into work and life following treatment.
• A robust, intentional process and relationship. A well-trained coach stays intently focused on what the client wants and helps the client identify his/her own agenda and stick to it. Coaching should never be about what the coach thinks is best for the client. While the coach may educate and offer ideas, giving direct advice is discouraged.
• Based on action and accountability. The coach supports the client in envisioning a positive future and then quickly getting into action to create that future. The coach’s job is also to hold the client accountable for follow-through without blaming or shaming the client when not every goal is achieved. It is not uncommon for the coach to continue to hold and honor a client’s vision when the client has temporarily lost sight of it. For someone in recovery this is of tremendous importance, because the years of self-doubt and shame can at times prevent the person from feeling confident, competent, and whole.
• Best used for a defined period of time. Unlike a 12-Step program that an individual might participate in for a lifetime, or clinical therapy that might need to continue for several years to be effective, the action-oriented nature of coaching means that it rarely continues for more than a year and often is needed only for a few sessions or a few months.
• Effective only when an individual is “ready.” Like treatment for addiction in all its forms, coaching is useful only when a client is truly ready. This means that the client is on a solid path toward a solid recovery, has dealt with his/her most significant “past” issues, and has the time and energy to devote to mapping out a new life. The client must be in the position to put energy toward creating a positive future while also maintaining a focus on recovery. Some coaches, myself included, use assessments and questionnaires to assess an individual’s readiness to engage in coaching.

Some specifics about the teleseminar:

Dates: Wednesdays in February (the 6th, 13th, 20th, and 27th)

Times: Wednesdays, 2pm Pacific /4pm Central / 5pm Eastern (calls last for one hour)

Cost: $139

Leader: Mark Brouwer, with Debbie Laaser, and several guests who’ll share their stories. Click here for Mark’s biography, and here for Deb’s biography, and here for information about Deb’s recently published book for wives.

What you will recieve:

1. Four live calls … each including: (1) teaching about sexual compulsion and recovery — what loved ones need and need to know (2) an interview with a “special guest” for the call (wives or parents of sex addicts who have walked the path of recovery) (3) time for Q and A
2. Notes sent out in advance for each call, to facilitate listening and learning, with suggestions for further resources to explore.
3. Access to recordings of the calls, in case you have to miss a live call, or want to listen again
4. Daily recovery-oriented devotions emailed to you during the 30 days of the course
5. The chance to get support from others in similar circumstances if you’d like, but also the option to stay completely anonymous to the group. In fact, if you’re not able to arrange for privacy during weekly teleconferences, you can still participate in the calls without having to talk out loud about potentially embarassing topics.

What you will learn … the content of the seminar sessions:

Session one (February 6) – Where is the line that separates compulsive sexual behavior from a “healthy sex drive”? What are the signs to look for to see if someone is sexually addicted, and how to discern if they are “recovering” or not?

Session two (February 13) – Interview with Debbie Laaser. What wives need to know about sexual compulsion, and what wives need to do to care for themselves in the aftermath of sexual betrayal.

Session three (February 20) — The roots of sexual compulsion, and what addicts need to do to recover. This session will show you the roadmap for recovery, and help you assess what is happening with your loved ones’ recovery process. We’ll pay special attention to problems of dishonesty and trust-building.

Session four (February 27) — This session has two parts. First, what parents can do to protect their kids from sexual danger, and how to help kids already struggling with compulsive sexual behavior. The second part will focus on what we need to do for ourselves — as spouses, family members, and friends of addicts — to find comfort, safety, and support in the midst of our pain. In other words, how can we help those we love without losing our own emotional health in the process?

If you have further questions, call (952-746-3885) or email Mark.

Although I’m a coach, I’ve also served for 15 years as a pastor and have a fair bit of experience in counseling people. And now after working with hundreds of addicts, I have some instincts about how past issues are affecting current behavior (the realm of therapy) which I bring to the table as a recovery coach.

Here are some articles you might find helpful that address this topic in greater detail:

Coaching vs. Therapy - Bridging the Gap, by Laurie A. Sheppard - Although this article seems to be written for coaches, it gives great information about the distinctions and value of coaching and therapy. What I like about it is that she seems to recognize how these two areas overlap, even while affirming the basic distinctions. I think this article sums up my perspective fairly well.

Coaching and Counseling: What is the Connection? by Sharon Brain and Juliet Austin - Great basic article giving an overview of coaching, how it works, and the differences between coaching and therapy.

The Continuing Debate: Therapy or Coaching? by Patrick Williams - very detailed article (17 pages in a pdf format!) written for therapists and coaches, clarifying the differences between coaching and therapy. It’s written by a former therapist who now leads a coaching training school that specializes in helping therapists make the transition to coaching. It contains some information about the history of coaching, distinctions between coaching and therapy, and also instructions for coaches about what to do when clients need therapy.

Here’s an article from William White in Counselor Magazine that describes recovery coaching. It shows how recovery coaching fits into treatment strategies, but it obviously comes from one who seems to only grudingly grant recovery coaching a place at the table.

I would add two thoughts of my own to what White has to say:

(1) People who are trained and experienced in coaching are experts in helping people strategize, stay focused, and build supportive environments around them that will help them reach their goals. This is exactly what many addicts need, and coaches are better equipped for this than therapists, who are trained to diagnose mental disorders and help people work through past trauma. This again highlights how these specialties work hand in hand. Most addicts have issues from their past that they need to work through as part of their recovery. Trauma work is for therapists, but coaching and strategizing are best done with a coach.

(2) Recovery coaching is a greater need in the sex addiction field, because many addicts are living in areas without access to local resources knowledgeable in this field. So if someone goes home from a workshop or treatment center to Smalltown, Kansas … where is he or she going to go for ongoing care? Will they fly once a week to Minneapolis or Nashville? By breaking down the distance barrier, recovery coaching makes quality care available to anybody with a phone and computer (or fax machine).

“The researchers … found that telephone counseling was beneficial and satisfactory, marked by specific improvement on the issue that lead to counseling and global improvement in emotional state. 68 percent [of those surveyed] reported feeling very or completely satisfied with the telephone counseling and 53 percent said they felt somewhat better as a result of counseling.”

Just to be clear … what I offer people is coaching over the phone, not counseling or therapy. Check here for a good article outlining the differences between coaching and therapy. It is oriented to business or leadership coaching, but we can apply its insights to recovery coaching as well. The bottom line in recovery from addiction is that often issues of past trauma need to be worked through, and this is best done in face-to-face therapy.

But a lot of what happens in counseling offices is more about strategizing about meeting the challenges of day to day living … and this is done very well in the context of coaching, and can be done over the phone just as well as in person. In fact, in some ways it can work better over the phone! As the article puts it: “The authors also point out that without an office, clothes and physical appearance to potentially distract them, clients being counseled via phone may be inclined to focus better on what the therapist says.”

The study showed that the people less likely to benefit from help over the phone were “people who reported feeling very poorly.” This also makes sense. People who are struggling — people who are “feeling very poorly” — would be the ones that coaches would refer to face-to-face therapists anyway.

All this to say … if you are needing help, maybe your best step is to pick up the phone!