Coaching
About Coaching
I am a co-founder of the method called Present Centered Relationship Coaching with my husband, Jayson Gaddis, who is the founder and CEO of The Relationship School. We also train relationship coaches and therapists who want to learn how to coach couples virtually through our Couples Coaching Training at the Relationship School.
Coaching is for couples and individuals who want to work with me, but live outside of Colorado. When I coach people virtually, I focus on the present and future goals and aspirations of my clients. I support them through cultivating more capacity for self-reflection, acquiring more insight, developing their presence and curiosity, and paying close attention to themself and their partner. In the coaching model, I do not work in depth with trauma or processing of historical material. Coaching is available to people who have adequate external support and internal resources to benefit from this higher accountability modality.
Coaching for Couples
While I have been working with couples since 2014, I began coaching couples virtually in 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic. Since I had to work with all of my couples virtually at that time, it helped me see how I could translate what I had learned as a therapist into a virtual coaching model, which I had not been able to envision before then. What I found was that a couple can make a lot of progress in their development (as a couple and as individuals) through a very clear and organized coaching model based on adult attachment science, interpersonal neurobiology, and understanding their nervous systems.
Most couples come to coaching and therapy with one main complaint: “We don’t communicate well.” Truly, just about every couple says this at first, but what this actually means can be quite complex to get to the root of. There is so much that goes into “good” communication, and it is so easy to fall into suboptimal communication even for the most connected and well intentioned couples. Communication is hardly ever the real issue, but it is at least a shared place to begin to look at what is actually going on.
Couples often need to learn a lot about themselves and each other that they didn’t realize. We think we know the person we have chosen to partner with, but it is not uncommon for people’s ideas of who they are with to not line up in real life with the evolving, complex, constantly changing human in front of them. Coaching works really well for a couple who can bring curiosity and a growth mindset to the sessions, and be open to uncertainty, being wrong, and not knowing.
Because of my background in adult attachment science, interpersonal neurobiology, experiential therapies, and study of the nervous system, couples will learn to interactively regulate more effectively through attuned and direct communication, value and honor each other’s differences (instead of trying to change their partner), share accountability for their relational experience, and create a shared vision for their relationship and future.
I offer a free 30 minute consultation to make sure we are a good fit for working together, and you can reach out to schedule that via my email contact.
If working privately isn’t of interest, I created a course with my husband for couples called Relationship Upgrade that you can take from home at your own pace. This course is best for couples who know they want to be together and are looking to strengthen their relationship.
And every two years, my husband and I offer an online course to train relationship coaches to work with couples. You can check out our Couple’s Coaching Training here.
Coaching for Women
I have worked therapeutically with women since 1995. Soon after I became a psychotherapist in 2003, a large part of my clinical training and experience occurred in the context of supporting women in recovering from eating disorders. That evolved over the last two decades into working with hundreds of women in different phases of life with a wide range of mental, emotional, spiritual, and relational stressors. Most of the women I’ve worked with were also recovering from the impact of traumatic experiences. The modern woman’s inner journey, identity development, relational experiences, and how she finds her way into a deeper and more whole experience and expression of herself continues to fascinate me to this day.
Women today have more opportunities and responsibilities than ever before. Most of us want a life filled with meaning–through our work, creative pursuits, relationships, and families–yet these endeavors (and the external societal expectations and messaging) leave little space to stay connected to ourselves along the way. It is possible to feel deeply fulfilled, and it requires tremendous awareness to make the choices necessary to carve our own way toward the life we each want to create for ourselves and those we love. Often, we are met with enormous challenges that must be navigated as well.
Women are often wondering: “Am I asking for too much?” “Am I too much?” “Is what I want even possible?” “Should I stay in this relationship, or leave?” These and many more extremely valid questions occur in a culture that doesn’t prioritize relationships, feelings, or show us what true collaboration and shared leadership in relationships can look like. It is greatly beneficial to obtain skillful support to fully understand what we each need to do in order to grow and develop ourselves towards relational empowerment.
Becoming a mother has been a powerful life transition for me, and I so enjoy working with women around integrating motherhood into their lives. Motherhood can be a time of reevaluation and change, it can be very confronting as well as empowering.
Many women today would like to connect with other mothers around the issues that modern women face when starting a family. A few years ago I started a personal blog about motherhood that you can find here: www.rearrangedbymotherhood.com
I also teach courses and facilitate women’s groups through The Relationship School.
I offer a free 30 minute consultation to make sure we are a good fit for working together, and you can reach out to schedule that via my email contact.
If you are interested in an in-person couples intensive with me, click here.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is coaching different than therapy?
Yes! Coaching focuses on the present and future direction of your life and your personal goals. Coaching will reference personal history without attempting to process it. Coaching has a more cognitive feel, where we pay attention to and work with beliefs, attitudes, narratives, behavior, and perceptions. Therapy can attend to all this, and can go beyond to include taking more time with personal history and the processing of memories and traumatic events that occurred in the past. Therapy also may involve more somatic and emotional processing of your sensations, feelings, and memories, and go at a slower pace to accommodate integration of all these aspects of experience.
Do you do coaching packages?
Currently, I do not. We schedule based on your needs and goals, and you pay for each session as we go.
How do I know if I am a good fit for coaching?
Since coaching is done virtually at a distance, people who do best with that model have access to support in other forms in their life, such as supportive relationships, and have adequate familiarity with and use of healthy coping tools. It also really helps to have a growth mindset, where you are interested in learning about yourself and curious about your internal thoughts, feelings, and ways of being. It helps to have an attitude of being a “student” in that you are here to learn about yourself (this mindset is helpful for therapy as well!).
How long does coaching last?
The idea with coaching (and therapy in my opinion) is to support you while you integrate more capacity within yourself that is in the service of your overall growth and development. Growing capacity can be around whatever you are working on: relationships, health, career, parenthood, or finding more purpose and meaning in life. I am development oriented as a practitioner, and whatever we work on will be connected to the growth and development of your capacities in a given area of life. I like to help people move forward, and sometimes that takes a while (6 months to a year or more), or that means just a few sessions. I am always assessing if progress is being made, and if not, we will actively discuss what is in the way and how to address that.