Therapeutic Coaching

It has become quite clear to me that we can't solely think and talk our way to better health, happiness, and healing, and I believe sitting in conventional talk therapy and endlessly rehashing our issues isn't a valuable use of resources. Understanding and reframing our story is important, but I see this as merely one part of a much broader process. Indeed, often we need to get the thinking/ego mind out of the way in order to let our innate wisdom surface - our minds and bodies are extraordinarily wise, therefore we don't need someone else to analyse us. We have all the answers within us, so what we need are the right tools and frameworks to surface our existing innate resources, wisdom, and potential. This is why I take a holistic, trauma-informed, and relational approach to my therapeutic coaching work, drawing on various concepts, tools, and techniques from my 7 Lenses.

Body, Mind, and Relations

As mentioned in the Somatic Experiencing section of My Approach page, we are so much more than a mind, and focussing only on the mind is an increasingly outdated view of mental health. Our entire organism is one big interconnected, interdependent series of systems, and the body stores memories, blocks, and trauma from whenever we are overwhelmed. As this can often affect our mental and emotional state, we need to work with the body as well as the mind.

Moreover, I believe our health and wellbeing isn’t solely an individual pursuit (a largely Western notion), but is intimately dependent on the health of our relations - to our communities, relationships, and environment. It’s all inseparably connected. Indeed, later in life psychologist Abraham Maslow revised the top of his famous hierarchy of needs from self-actualisation to self-transcendence - this reflected his growing spirituality, while also pointing to the value of thinking beyond ourselves. Maslow showed that we didn’t have to choose between self-development and self-sacrifice, or self and other/world, but that our greatest potential is achieved by integrating both. Therefore, I believe a focus on the mind, body, and these relations is essential for meaningful and lasting wellness.

Beyond Conditioning: Unlocking Potential and Wisdom

In line with Internal Family Systems, various ancient wisdom traditions, and Jungian and Grofian psychology, among others, I believe that just as every acorn has the potential to become a great oak tree given the right conditions, we too have our full potential within us, waiting to be discovered. In line with these views I also believe we have an innate wisdom moving us towards this potential, which can be tapped into.

Often the process of accessing this potential and wisdom is one of stripping away rather than adding more. I believe we are perfect as we are, but life can throw us many challenges, often deeply hurtful, confusing, or traumatising ones that force us into protection mode. Whenever we are shamed, hurt, abused, humiliated, scared, neglected, or abandoned, we automatically deploy parts of ourselves to protect us - for example we may keep people at a distance, excessively judge others, tell ourselves we can’t, or dissociate from the pain through alcohol, food, drugs, internet/social media use, shopping, work, sex, porn, and so on. We may become frustrated at these parts, because we see them as getting in our way. But they are on our side - they don’t want us to get hurt again. Over time we can extend compassion towards them, letting them know, with gratitude for their service, that they no longer need to work so hard.

Further, certain aspects of modern culture can limit us. We often distract and numb ourselves, and habitually put a positive spin on what is a far more nuanced reality. We constantly compare and compete with each other, existing from a place of feeling like we’re not enough, and where wellbeing is found at some forever-moving point in the distance - once we get that promotion, a bigger home, or a better body. Happiness is sold as something external to us, rather than something innate. We often exist as human-doings rather than human-beings, constantly chasing that elusive pot of gold instead of appreciating the beauty of the rainbow that’s right here, right now. We can become trapped in our heads, removed from the present moment by ruminating about the past or fretting about the future, becoming disconnected from our bodies, feelings, and senses. We mostly see ourselves as isolated, fragmented egos, rather than being part of a vast web of interconnection. We might also lose sight of the child-like awe for existence, becoming blinded to the magic that imbues everyday life.

“I believe that just as every acorn has the potential to become a great oak tree given the right conditions, we too have our full potential within us, waiting to be discovered.”

How I Can Help You

I use my training and experience to help you reconnect with your essential Self - mind, body, and spirit. I won’t pathologise you, or profess to be the expert on you. Rather, I can simply facilitate a process that can help you to connect with your Self, process your parts, establish healthier habits, and tap into your existing wisdom and potential, full of love, joy, feeling, connection, creativity, perhaps even a child-like sense of awe for ordinary life that can become dulled over time, for the betterment of yourself and everyone you are connected to.

I can help you to:

Identify, empathise with, and release your limiting parts

Create meaning from your life story/rewrite your life scripts

Learn how to release trauma stored in the body

Become more embodied

Befriend your nervous system

Analyse your dreams in order to understand your unconscious better

Start or deepen a meditation practice

Start a yoga or other embodiment practice

Start a gratitude practice

Start a breathwork practice, using the breath to either calm/energise your system, or access expanded states of consciousness

Find your community if you lack one

Connect with nature

Develop self-esteem

Soothe your inner critic

Avoid spiritual bypassing (i.e. using spiritual practices and beliefs to avoid dealing with our painful feelings, unresolved wounds, and developmental needs) and spiritual narcissism (i.e. assuming we have discovered all the answers)

Approach and navigate a difficult conversation

Use the Getting Things Done methodology to be more effective personally and professionally

Understand premature forgiveness, and healthily express rightful anger and grief (which can lead to authentic forgiveness, sometimes even gratitude)

Transform guilt and shame into positive guidance

Build resources to manage stress and anxiety

Cultivate self-compassion

Determine which specialists would be most helpful to you

Understand why you should strive for wholeness over perfection, and how to do it

Keep accountable to your SMART goals

Rediscover a child-like awe for ordinary life

Set healthy boundaries

Access and experience your Self - the wise person inside us all

See FAQs for the differences and similarities between therapeutic coaching and psychotherapy.