Reflective Practice in Mental Health

When coaching clients with mental health issues, coaching practitioners often navigate complex landscapes, sensitive territories and ethical challenges.

Here, reflective practice plays a vital and developmental role for coaching practitioners and is an important resource to nourish and inform practice, enabling you to be present and in the moment with yourself and the client and aiding effective Supervision practice.

The leading Professional Coaching Bodies also increasingly recognise and support this practice.

Helpfully, several books exploring ‘Reflective Practice’ and providing explanations, guidance and examples are available.

Titles such as Michelle Lucas’ book ‘Creating the Reflective Habit’ (2023) or Iain McCormick’s (2023) guidebook ‘Reflective Practice for Coaches’ have brought wonderful definition, a sense of ‘concreteness’ and substance to the Reflective Practice of coaching practitioners. In addition, their books contain a rich selection and variety of approaches to Reflective Practice.

Revisiting here some of the concepts or terms swirling around reflective practice may be helpful, especially as we, at times, use terms or concepts interchangeably. At the same time, they may have distinctly different meanings or foci. Namely, how can we set apart reflectivity and reflexivity, or what is critical reflection?

This will be further explored in the upcoming AC Mental Health and Wellbeing Conference on November 14-15.

There are many models for Reflective Practice, such as ‘Reflection on action’ and ‘Reflection in action’ (Donald Schön,1987), Kolb’s (1984) ‘Learning Cycle’, Gibb’s (1988) model of the ‘Reflective Cycle’, or Johns’ (2000) model of ‘Structured Reflection’, David Clutterbucks (2006) ‘Seven Conversations’ and many others.

What all models have in common are the following three elements when we are reflecting on an experience or actions taken: 🔙 Retrospection, 🌡 Self-evaluation,  🧭 Reorientation.

What About Reflexive?

Reflexivity has an interior focus and tunes into our internal conversations. It directs our awareness towards the impact of our meaning-making expressed through our behaviours and language, in particular.

Tatiana Bachirova offers a helpful distinction of reflexivity when stating: “Reflexivity is a unique human capacity of being conscious of one’s own actions, thoughts, feelings and their effect. So being reflexive is paying attention to and being aware of oneself and one’s experiences” (Bachirova, 2021).

Reflexive action is less about focusing on the action in itself (whether after the fact or while we are in action) or learning what we might do differently next time. It is rather about being introspective and becoming (self) aware that/when our behaviour, language or meaning-making may influence how a client reacts to the situation- and why.

It is about recognising and acting on the subjective influences during practice. Reflexivity supports us in questioning our own assumptions, values, and prejudices. This brings us to critical reflection.

Looking at the ‘critical’ it can be seen as the unfolding and ever deepening “awareness of the own blocks to attention and self-deception” (Bachirova, 2021). The power of critical reflection is the potential to explore the world by drawing on multiple ways of knowing.

The ability to critically reflect begins with self-awareness and examination of personal values, beliefs and assumptions that may have been unconsciously embedded within our personal worldview as well as examining the interplay of the contexts we encounter or that we represent ourselves to others.

Stay tuned for the upcoming AC Conference on Mental Health and Wellbeing Conference where we will explore Reflective Practice and its facets more deeply. We’d love to see you there.

Written by AC Contributor, Ursula Clidiere.

Join Ursula on the opening of Day 2 where you can experience some reflective practice in action! You also can reach her at www.linkedin.com/in/drursulaclidiere