Dr Megumi Fieldsend’s dissertation for her Master’s in Existential Coaching at the New School of Psychotherapy and Counselling explored using the Eight Tensions^® in supervision for Coaches and Coaching Psychologists. She was awarded a Distinction for her dissertation and overall degree. Here, Megumi explains how the Eight Tensions^® features in her coaching practice and her research.

I’m Megumi Fieldsend, a coaching psychologist and a qualitative researcher, specialising in Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). For my private coaching practice, I use the Eight Tensions^® Framework according to my clients’ needs, and by incorporating it into my meaning-centred holistic approach, I can help my clients find their own inner strength and directional clarities necessary to navigate life.

Research Summary 

I recently completed an IPA study, titled “Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of Using Existential Tensions as a Supervision Heuristic for Coaches and Coaching Psychologists in Supervision”, for my MA in Existential Coaching at the New School of Psychotherapy and Counselling/Middlesex University.

This is the first study to look at the experience of professional coaches and coaching psychologists in supervision where existential tensions have been operationalised as the Eight Tensions^® Framework. I used IPA to elucidate personal accounts of five participants and explored their experiences in this context. Through detailed and in-depth idiographic approach of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, three themes were identified:

• • The Eight Tensions^® Framework Supervision: Usefulness and Difficulties

    This theme reveals the value of the Eight Tensions^® Framework supervision as a dynamic yet safe interaction with other coaches in a group, referring to the practical importance of gaining wider perspectives from other supervisees who have different philosophical backgrounds, approaches and working contexts. While all acknowledge the importance of gaining better existential understanding, the applicability of the framework to each person’s own practice is uniquely conceptualised.

• • Developing Into a Reflexive Coaching Practitioner

    This focuses on the participants’ professional contexts and points to how existential learning helps shape their own professional identity. Gaining existential knowledge that has particular resonance to a coach’s personal values and meanings is importantly associated with each individual’s approach, and reflects on their practical advancement.

• • Living With a New Existential Outlook

    The third theme shows how the participants interpret existential knowledge in their lives beyond practical and professional development. All the participants have cultivated awareness of human complexities, at the same time, they live their life more fully since they are now aware of the existential givens (such as finitude of time, living with others in the world): they are now living existentially.

The findings highlight how existential knowledge gained through the supervision, and working with existential tensions, help participants to enhance not only ways of developing the self and practice, but also understanding life.

This study evidenced the value of existential tensions in supervision as a heuristic, and further points to the diverse ways of using existential tensions in coaching practices as a way of helping clients to find their own meaning in everyday living.