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By unfolding the positive intentions of the addiction, therapists treating drug abusers on Sct Ols (Addiction Center in Denmark) create conscious, intentional relationships between the client and the addiction.
A little over a year ago, the first two Center for Right Relationship (CRR Global) leaders flew into the idyllic Danish island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea. Their job was to lead the first of a series of classes in relationship systems coaching for the complete staff of therapists on Sct Ols, an institution for treatment of drug and alcohol abuse.
Six months, and several two and three day retreats later, most of the Sct Ols staff had gone through the entire Organizations and Relationship Systems Coaching (ORSC) core program.
Sct Ols willingly explores new ways of working with drug and alcohol abuse.
Part of this is installing coach competence in the staff. Its founder, Tor Harstrup, has made it mandatory for all employees to go through both an internal coach education and the external ORSC program from CRR Global.
“A guiding perspective is reinstalling the abuser as the expert of his own addiction,” says Harstrup. “The ORSC model is a fabulous supportive framework for this perspective.”
ORSC has a systems approach to coaching, where one of the cornerstones is to hold the relationship as creative, resourceful, whole, and capable of repairing itself. This approach may apply even if not all individuals in the relationship are creative, resourceful and whole. A systems coach coaches the relationship, and sees the individuals as channels for what the relationship needs to express. They are “voices of the system”.
The relationship perspective gets an unusual twist, when the relationship in focus is between the client and his or her addiction. On Sct Ols this sometimes means group coaching where 3-12 people sit around in a circle with an imagined heap of the “most fabulous collection of drugs and alcohol in existence” in the center.
From this starting point, the systems coach unfolds the relationship between the group and their addictions.
“The addiction actually has a positive intention,” says Harstrup. “When asked, abusers describe the effects of the drug with words like satisfaction, joy, courage, strength, calmness, harmony, self-confidence, love, freedom and a sense of belonging. In the beginning, this is true, but as tolerance grows, the only effect of the drug is to create a sense of normality – at best. At the same time the consequences of not taking the drug rises to fill the entire horizon.”
Facilitating conversation and creating alignment is the key. Harstrup describes how he, having himself been a heroin addict for many years, has had trance-like conversations with his own addiction.
“I negotiated with the addiction, and had success convincing it that the positive intention could not be achieved in the old way any longer”, he says. “Furthermore we agreed that it actually had been many years since we experienced that effect. I asked the addiction whether it was willing to cooperate with me in order to fulfill the positive intention in other ways. It gave a loud and clear ‘yes’”.
The addicted and the addiction thus created alignment, and were able to put the real problem out in front, and start working on it as a team. Other coaching and system skills are applied in the continuing process, which leads on average 1 of 2 clients to cross the edge to a new life free of the self-deceptive chemical stimulation.
Harstrup sees ORSC as a component in his larger framework, called Inclusive Therapeutic Community (ITC). “We hold inclusion as an ideal. The system should adapt to the users, not the opposite.”
Today, a year after Sct Ols first started training its professionals in ORSC, coaching relationships has become a vital part of the daily routines in the institution. Of the staff of 35, 20 are coach trained, and 15 has applied and received certification from the International Coaching Federation.
“Three of them did not pass the exam on the first try”, says Harstrup. “Paradoxically, but not really surprising, those three are the most experienced counselors we have.”
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There are 7 Responses so far...
Hi Paul, thanks for letting us all know on the ORSC list about this article. Tor was in my cohort so I’m so happy to see this success. Would love to be able to pass this article on to potential clients. I think it would be very well received if it included some case studies of perhaps the benefit to the clients as well. Do you have any thing like that written up? The impact of this coaching (as we all know!!) is incredibly powerful. Would love to be able to share that concretely with potential clients. Is that possible?
Regards,
Charlotte
That’s pretty heavy duty stuff for coaching. The article states that the clinic found made it “mandatory for all employees to go through both an internal coach education and the external ORSC program from CRR Global”. But I gather that these employees were trained and qualified therapists to begin with. So the coaching model was an add-on to their existing training?
That sounds appropriate. What concerns me is the idea that coaches who are not trained as therapists would consider themselves qualified to work with heavy duty addictions.
I’m currently working out my ideas on the appropriateness of coaching addictions. I just wrote about this as part of my Habit Change Coaching pilot program Smoking Cessation: Should Coaches Offer this Service? I would appreciate some feedback on this, so I can guide my program participants appropriately. Thanks!
Paal: Thank you for this article. When I heard about Tor Harstrup, his program and his connection to ORSC, I was very excited. I still am.The potential of this work to create change in this domain is particularly interesting to me (what’s personal is universal): I have 2 siblings with drug addictions and I have been using ORSC tools myself with both of them and my family system for the past 2 years, with some success. I can see the wider application and would love to stay connected to see how else this work is being applied. My own ORSC reframe on how to view and interact with my family system continues to influence and be part of this change. I’d love to hear from others how to best leverage ORSC for addiction recovery.
Thanks! Allison
Hi Barbra, thanks for your comment. I agree with you that non-therapists trained as coaches should not do this work. As far as I understand they are all trained therapists, and ORSC is and other coaching training is in addition to the training they already have in the field.
About smoking cessation, I can’t claim to be an expert in this field (nor in drug abuse), except that I quit smoking myself many years ago. Sct Ols, as I understand, sees the client as the expert of his or her own addictions. My hunch is that reinstating the client as the expert of himself, which is a foundation of coaching, should speak in favor of coaching smoking cessation.
Charlotte, I do not have any case studies, but I expect Tor may be able to help you with this.
Thanks for your reply Paal. If I understand you correctly, you think that non-therapists should not be coaching on “heavy duty” addictions such as heroin addiction, but smoking cessation would be appropriate territory for a non-therapist coach. Some people would argue that smoking addiction is as difficult to overcome as heroin addiction, but I think your distinction makes sense. For one thing, the family, job and social problems caused by smoking addiction are not to the same degree as that caused by heroin addiction.
I was thrilled to read your article. I believe in your philosophy from beginning to end and have been working on this for approximately 30 years. I truly believe, am convinced, that until we put the client in charge, believe that he is whole, creative, capable, and competent, nothing will change much in the addiction field and the clients will continue to lose out.
Each individual is different and in my view, addiction and recovery is really a search for the self, longing for reconnection with who they truly are. It’s a matter of self-regulation with intention to make the situation bearable and change it in some way, at least momentarily. To use labels to define an individual is one way of not seeing the obvious – who the client is.
I am a Gestaltist, and as such, raising awareness is the cornerstone of the process to regain an understanding of one’s modulations, feelings and emotions. Making choices and becoming response-able for outcome in relationship with others and all there is, is truly a process of interdependence and co-creation.
Thank you for printing this article. With your permission, I shall use it as one of my printed articles in my trainings working with addictions and beyond.