Parent Coaching
I hear it all the time: “My kids are constantly fighting, ignoring me, melting down…”
“I want to gentle parent but it’s not working!”
“My kid doesn’t talk to me about their challenges but I can see they’re struggling”
“I want to get closer with my kid… I can feel this distance and tension between us, and I don’t want that”
If this is you, you’re in the right place. I specialize in guiding parents through a holistic journey that extends beyond traditional parent support. My approach delves deep into the core of parenting by assisting parents in not only refining their parenting skills, but also embarking on a profound journey of self-discovery and healing.
My unique coaching process recognizes that in order to foster stronger connections and cultivate lasting peace within the home, parents must first address their own inner landscapes. I provide dedicated support to help parents reparent themselves, allowing them to heal their inner child and liberate themselves from past wounds. By empowering you to navigate and recover from their emotional triggers, YOU can pave the way for more empathetic, intentional, and harmonious interactions within your family unit!
The fact is, by nurturing parents' emotional well-being, we inherently enhance the atmosphere at home. I’ll provide a safe, warm and nurturing space for you to explore your own areas for growth, gain insights into your triggers, and develop effective coping strategies. I’ll also help you to learn how to parent collaboratively with your children to empower them and build mutual trust. Through a process of self-discovery and healing, I help parents unlock the potential for deeper connections with their children and partners, ultimately leading to a rewired family system and a more peaceful and joy-filled home environment.
Internal Family Systems (IFS)
Internal Family Systems (IFS) is a transformative, evidence-based therapy that helps individuals understand and heal their inner worlds. This approach views the mind as a system of parts, each with its own perspective and purpose. Within IFS, I often encounter three primary types of parts: exiles, managers, and protectors.
Exiles are the parts of us that hold onto deep-seated emotions and memories, often from past traumas or painful experiences. These parts can feel vulnerable and isolated, carrying burdens of shame, fear, or sadness.
Managers act proactively to keep our exiles from being triggered. They work to maintain control and order in our lives, often through perfectionism, criticism, or overworking. Their goal is to protect us from the pain and vulnerability of our exiles by managing our day-to-day experiences.
Protectors, also known as firefighters, react when an exile's pain breaks through the manager's defences. They try to numb or distract us from this pain, often through impulsive or compulsive behaviours, such as overeating, substance use, or anger outbursts.
IFS aims to create a harmonious relationship between these parts, guided by the core Self—the wise, compassionate, and grounded presence within each of us. By understanding our parts and embracing our internal family, we foster healing, growth, and inner peace.
Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT)
Emotion-focused therapy facilitates positive connections with others, better emotional awareness, management and regulation of behaviour patterns, and turning unwanted thoughts and behaviours into positive ones. EFT is commonly used with families to help members understand each other better via communication techniques which illuminate unhelpful behaviour patterns within relationships. It is an attachment-focused modality that I consistently use in all my sessions to support individuals in gaining awareness and insight into each other’s perspectives.
Dialectical Behavioural Therapy (DBT)
For some, emotional regulation can be really difficult and talking doesn’t always help. Folks who are less interested in exploring their thoughts, feelings and behaviours verbally will likely benefit from a DBT approach - in DBT, clients are taught two strategies: acceptance and change. Utilizing skills from mindfulness, distress tolerance, interpersonal effectiveness and emotional regulation, I teach clients how to accept their thoughts and feelings and choose healthy behaviours they can use to move through them.
Social & Emotional Learning (SEL) Skill Development
Research shows that when young people have supportive relationships and opportunities to develop and practice social, emotional, and cognitive skills across many different contexts, their academic learning and functioning overall is enhanced. Many studies offer consistent evidence that SEL improves academic performance. I use a combination of psychological and SEL interventions that address self-awareness, relationship skill, self-management, responsible decision-making and social awareness - critical skills that are necessary for academic success and enhance emotional well-being, which is crucial for developing foundational literacy and communication skills.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)
CBT follows the logic that our thoughts, feelings and behaviours are intrinsically linked in a cycle and uses evidence, logic and data to lead clients to make choices and practice behaviours that are positive and healthy. I use CBT to help young people become observers and detectives – they’ll learn to recognize their positive and negative automatic thoughts, identify their typical reactions to those states, and decide whether they’re helpful or not (and what to do instead). CBT is highly regarded as being adaptable to most situations and problems as it offers practical solutions for dealing with them. Most importantly, CBT strategies enable me to show my clients that they are capable of handling anything that comes their way when they’re equipped with the right tools to empower them.