What is coaching?

Coaching is a powerful, relationship-based approach to personal and professional growth. Through the coaching relationship, individuals, teams, and couples are capable of making significant and sustainable shifts in all facets of life. Coaching is supported by a powerful, trusting relationship between coach and client, and each engagement is individualized according to the needs of the individual or organization.

What makes my approach unique?

My work is intentionally inward and intended to yield powerful transformation. I invite my clients to turn inside to look at themselves with self-compassion and curiosity. We explore how each of us engages in protective behaviors (anger, judgement of self, judgement of others, freezing, retreating, etc) in an effort to get our needs met. We often protect to avoid feelings that feel too big or too hard. This pattern of self-protection can ultimately make our lives feel very hard and our relationships very strained. Trained in Internal Family Systems, I work gently to map the system of protective layers that are trying to help but ultimately causing stress and challenge in our lives. This process is remarkably impactful and with time and patience, leads to profound and long-lasting healing.

What topics are covered in the coaching relationship?

It’s whole life coaching, so you can choose to work on any part of your life that is ripe for examination, growth, and shift. This includes all things professional and career related, relationships (work and personal), self-esteem, wellness, life-work balance, fulfillment, transition, life purpose, and personal growth. It’s all possible! Often clients bring a topic or question to the coaching as a starting place. If not, I have provide exercises to surface topics you want to explore. Once the coaching relationship is formed, the question of what to explore tends to flow with ease.

What about relationship coaching?

Relationship coaching is a powerful method to strengthen a relationship between two or more people. Partners and teams that engage in coaching have the opportunity to focus on the relational system with a gaze towards what is possible and with careful, supported attention on communication. Many partners and colleagues engage in coaching from a place of strength and curiosity in the relationship (How can we be better? What more can we learn about ourselves and one another?). Others come with a specific challenge area to address. Like individual coaching, the dynamic of relationship coaching involves both looking inward towards self-discovery and forward to see what is possible. The center of the relationship is communication. I am trained in IFIO (Intimacy From the Inside Out) to support partners and colleagues to learn how to create and sustain a dynamic that includes functional communication. With my support, partners learn about one another and together build new practices in communication and understanding.