Existential wellness coaching tactics

This chapter explores the distinctive tactics of existential wellness coaching, emphasizing the integration of general coaching skills with existential principles. While existential wellness coaches employ foundational methods such as listening, reflecting, questioning, and goal-setting, they also address deeper concerns of meaning, purpose, freedom, individuality, mortality, and existential anxiety. Strategies may draw from established wellness frameworks, such as the 12 pillars of wellness, as well as individualized practices, including journaling prompts, guided visualizations, and rituals. Through illustrative vignettes, the chapter demonstrates how coaches normalize existential crises, clarify values, confront avoidance, reframe work and purpose, and cultivate meaning through service, creativity, and daily practices. Extended case studies, such as Daniel’s struggle with purpose, Étienne’s values conflict in Paris, and Sister Margaret’s departure from religious life, highlight the use of tactics like values clarification, narrative reconstruction, paradox exploration, ritual creation, and tolerance of uncertainty. In addition, 20 client mini-scenarios exemplify diverse existential themes, from mortality awareness and authenticity to creativity and spirituality. The chapter concludes that existential wellness coaching does not provide definitive answers but instead offers clients a respectful, collaborative space to wrestle with life’s hardest questions and cocreate authentic pathways toward purpose and vitality.