Description

New perspective can completely transform a problem.  There may still be difficulties, now you can see where you’re going.  What was overwhelming becomes clear.

I hope to help people make these kinds of shifts in all the work I do.  But learning alone isn’t everything.  Breaking habits is hard.  Trying to think your own way out of a problem is hard.  And it’s particularly hard to soothe your own emotional triggers.

If you’re feeling stuck, overwhelmed or confused, it’s probably more effective to have one-to-one support to unlock your particular challenges in your particular situation.

Therapy and Coaching Can Help You

• Heal difficult emotions and triggers.  Your thinking brain is driven by your emotions.  That’s why it’s hard to think straight when you’re anxious or upset.  I can help you soothe old triggers, calm fears, and learn how to feel more balanced and confident.  This helps you be at your best when you’re tackling other challenges.
• Get clear.  Like the mouse before it stepped out of the maze, it’s hard to see clearly when you’re in the thick of a problem.  The way human brains are arranged means we tend to get overwhelmed or slip into disempowering, self critical or negative ways of thinking.  I can help you get clear so you know where you’re going and what to do next.
• Make changes.  Effective change isn’t just about feeling better here and now.  It’s also about building new ways of being in the world.  Most sessions, we will agree something you will do and a plan for how you will do it.  In one-to-one work, this can be tailored specifically to you.  This means you’re much more likely to actually do it than if you just think it to yourself.  And we’ll use the feedback from how it goes to help you take another step next time.
• Coaching and support over time.  My background is as a solution focused therapist.  That means I keep reflection geared towards helping you as effectively as possible in the present.  Having said that, there’s a great power in having support over time.  It’s a compass to keep you moving in the right direction.  It’s a sounding board to clarify your thoughts.  It’s a safety net for when things go wrong.  It’s a motivator to keep you moving forwards.

Releasing the Past and Moving Into the Future

I use therapy and coaching side by side.

People use the words differently but roughly speaking, therapy is about healing and integrating experiences from the past.  Coaching is about helping you move forwards in the present and future.

Coaching helps you steer your car.  Therapy helps you release the brakes.  Most of the time you need to do both.  Otherwise you can get caught in either too much analysis without any forward direction.  Or trying to move forwards too quickly then getting caught up in old patterns later.

The way I work, if you were suffering from  emotional triggers from the past and that was getting in your way, we might spend some time helping you heal those feelings through understanding, visualistions and movement practices.  That’s more like therapy.

At the same time, as you began to feel better, we would start helping you bring more positive experiences into your life.  So that would be more like coaching.

We do what is most useful to you.  Usually that involves both releasing the past the moving into the future.

How Does It Work?

Therapy and coaching with me usually follow a weekly rhythm.

1. You email to ask if I can help with something.
2. I reply to say what I can and can’t do and give some initial advice if I can.
3. You decide if you’d like to hire me.
4. If you do, we schedule a time and you pay.
5. We ‘meet’ by video call online usually for about 1-1¼ hours.
6. I send you a recording of the session and any follow up notes.
7. I email you a few days later to see how you’re getting on and help keep you on track.
8. If we have planned a series of sessions, we repeat steps 5, 6 and 7.

So although we talk live once during the week, support is there for you through the week if you need it.

Includes

• Email enquiry and initial advice
• Online video session at mutually convenient time – approx 1¼ hours
• Recording of our session if you want to make one
• Notes on next steps
• Email feedback and questions during the following week as you implement what we have talked about

If you’d like to ask whether I can help you, let me know what you would like to achieve and what is currently stopping you at hello@yourownbestfriend.co.uk .

Payment

If it seems like a good fit and we’ve agreed a time, just buy this session using the Add to Basket link above.