The Work After the Work: Why Skills Need a Bridge After Therapy Ends

Every clinician knows the moment. A client has done the hard work: processed trauma, learned to sit with distress, loosened the grip of the stories that kept them stuck. Goals are met, symptoms have eased, and discharge is appropriate. And yet you both sense that the new skills are still young. They show up reliably in your office. Whether they show up on a hard Tuesday afternoon, three months from now, is a different question.

That gap is why I built my coaching practice.

Who I am, and what I am not

I hold a BA in Religion and Ministry and an MA in Biblical Counseling from Luther Rice, and I am a Board Certified Master Mental Health Coach and Certified Trauma Informed Coach, trained through Light University. My trauma training through the Arizona Trauma Institute covers individual and family trauma and advanced treatment of complex PTSD. I have managed intensive outpatient programs at a counseling clinic, served as board president of a nonprofit counseling center, and helped organizations become trauma-informed. Today I own and operate Christian Care and Coaching, where I work in harmony with licensed providers every week, and I am a member of the American Association of Christian Counselors and the International Christian Coaching Association.

I also know from my own life how much the months after therapy matter. My wife and I walked a long road through counseling and healing, and we are still practicing what we learned. That experience is part of why this work matters so much to me.

Because you are trusting me with your clients, I want to be plain about scope. I am not a state-licensed counselor, and every client I work with knows that from our first conversation. Mental Health Coaching is not psychotherapy. I do not diagnose, I do not treat clinical disorders, and I do not accept clients who currently need a clinician. My work begins where yours has reached a natural, clinically sound endpoint, and it is designed to protect the gains you helped your client make.

What the work actually looks like

My coaching rests on contextual behavioral science. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy gives us a shared target: psychological flexibility, or the capacity to stay present and keep moving toward chosen values even when thoughts and feelings are difficult (Hayes et al., 2012). DBT skills (mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness) are explicitly teachable and practicable outside a treatment frame (Linehan, 2015). Relational Frame Theory helps me understand why a client's language can pull them back into old patterns, and how to help them notice it when it happens (Hayes et al., 2001).

In coaching, these stop being concepts and become reps: rehearsing skills in real contexts, building values-based routines, and having someone in their corner who speaks the same language you taught them. For clients who want it, I also integrate a biblical worldview and values. That integration is always the client's choice, never a default.

How I partner with referring clinicians

• Screening first. I screen at intake. If clinical concerns emerge at any point, I refer back to you or another licensed provider promptly.

• Coordination with consent. With a signed release, I am glad to coordinate so the coaching work reinforces your treatment rather than competing with it.

• Your door stays open. Clients who need to return to therapy are encouraged to do so, and I make that transition easy.

  
  

An invitation

If you have a client finishing treatment who would benefit from continued, structured skills practice, I would welcome a conversation. You can reach me at don.gudeman@gmail.com.

Good therapy changes lives. My hope is simply to help that change last.

References

Hayes, S. C., Barnes-Holmes, D., & Roche, B. (Eds.). (2001). Relational frame theory: A post-Skinnerian account of human language and cognition. Kluwer Academic/Plenum.

Hayes, S. C., Strosahl, K. D., & Wilson, K. G. (2012). Acceptance and commitment therapy: The process and practice of mindful change (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.

Linehan, M. M. (2015). DBT skills training manual (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.