Coaching offers support and safety to change and grow. You will learn about yourself, and how you show up in your life and relationships. As you learn, you will be better able to choose what comes next.
Trauma Recovery Coaching offers a peer-oriented approach that respects your agency. As a survivor, you don’t need someone else telling you what to do, you need someone who believes in you and gives honest and compassionate feedback as you explore and grow.
What Is Trauma Recovery Coaching?
Trauma Recovery Coaching is designed specifically to help you recover from trauma.
Trauma Recovery Coaches are trauma specialists first. We use coaching as a way to support healing and growth. Many coaches, including myself, are trauma survivors.
We do not diagnose or prescribe. We work collaboratively with you to rebuild agency and health.
We do not pathologize trauma responses—we understand that abnormal responses to abnormal experiences and situations are normal.
We recognize that survival responses do not define you.
We have standardized, detailed safety protocols to ensure the best possible support for your healing and growth.
We are part of a community of coaches who provide personal and professional support and accountability.
My Specializations
Complex PTSD
Complex PTSD includes a variety of survival responses developed in the absence of support and connection when we are overwhelmed. Those adaptations are highly functional when we are isolated, but often hinder our healing because they depend on disconnecting from ourselves and others. Grief is often a central component of cPTSD, but that may be masked by anger, numbness, impulsive behaviour and/or high performance.
Childhood Emotional Neglect
Children need emotional support and validation from their caretakers in order to learn to trust the world and themselves. Unfortunately, many parents are unable to provide this, for various reasons. This can happen alongside other forms of abuse and neglect, but it can also happen in a home where physical needs are attended to. Without this support, we struggle to know ourselves and find a place in the world.
Seventh-day Adventists (Current and Former)
Seventh-day Adventism promotes a wholistic approach to health which provides a valuable foundation for healing. However, it often tends towards fundamentalism, which can lead to religious trauma. Because it is a tightly connected community, leaving can be devastating.
I was raised Adventist and studied to be a pastor, but my relationship to the church is complicated. I value the experiences I had growing up, but I have struggled to reconcile that with the exclusivity, emotional immaturity and controlling behaviour common in the church. Wherever your journey leads you, I am familiar with the complexity of being Adventist—especially as the child of a church employee.
Religious/Cultural Trauma
Religion and culture provide powerful resources for facing the demands of life. Unfortunately, they are sometimes used to coerce and control behaviour and thought, rather than to cultivate confidence, curiosity and compassion. When that community forms a central part of your life and identity, it can be difficult to leave. Those who do may face profound isolation and struggle to adapt to the world “outside.”
Adult Third Culture Kids
Third Culture Kids experience displacement and isolation as their parents move for work or other reasons. Conventionally, these are missionary, military or business kids, but they can also be the children of immigrants. They don’t belong to their parents culture or the local culture. Survival may require adapting between various contexts, which can leave them wondering who they are. As well, they may struggle with unresolved grief as their parents are often too busy to attend to their emotions around transition.
Academic Overachievers
Excelling at school often brings a different kind of isolation—especially when you are dealing with trauma. Being a “good” student can mean being ignored by teachers and bullied by peers. It is often assumed you are “okay,” when that may be far from the truth. For many overachievers, anything less than perfection may bring abuse at home. At the same time, there is often less support because “they’ll figure it out.” Self-reliance can easily turn into alienation and deep loneliness. And success at school doesn’t necessarily mean success at life, leaving some overachievers struggling to find meaning and purpose once school ends.