Personal Coaching
Goals
Personal Coaching (or Personal Development Coaching ) is an assisted process with the goal of helping you become more self-aware, more coherent, and more capable of owning and accomplishing your agendas. In short, it is meant to help you become more fully yourself in the best way possible.
Together we will work on articulating what you want this to mean for you at this time in your life; what you want the goal of this process to be.
Approach, Process & Tools
I bring all of the lenses and tools with which I have been trained, to bear on our work. In addition to being a trained psychoanalyst, clinical, and management psychologist, I bring my formal training and expertise in negotiation and conflict management; my lengthy training and practice in couples and relationship work; my brain- and neuroscience training and lens; my somatic neurophysiology credentials in working with resilience, character and trauma held in the body and expressed nonverbally – to name some of the main approaches that inform how I help people.
Being present with you, and inviting you to be present to yourself, is at the crux of all of our conversations. In addition to seeing your uniqueness and individuality, I am alert and interested in your context and background, including your cultural and values background. That would include your ethnic, national, racial, religious, gender, socioeconomic, educational – in short, any part of any of the communities by which you were influenced to be where you are now – without myself giving privilege to any particular community.
Getting Started
When we first meet, you can let me know what you want to work on, including any specific issue. It’s okay to have trouble articulating it, or to not know at all. Very often when people start by identifying something specific they want to work on, as self-learning deepens, a more meaningful goal can emerge. Moreover, everything tends to be interconnected, so I have found that starting anywhere is a useful beginning. In other words, you are not expected to “diagnose” yourself so much as begin the process of letting me get to know you, so that we can begin the process of tracking and understanding you.
Engagement in personal coaching starts with agreeing to some time and frequency to meet and talk. In these conversations, we will talk about you: how you live your life, how you function, the beliefs that motivate you, how you relate to the people around you. They include helping you grow in awareness of the unconscious part of your functioning: motivations, personality, emotions, formative events and relationships that shaped who you are today; and what may be getting in the way of your further growth.
As it may seem appropriate, I may invite you to some exercises, either within the sessions or in your life. I am also inclined to use what is going on “in the room” (in our interaction) to deepen our understanding of you.
Areas of Focus
I work with an individual as a whole person. I look at the entire life trajectory, and am skilled at comprehending and appreciating the challenges that have formed your strengths; at perceiving your inherent gifts; and helping you discern the paths of growth in your life, as well as the sticking points of your continued growth.
At the same time, I find that many people want to work on specific problems and skills. While keeping a holistic, whole life development view of each person in mind, I have identified some specific issues that may provide an inroad to your work. These do not exclude other topics people seek to address, such as improving communication, coping with anger in self and others, improving attention, a tendency to worry, challenges to self-confidence, workaholism and stress, committing to a healthy lifestyle, and so on. Here are some specific topics that may help you as an inroad to coaching:
- Career transition
- Creativity
- Imposter syndrome
- Life changes
- Peak performance
- Relationships
- Women leadership