Realism, Personal Responsibility, Individualism. All worthy goals! Coaching with Dr. Hurd is solution-focused and goal-oriented. Time is spent discussing your problems in the here-and-now, with reference to your background and your childhood only when relevant.
Therapy tends to be about what’s wrong, what are the symptoms and what can someone else do for you to relieve you?
Coaching, in contrast, tends to be about what’s right, what your track record is, what are your strengths, what are your potentialities and how can you build on them?
Therapy tends to label you, while coaching tends to lift you up.
Introspection, Coaching and Self-Help that Work
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Introspection: What’s in it for you? (Click each point to learn more)
A helper/coach should talk to you, and have a dialogue with you. This point sounds like common sense, but many conventional helpers appear to be highly passive and do not respond to their clients other than to nod “um-hmm” or occasionally to ask, “What do you think?” You should expect your coach to engage in an active dialogue with you, while still maintaining a professional detachment.
Bad help rests on the premise that your childhood experiences shaped you in ways that are largely beyond your control in adult life. Good help rests on the opposite premise: That you can and should rise above your past. Typically, conventional thinking presumes there is little you can do about your early experiences — other than to identify them and insist that others in your life realize they have disabled and victimized you. A good, compassionate listener understands that while you do not have control over your early childhood experiences, you do have control over how you think and act in the present. He or she will help direct you in a healthy direction: To reject and rise above mistaken, dysfunctional patterns of thinking and acting.
Emotional states are in YOUR mind. Experts who suggest you are totally determined by other forces — social, familial, biological — are simply wrong. As proof of this fact, look at the state of the world despite the unprecedented number of therapists, psychiatrists and self-help gurus. We’re getting worse. If you’re going to truly get help, you will need a different approach from what the mainstream is presently offering.
In personal coaching with Dr. Hurd, you can learn how to reinforce rational ideas in place of irrational ones whenever possible (e.g., to reinforce the healthy idea, “I am my own keeper” to replace the mistaken idea, “I am everyone else’s keeper”). You can learn the technique of psychological entrepreneurism. You can discover the virtue and healthiness of going with your own independent, reasoned judgment throughout life. You can learn to develop a time budget and how to “reprogram” your mind where necessary. Confidently integrate the acceptance of reality into your everyday life, without losing the need for idealism and romance while living a rationally self-interested life, rather than a mindless or self-sacrificing one.
Both rational and irrational individuals feel. The distinctive feature of a healthy, happy person is his/her habitual use of introspection to examine the truth or falsehood of automatized thoughts/feelings. This is something most of us are not taught — and, in fact, many of us have learned just the opposite.
Everyone talks about communication, but few people practice it. Either we say nothing about an emotional or difficult topic, or we explode or overreact to it. In the great majority of cases, there is a third alternative: rational assertiveness. Good helpers can teach and reinforce healthy principles of communication which will, in turn, improve your relationships. People can be very different, but the great majority respond well to dignified, respectful communication. Usually they want the same things you want: kindness and sensitivity integrated with honesty and objectivity.
Generally, the key to dealing with difficult people is to be firm but without becoming defensive or hostile, as these show weakness. A good personal coach can help you rehearse for handling difficult individuals and, at the same time, learn to accept that you will never change who they are. Dr. Hurd will also remind you that you have choices. In many cases, you need not interact with difficult individuals at all. In most if not all other cases, you can drastically minimize your contact with them. In cases where you have no choice, coaching sessions can help you learn not to give such people psychological power.
Dr. Hurd has published a wealth of articles, books and essays designed to motivate and teach you. His most recent book, “Bad Therapy, Good Therapy (and How to Tell the Difference)” inoculates you against the irrational influences of most conventional, professional approaches to help, while providing you with a sound alternative in terms you can understand and apply to daily life. His second book, “Grow Up America!” helps you move past the excuses of today’s culture — excuses perpetuated by people (therapists, lawyers, politicians) who want you to remain dependent upon them in some form — and towards independence and the rational pursuit of happiness.
Dr. Hurd is on your side, but will never compromise objectivity or honesty. Your relationship with the him is strictly professional and confined to your coaching session times. No professional of any kind can replace a loved one in your personal life. But a professional helper can act as an objective voice of reason in your life, to make sure you consider all the relevant options before taking important actions. Probably everyone needs a good objective sounding board at some point in his or her life. Move past labeling yourself “crazy” or making excuses like “attention deficit disorder.” Labels make you stagnate. Rather, coaching is about improving your life and doing what’s objectively right for yourself.
The ultimate goal is to help people independently use their minds in the pursuit of psychological achievement and fulfillment.
Set boundaries and limits with others … Be more realistic in your goal- setting … Schedule time for your commitments, the same way you do for appointments with others … Always leave room for mind-and-body refueling … Control your environment better … Learn these techniques and more.
Change your thinking before trying to change self-defeating behaviors … Learn how stopping undesirable behaviors is much less complicated than the psychiatric business leads you to believe … Learn to accept that you do have free will and, like it or not, you are doing these self-destructive things, but that you can stop … Consider what you subjectively get out of doing these things even though on the surface they seem irrational.
Getting past the idea of what’s normal, which simply means what most people are doing (something we don’t even know since people are rarely frank and open about sex) … Replace the idea of being normal in sexuality with the idea of doing what objectively serves your interest and the interest of your partner … Understand that sex sometimes breaks down when your mind is trying to tell you, “Pay attention to something here!” … How to better value and enjoy sex, but at the same time recognizing that sex is not the only value in romantic relationships (heresy in today’s culture)…
See how procrastination is usually a sign that you have been over-thinking and under-acting … Learn why the question, “Why do I procrastinate?” is the most counter-productive one to ask yourself … Better understand the importance of integrating thought and action, mind and body … How to take small steps to reverse the procrastination process immediately… Analyze what you subjectively get out of procrastinating, irrational as you insist (on the surface) that it is…
Learn how the first rule of relationships is a healthy “I,” rather than the absence of a self (as we have all been taught) … Learn too that respecting the other’s equal right to an “I” is crucially important … Find ways to cope with the fact that you simply cannot and will never change or mold somebody else into the person you feel you want them to be, and that most efforts to do so end in disaster … Discover the subtle but crucial differences between rational parenting versus either permissive or authoritarian parenting, both of which involve the same basic underlying error … Learn the rewards of treating personal/family life as a value to the same degree you treat financial and career life as top values.
How not to let moods overtake your life; feelings are important, but there’s more to life than just feelings! … Learn how anxiety without a reason usually means there is a big reason: Having convinced yourself that you are unfit to live and cope, even though there is probably much evidence to the contrary … Discover how to become an independent judge of reality rather than a passive recipient of what others tell you to do and think … And much more you won’t find in what passes today for “spirituality” or “self-help.”
Learn how to weather these rough periods, and most of all accept that they are temporary transitions to something better if you approach it this way … Discover how destructive it is to keep a relationship in a half-way state, somewhere between broken-up and still together … Why all-or-nothing approaches to relationships ultimately lead to success, despite what most mental health professionals preach … See how being single has its advantages and a period of singlehood can pave the way for a happy relationship down the road …
See how intelligent, self-responsible introspection is not a passive process that does something “to” you, like surgery or medication … Rather, see how help can consist of a single conversation, or perhaps a series of conversations over time, with an objective party outside of your personal life … A conversation with someone who does not tell you what to do, but rather how to better trust your own mind and judgment to determine this for yourself … Grasp how true, rational help essentially means change and growth, where necessary, and that this is a lifelong process (of which things like coaching are just one piece of the process) …
Traditional helpers treat people as helpless, passive, and unable to control their emotional problems. Dr. Hurd assumes that clients have choices, strengths, and can usually resolve problems in a reasonable period of time.
Check out Dr. Hurd’s article: Philosophy Matters in Life — Here’s Why
Also Check out Dr. Hurd’s article: Politics and Professional Help
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If you are a new client and have already been in contact with Dr. Hurd regarding your first appointment, please fill out and submit the New Client Form.
Consultation/coaching by email, phone or live chat, while potentially very helpful, is not psychotherapy. Psychotherapy can include treatment of serious mental or emotional disorders, while long-distance consultation is for everyday life problems, stress management, or just needing someone to talk to.
