The human mind is complex and often requires an other to witness and reflect it, providing an opportunity to understand one’s inner world from a wider perspective. Change is not easy. To overcome established negative habits and mental attitudes many skilful strategies need to be employed, often simultaneously. Despite our desire to change, we often sabotage ourselves and miss our blind spots; this inevitably leads to a relapse. A well-trained wellness coach serves as a sounding board, a skilful listener and enquirer, an accountability buddy, a healing co-regulation partner, and a teacher if required. As a result of such a coach–client relationship, the client is empowered to step into a more creative, aware, and open-minded approach to life. In this way success is inevitable!

Coaching is all about helping you change for the better, and it views you as an expert on your life (even if you currently doubt it). The change you are seeking can be as small as starting regular visits to a gym, or as big as helping you uncover your purpose in life. You decide the scale of the change you want to bring into your life. There is no right or wrong way to do it. You decide how fast or slow you want to go, and how much challenge is just right for you. The coach is there to support you in the way that serves you best. 

Coaching is not defined as therapy. It does not focus on digging into your past to uncover what exactly has influenced your current perceptions and behaviours. Instead, coaching approaches any given challenge from the perspective of positive psychology. It focuses on your desires and values, strengths, resources, and the future you want for yourself. Based on your needs and readiness to change, coaching facilitates the expansion of your awareness as you obtain deeper insights about your life. In this way you tap into your own creative potential, from where the most suitable course of action naturally arises. This process often has a highly therapeutic and empowering effect on people, unless a major trauma or dis-ease is present.

Trauma is an experience or an event (or series of events) which leaves us feeling helpless, terrified, and profoundly unsafe (Pat Ogden et all, “Trauma and the Body”, 2006). Treating trauma is outside the scope of practice of any coaching; however, coaches can get additional trauma-informed training which makes them capable of recognising trauma. This equips trauma-informed coaches to work around trauma in non-harmful or non-triggering ways. If at any point the trauma becomes overwhelming and/or the coach is incapable of supporting an individual client, based on the code of ethics of coaching the coach is obligated to refer the client to another suitable practitioner.