Beyond Labels: The Distinctive Power of Relational, Embodied Inquiry in Breakthrough Conversations Coaching
When my Scottish educational psychologist mother-in-law visited an American friend with my lively young son, the friend suggested, “Have you ever considered he might have ADHD? Maybe he could benefit from Ritalin.” My mother-in-law replied, “I think it depends on which side of the Atlantic you live on.” This story always reminds me how quickly we move from witnessing natural curiosity to applying diagnostic labels – and how much culture shapes our readiness to do so.
Honouring Neurodiversity, Questioning Constraints
Labels like “neurodiverse” or “ADHD” are vital for acknowledging real challenges and opening doors to support. They can validate struggle, foster community, and help tailor coaching. Yet, as empowering as these identities can be, they risk becoming limiting frameworks – ways of explaining away complexity or even resisting change.
For this reason, many coaches and therapists turn to mindfulness – pausing to observe thoughts and feelings with curiosity and non-judgment. This mindful curiosity is a powerful antidote to rigid labelling, helping us notice our automatic assumptions and see people and ourselves with fresh eyes.
Beyond Mindful Curiosity: The Relational Edge of Breakthrough Conversations
While mindful curiosity encourages us to observe thoughts and feelings non-judgmentally, the Breakthrough Conversations approach goes further. It is explicitly relational and embodied: the coach and client engage in a shared, moment-by-moment tracking of the client’s emotional experience, in the context of real relational challenges.
A key distinction is that this approach is not just about individual self-awareness but about resourcing clients to be with emotions in real time-to celebrate positive emotions and to tolerate difficult emotions. When clients encounter positive emotions (what we might call “Green” states – resourceful, open, and expansive), they often take them for granted or dismiss them. When they encounter difficult emotions (“Red” states – reactive, challenging, or overwhelming), they may react with defiance or compliance. In the more neutral, habitual states (“Amber”), clients may feel stuck or on autopilot.
The coach’s role, in any of these states, is to help the client stay with these feelings – not alone, but in a co-regulated, supportive relationship. This is achieved by inviting ongoing, verbal descriptions of raw sensations, images, and emotions, and reflecting understanding in a tentative, attuned way. The impact is to enrich and enhance the experience of Green states, and to dilute and make tolerable the experience of Red states.
Choreographing Phenomenological Inquiry
Let’s explore how this unfolds in a coaching session. In practice, the coach actively choreographs the client’s attention, inviting them to stay with and follow what emerges next in their body and emotions. Inevitably, clients will flick back into thinking, narratives, and labelling. However, the real transformative power of this approach emerges when we support clients to stay with their spontaneously arising experiences. As we guide them to remain present to what unfolds in each moment, we often witness a surprising and profound shift. Just as a physical wound heals naturally in the right conditions, areas of embodied emotional blockage begin to integrate when met with compassionate, relational attention. In these moments, clients often experience new, more empowering body sensations, accompanied by positive emotions and enabling images – signs of growth and healing unfolding in real time.
This practice draws on Buddhist mindfulness, emphasising the insubstantial, ever-changing nature of identity. By cultivating “adjacency” to our stories and labels, we learn to observe ourselves with less identification, loosening the grip of fixed identities – whether neurodiverse, gender, cultural, or diagnostic. Even psychometric labels (“I’m an introvert,” “I’m a detail person”) can become straitjackets if held too tightly.
The Call for Coaches: Supervision, Training, and Attuned Presence
Breakthrough Conversations coaching calls for more than mindful presence: it requires skill in relational attunement, a deep understanding of embodied emotions, and an appreciation for the universal pull of attachment needs. I encourage coaches to seek supervision and training that integrates the latest insights about neurodiversity, while also holding the possibility that diagnostic labels may be limiting as well as supportive. For those interested in developing these skills, our advanced coach training offers hands-on experience and supervision in the Breakthrough Conversations approach.
Supervision plays a crucial role here, ensuring that coaches can ethically and effectively integrate new discoveries about neurodiversity and embodied inquiry, while staying true to a view of human identity as constructed and impermanent.
Summary: Where True Breakthroughs Happen
Labels and diagnostic categories have value, but the most transformative coaching arises from a refined, relational curiosity – one that is always attuned to the specificity and unfolding nature of each client’s experience. This is where true breakthroughs happen, beyond the limits of any label.
How might stepping beyond labels open new possibilities for your clients-and yourself?