Areas of Specialty
Thought Work
You have thousands of thoughts every day, many that you're unaware of, but that affect your days and life. Some thoughts are so old and so repetitive that you may identify them as a permanent part of you, and they’re keeping you stuck. You may mistake your thoughts for the undeniable truth, instead of something of your own creation, and something you can observe and change.
When you understand that your thoughts generate your feelings, your feelings inform your actions, and your actions create your results, you can see clearly how your thoughts have a very powerful impact in your life. As your coach, I will guide you to observe and explore your thoughts, reflect on their impact in your life, process the feelings that come up, and ultimately choose thoughts that create the feelings, actions, and results you want.
Impostor Syndrome
Impostor syndrome is like the devil on the shoulder of high-achieving women. You achieve for the sake of proving your worthiness to others, all the while not believing in your own worth. In this state, you "compare and despair," convinced that everyone else is smarter, more accomplished, more professional, and more deserving than you. This leads to a constant fear of being exposed as a fraud and judged as harshly by other people as you judge yourself. Accomplishments often go uncelebrated and even unacknowledged or dismissed as a result of luck or trickery.
We know that this syndrome is experienced by many women, and the awareness of it as a shared experience is foundational to our work together. As your coach, I will encourage you to explore your old thought patterns regarding inherent self worth and value, achievement as currency for love, respect, and acceptance, and perceiving your peers as threatening or superior. We will work together over time to create new thought patterns that embrace your innate worthiness, find inspiration and community among your fellow high-achieving peers, and intrinsically motivate achievement for the sake of your own growth and satisfaction.
Perfectionism
You live in a society that sells the idea of “the perfect woman/wife/mother/lover/etc.,” as how to succeed in life as a woman. A lot of people make a lot of money from the products and services that striving for perfection requires, and we just keep buying even though we’ll never get there, and many of us believe it's our fault because of some unique personal shortcoming.
It’s no surprise that many women suffer from perfectionism. If none of us are perfect but we all think we should be, that means a lot of us are full of negative thoughts and emotions directed inwardly. Perfectionism, procrastination, and “all-or-nothing” thinking are nasty bedfellows that keep us stuck in inaction, feeling unworthy, and missing out on the life we desire. As your coach, I will help you identify your own perfectionistic thinking and how it’s stealing your dreams, and encourage you to develop a practice-and-progress growth mindset instead.
People Pleasing
Many of us learned as children that being our authentic selves didn't win the affection and praise of our parents. In your very earliest years, you may have begun perfecting the practice of reading other people's emotions, "walking on eggshells," especially when a parent appeared stressed or angry, and saying or doing what you imagined would please others in order to be safe and cared for in your household. The real problem is when you bring this dynamic into your adult relationships. Although people pleasing sounds like something nice, it feels awful to both the "pleaser" and the "pleased," and isn't a healthy dynamic for a relationship. The reason for this is because people pleasing is in actuality lying to someone in order to attempt to control them, and in essence abandoning your authentic self.
In order to shed this old survival tactic, you have to start by building awareness of your authentic self and reckoning with the illusion of controlling other people. As your coach, I will guide you in listening to, accepting, building trust with, and ultimately sharing your true self. We will ground our work together in the truth that you only have control over your own thoughts, feelings, and actions, and no one else's. You will learn to sit with both your own uncomfortable emotions and others' anger, sadness, and disappointment, and know that you don't need to do anything to fix it. Over time, you will first see your relationship with yourself transform, and ultimately experience healthy, authentic, trusting relationships with other people.
Sound familiar?
Do you want to quiet the noise and see how we can work on these together?