Hello my friends, and welcome back to not another Mindset show. I’m your host, Dr. Kasey Jo. My goal with this podcast is to take the science of mindset and behavior change and distill it down into actionable takeaways for you. Together we’re gonna unpack research around motivations, self-sabotage, willpower, and so much more, and we’re going to take all of that and translate it into strategies you can immediately apply to your health fitness.

Relationships, business, marketing clients, all of the things. But just to be clear, it’s not all serious and sciencey around here. We’re gonna have a ton of fun too, and I’m so excited to share all of this with you. All right, let’s go ahead and get into the episode, friends, and welcome back to not another mindset show.

Today’s topic of conversation is one that is brought up. At least once, if not multiple times in every single cohort of the Health Mindset Coaching certification. If you are tuning in for the first time, the Health Mindset Coaching certification is my bread and butter program. It is a certification for.

Mainly health and fitness professionals to learn more about the science of mindset, behavior change, and psychology so you can support your clients when it comes to any behavior change and mindset. Barriers, we’re talking self-sabotage, all or nothing thinking low motivation, lack of consistency, all of that stuff.

That boils down to psychology and most coaches, most health and fitness professionals don’t get a lot of training in these areas, and that is what. The Health Mindset Coaching certification is all about if you’re interested in HMCC. Or maybe you just wanna trial it out, get five free lessons in mindset and behavior change coaching.

I’m gonna make sure that there’s a link in the show notes for you to go ahead and add yourself to the wait list for the certification. This does not tie you into anything. All it does is put you on the wait list to learn more about the certification when we open up enrollment in the future, and get you five free lessons in the meantime.

So. What we talk about a lot inside HMCC with my students, and also it’s just like a conversation I’m having on social media a lot because I’m in this area of helping coaches better understand psychology. To what degree do we need to be careful? We do to a large degree, need to be careful actually, that we’re not.

Practicing outside scope of practice that we are not as coaches, trying to be therapists and. This is difficult and this is why it’s brought up so much, because we wanna be able to help our clients with self-limiting beliefs and negative thought patterns, especially when things come up, you know, around body image or just being frustrated with lack of progress in the health and fitness realm.

We wanna be able to help our clients with those things because if you help your clients with those things, that’s how they become successful. That’s how they maintain behavior changes long term. But we need to be incredibly cautious that we are not. Trying to help clients who maybe have an eating disorder or have a real clinical issue when it comes to body image or something is impacting their lives on a day-to-day basis, to a degree that maybe we’re not aware of as coaches, and we’re trying to coach them through it when the reality is they need a mental health professional.

So there’s so much that health and fitness coaches can learn from psychology. I mean, I’ve built an entire business around it. There’s so much that coaches cannot do. Understanding that difference is extremely important. Coaches should understand the science and strategy behind behavior change and mindset, and how to help their clients achieve their health and fitness goals From that perspective, because this goes so far beyond nutrition and fitness, we all know that.

How many people out there know that they need to eat healthy and exercise, and how many people are actually doing it? Like it’s not a nutrition and fitness issue, it really is a mindset and behavior change issue. So with that said, though, coaches should not be attempting to help clients with mental health conditions, and there is a line, a very clear, dark, bold line that we cannot cross as coaches.

So you can be a super effective coach using principles of mindset and behavior change, and applying the science of psychology to your coaching practices. And I truly believe it is crucial to do those things and at the same time, also know when you need to refer out. So that is what we are talking about today.

For instance, as a coach, you’re going to come across clients who. Are stuck in negative thought loops about their progress. They’re, they’re struggling with seeing themselves in the mirror, all of those things. That doesn’t necessarily mean that person needs a therapist and doesn’t need a nutrition coach.

That’s not the case. It can be a situation where they need both. It doesn’t have to be one or the other, but being able to coach them through this and knowing. What questions to ask to help them break those negative thought patterns and rewire the way that they’re thinking, reframe the way that they’re seeing things can make a massive, massive impact.

And doing this is not therapy, it is effective coaching. But again, we need to be clear on where that line is. So. A rule of thumb that I always share with my students is if you feel like you have a client who is struggling with something, again, I’m using like body image, you know, it could be, um, eating behaviors like stressful eating, emotional eating.

I have some episodes on those things. By the way, if you wanna scroll back a few, you, if you start to notice and your client is sharing with you that. And you could even ask this if you’re feeling a little bit like your spidey senses are tingling, and this might be a greater issue than something that you are equipped to help this client with.

You could even ask them, are these things impacting your day-to-day life, your relationships, your work, productivity? How often are you thinking about these things? And if this person is, it’s been made clear to you, or you’re asking questions around this and it’s now being made clear to you that. How they feel about their body.

Their relationship with food is something that they are thinking about all day. It’s something that is impacting their relationships, their work, other things that is absolutely a massive red flag for you to refer out. So that is a, a big general rule of thumb that I like to share. And that said, though I am not a mental health.

Therapist, counselor, clinical psychologist. I have a PhD in psychology, but I am not a trained clinician. So instead of me sitting here and trying to explain to you the differences between what you can do as a coach and what should be referred out to a therapist or mental health professional, I actually went to a couple students past graduates from my certification program who are mental health professionals.

What’s really cool about HMCC is. Although it is mainly geared to health and fitness coaches, we have folks from all different domains coming into HMCC, including clinical psychologists, doctors, nurses, psychotherapists, mental health counselors, social workers, I mean everything. Because this stuff is so important in all of these different areas, and anyone who is in a helping professional who is a helping professional rather.

Should be equipped with this information, this knowledge, these skills, these strategies. So I went to two past grads. One is Valentina. She is a clinical psychologist, and the other is Scott, who is a psychotherapist. Both of them have been practicing for a long time. They recently went through HMCC, so I, I told them I’m doing this episode.

I feel like this is a really, really crucial topic for coaches. I’d love to hear some feedback on your experience. Using mindset, behavior change, et cetera, from a coaching perspective versus a like therapeutic clinical perspective. And also like any tips or just any wisdom you can share with everybody else to help them better understand what they are.

Equipped to help people with and what they are not. So again, instead of me just trying to tell you what I think, I went straight to the source of some mental health professionals who are very, very clear on what we do inside HMCC because they literally graduated from the certification themselves and have a very clear picture on what the difference between coaching and therapy really is.

So. I’m gonna go ahead and honestly just read exactly what they told me because I am not in a position to pretend to be either of them or take what they told me and try to like fudge it or whatever. Not that I would do that in the first place, but you get what I’m saying. This was not like a a, a phone call or anything.

It was literally me DMing them on Instagram and I got exactly what they said, and I have it right here for you. So first we have Valentina. She’s a clinical psychologist and she said the health mindset coaching certification gives you amazing tools and skills and a solid mindset to be an effective coach.

It helps you navigate complex conversations with clients in a grounded and supportive way, but that doesn’t mean. Everything that comes up is within your scope of practice. Just because you feel confident holding space doesn’t mean it’s your responsibility to hold it all, which I feel like she said that so beautifully.

When clients start opening up about things like disordered eating, compulsive training, anxiety, or past trauma, that’s a sign they might need mental health professional, not just more coaching. And I love that too. Uh, I’ll, I’ll make my little, my, my notes inside the columns here and share them with you guys as I’m going through this.

I think this is really important too, because it can be easy as coaches to have like develop a relationship with our clients and have them share some of this stuff with us and we just kind of like read it and go, even if you’re not necessarily addressing it, you just kind of brush it off and talk about the stuff that you feel equipped to handle.

But the reality is like if they’re sharing that with you. That probably needs to be a conversation about whether or not they are working with someone else who is better equipped to help them with those specific things. Second, she says. You can still be incredibly effective and supportive without crossing into therapy using HMCC.

Tools like values exploration, motivational interviewing, and compassionate curiosity are powerful. Within the scope of coaching. You can ask great questions, help them set boundaries and reflect patterns, but you don’t need to dive into diagnosing or unpacking childhood trauma. That’s where therapy comes in if you’re helping them move forward.

You’re not necessarily unpacking everything from their past. Also beautifully said, and something I do wanna share with you. This is like a little plug for me, shameless plug, but she said, you can ask great questions and so much of good coaching is not prescribing. It’s not telling, it’s not. Honestly, traditional forms of coaching.

Instead, it’s asking really good questions, reflecting back what you’re hearing from them. And I do have a free resource for you, and I will make sure that that is linked in the show notes. So at any time you can scroll down and go grab it. It’s called the Best Questions Freebie, and it’s literally just some of the best questions to ask your clients to do exactly what Valentina is talking about here.

So there is an opportunity for you to see. What are these types of questions that I could be asking that are within my scope of practice, but don’t put me into a therapeutic position, so make sure you check that out. The best question’s, freebie. I’ll make sure that’s linked below. Okay, next, she says, third, don’t forget to protect your own wellbeing.

If you’re feeling emotionally drained, overwhelmed, or like you’re carrying your client’s problems home with you, that’s a signal to check your boundaries. Supervision, peer support, or even therapy for yourself can help you keep showing up Fully. Coaching is emotional work, and it’s okay to set boundaries.

A well supported coach is a better coach. She’s so good. Is she not? I think we, maybe we just need to have her on the podcast. Um, so love this too. I mean, I think. If you’re listening to this podcast, I’m going to assume you’ve probably at least dabbled in therapy to some degree, right? Or at the very, very least, spent a lot of time doing some intentional, deep work on yourself and.

It’s so true, like coaching can be really em emotional and really heavy, especially because so many of you are in a coaching role because you want to help people. But people who are like, I wanna help people for a living are typically those that also feel very heavily for those that they are helping. So making sure that you have your own self-care practices, potentially have a therapist yourself, which is great.

’cause if then you’re in therapy, you can go to your clients and say, Hey, I also work with a therapist and it’s really helpful for me to do X, Y, Z. ’cause remember, they look up to you. So you’re a role model. If you’re saying, this is something that I do for myself, maybe it’s something you could consider doing for yourself, that would be really powerful.

And also, of course, just like making sure you take care of yourself in these situations. I know. There is a, there’s a term called compassion fatigue, and it’s just as it sounds that we’re doing such compassionate work and holding the emotions of other people, that it can be quite fatiguing. And this is where a lot of coaches express that they’re like burnt out.

It’s not even necessarily because of the volume of work, but because of the nature of the work. So there’s a lot that you can do to make sure that you’re kind of taking care of yourself so you don’t get to that place. So love that point. Alright, and then she says, finally, don’t be afraid to build connections with mental health professionals.

Creating a collaborative network means you’re not doing the work in isolation. It allows you to support your clients even better, because you know where your role ends and someone else’s begins. That’s not weakness. It’s real professionalism, and your clients will feel even more supported when they know you’ve got their whole wellbeing in mind.

So. Obviously amazing, amazing advice here. I think if you haven’t had the chance to connect with someone else who’s in this field. We had, um, when I had my health and fitness coaching company, KJO coaching, we actually had one of our clients, Kim, shout out to Kim, if you’re listening to this. She is a mental health professional and she was a client of ours, and we actually ended up doing sort of a partnership where we would give discounted rates on her sessions through KJO.

So we were sending her clients from KJO, and then she was giving them a discount in con return. And this was lovely because she obviously understood exactly what our clients were doing, whether it was tracking macros or strength training, or what the check-in process looks like. So she had just a full, well, she was a full wealth of knowledge when it comes to what nutrition and fitness coaching looks like.

In addition to then being able to support our clients in ways that the coaches could not. So that is an option. If you could find a way to connect with a mental health professional that you could kind of. Work with in tandem inside your business and create that collaboration, that’s a, a beautiful way to do it.

We even had her then come in like once a quarter and do different workshops on specific topics, and it was, it was a lovely relationship and that’s something you could definitely consider and something, I wrote this here, I’ve worked with. Clients in the past where I was actually in communication with my client’s therapist.

So we kind of worked as, it was like a triangle relationship where we were all kind of like kept in the know and chatting about things. And I would sometimes like send her an email and be like, just so you know, we chatted about this today, could be something you wanna bring up. I let so and so know as well.

And like that’s, you know, that’s the story. So that’s an option too, where it could be, again, it’s not. Either or situation like either your client must work with a mental health professional or they can work with a health and fitness coach. It can be both, so just keep that in mind too. All right. Next we have Scott.

And he is a psychotherapist and has been practicing for multiple decades, I’m pretty sure. So I asked him when coaches should know when to refer out and what they can do as coaches, and here’s what he had to say. If the obstacles in your client’s life have a repetitive theme or have become pervasive and persistent and moderately or severely impact one’s happiness, then a mental health professional may be necessary.

There are times when a health coach may not hear the subtle hints a client is giving when they are suffering from abuse or severe depression. So if you’re noticing anything, that might be an opportunity to have a conversation, not necessarily like dig deeper and pry, but just see like, what else is going on here.

And again, like you’ll have, the spidey senses will be tingling where you’re like, oh, okay. At some point I, I feel like we’re getting into territory that I’m not necessarily comfortable with. And I think it’s important to be able to be confident with your clients and say, I wanna make sure that I maintain my integrity as your coach and I’m looking out for you.

So like, let’s talk about this a little bit if you’re up for it. He also said, on the other hand, a health coach may provide a therapeutic helping relationship without actually being a therapist. The relationship itself is often healing enough for most clients. Some clients don’t want to go deep, which is where health coaches should avoid.

I, I love this too because like we, we don’t wanna pressure clients into unpacking things with us. If it’s really making them uncomfortable, although mindset work is incredibly helpful, especially for those who struggle with consistency and self-sabotage, ultimately they aren’t working with you for.

Mindset support. I mean, some might like, oh, I know my mindset’s getting in the way, so like, I wanna get into that. But for the most part, if we’re talking, if I’m talking to you, the health and fitness coach, people are looking for nutrition and fitness advice, and they may not be ready or willing to go there.

So you do need to be cautious with how you approach some of this stuff. So all in all. The most successful and effective coaches are the ones that are including mindset and behavior change into their coaching. But you need to know when to refer out. Don’t let the fear of crossing the line. Keep you shackled to only talking about macros and step counts.

And because I know that so many of you probably listening to this episode are very hesitant to like go anywhere else because you don’t want to cross the line. And I am so like I admire you for that. And at the same time, I would really love for you to learn how to leverage the science of mindset and behavior change and psychology with your clients in a way that is.

Not crossing that line. There is a beautiful middle ground that will make you the most successful and effective coach. So that is all I have for you today. I hope this was helpful. I thought it was gonna be really fun and really enlightening to be able to hear from some mental health professionals themselves.

Again, rather than me just trying to be like, here’s what I think, even though I’m not technically a clinician. So that is, that’s all I got. Let me know. If anything comes up for you, please shoot me a DM on Instagram. Reach out to me, leave a review, a five star review if you are willing to. As a reminder, I do a giveaway every single month where you can get.

Your hands on one of my DIY programs, and these are DIY programs that are related to everything. We’re just talking about mindset and behavior change type of coaching. I give one away to a lucky reviewer every single month. So all you have to do is leave a review and then make sure you screenshot your review and put it into the review giveaway form, which is linked in the show notes of every single episode.

Otherwise, there’s no way for us to find you because the reviews are anonymous and there’s no way for me to necessarily find like an email to reach out to you. So, all right, my friends. That’s all I have, and I’ll see you next time. And that’s a wrap for today’s episode of Not Another Mindset show. If you enjoyed today’s episode, don’t forget to hit that subscribe button so you get notified of the next one, because if you’re anything like me, if the episodes aren’t popping up for you automatically, you’ll keep forgetting to come back to the show even if you really, really enjoyed it.

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Alright, my friends, that is all I have for you this time. I so appreciate you being here and love to see you prioritizing your growth. I’ll see you next time.