Coaching
“When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.” – Audre Lorde
Life & Relationship Coaching
While coaching has some cross over with therapy, coaching is never used to treat diagnosed mental health disorders. Instead, coaching focuses on improving our relationship to failure, learning to fail forward, find new ground, and stay connected to a sense of purpose and meaning, as we define and reach toward achievement.
Historically there are some cross overs between psychology and coaching, especially if we look through the humanist or Jungian lens, the process of individuation, and the belief that development is a journey of discovering and becoming more of who we are.
In our life coaching or relationship coaching sessions, we can create a strategy that advances personal growth and interpersonal connection by becoming more attuned to our areas of need, and learning to strengthen our capacity to grow insight from mistakes and failure. Coaches help by having an objective outlook on the aims that will define success for each person, and are able to apply methods and create the accountability needed to feel this process moving toward greater accessibility of our visions and dreams.
Parent Coaching
Parenting today can be fraught with difficult moments few people feel equipped to confront. The landscape in which parenting currently takes place is arguably more complex than in generations past given the elements of technology that are now interwoven with child friendships and school environments, the pace and complexity of expected change in the context of overstimulation in our social milieu, and risks that youth and teens face in terms of mental health struggles in the post covid era. The impact of this thorny group of challenges often results in lack of emotional awareness created by their cumulative burden on kids learning to become adults.
Parent coaching is an opportunity to collaborate on flexibility, structure, and emotional attunement with a professional experienced in working with family dynamics and the needs of young people as they confront an array of problems their brains are not yet developed enough to encounter wisely.
Parent coaching is designed to help parents understand and implement the scaffolding for safety and vulnerability that is needed to create a healthy relationship to the problems of child rearing. Parent coaching can also focus on the wellbeing of parents, and explore how to maintain a healthy balance between taking care of personal needs, and creating the flexible containment and guidance needed in the parenting relationship.
Teen & Young Adult Coaching
The convergence of issues that adolescents are faced with currently is complex and often emotionally overwhelming. Coaching in this context is providing your teen with an adult support who can help them identify coping skills, build critical thinking, practice executive functioning skills, and learn the social development skills that are crucial to moving through the conflicts that arise during these years.
The search for identity that is so central to adolescent experience can often be bound up with bouts of depression and isolation. In the post covid era, teens are thoughtful about how social dynamics impact them, and they seek support and safe expression for the many emotions and ideas they are confronting.
Adolescent coaching can help teens who are struggling with the more common elements of the middle school and high school experience, or it can provide a guided landing for youth who have been in intensive treatment for mental health disorders and co-occurring learning difficulties as they reintegrate into a more normalized version of the teen landscape. To participate in coaching, teens who are within six months of transitioning home from a residential treatment program are required to have a therapist in the state they are living in addition to coaching.