FAQ
what is coaching?
Coaching is a collaborative process that creates space to slow down, examine what is happening, and get clearer about what you want to do next. Together, we explore the questions, patterns, values, and possibilities surrounding the situation you bring to coaching.
Rather than giving you a prescribed answer, my role is to help you see yourself and your circumstances more clearly, challenge assumptions when useful, and turn greater awareness into intentional action.
how is coaching different from therapy?
Coaching is a collaborative, forward-focused process designed to help you gain clarity, increase self-awareness, make intentional choices, and take meaningful action. While our conversations may explore past experiences or relationship patterns when they help illuminate what is happening in your life today, coaching is not psychotherapy and does not diagnose or treat mental health conditions or trauma.
Therapy and coaching can complement one another, and some clients choose to engage in both at the same time. If something arises in our work that appears to fall outside the scope of coaching, I’ll be transparent about that and may suggest support from an appropriately qualified mental health professional.
What might we work on together?
Coaching is individualized, so what we focus on will depend on what is happening in your life and what you want to understand or change. Our work may include:
Recognizing relationship patterns, learned roles, or expectations that may be influencing your choices.
Exploring how experiences such as parentification or attachment patterns may be showing up in your relationships and life today.
Gaining clarity around a difficult relationship, family dynamic, career decision, or life transition.
Strengthening self-awareness and identifying what you genuinely want, value, and feel responsible for.
Examining assumptions or long-standing beliefs that may no longer reflect who you are today.
Developing more intentional ways of communicating, responding, and making decisions.
Creating practical next steps that support relationships, work, and a life that feel more aligned and sustainable.
Can we explore parentification or attachment patterns in coaching?
Yes. We can explore how early relationship experiences, learned roles, and attachment patterns may be influencing the way you think, relate, or make decisions today. The purpose is not to diagnose you or treat past trauma, but to develop greater awareness of patterns that may still be operating automatically and consider how you want to respond differently now.
If you’re looking for deeper trauma processing or mental health treatment, therapy may be the more appropriate setting—or coaching and therapy may be used alongside one another.
What will coaching with you be like?
I believe the relationship between coach and client matters. You should feel comfortable being honest, questioning your own thinking, and bringing the complicated parts of a situation into the conversation without fear of judgment.
Our initial Exploration Call is complimentary. It gives you an opportunity to share what you would like support with, ask questions, and get a feel for what working together might be like. It also gives me an opportunity to determine whether I believe I can genuinely support you. If something comes up that appears to be outside my expertise or the scope of coaching, I’ll be transparent about that and may offer a referral from my network when possible.
If we decide to work together, I do not follow a one-size-fits-all formula. We will explore what is happening, what may be influencing it, what matters most to you, and what you want to be different. From there, we will identify practical steps that feel aligned with your goals and circumstances.