How Coaching Works With Me
(And Why It Usually Starts Somewhere Unexpected)
Coaching has been a buzzword in the therapy world for a long time. As therapists, it’s almost like moving through a battlefield and earning our scars when we get our degrees.
Then to have a “trauma-informed” coach using their personal experience to say something potentially damaging to a family system, all because someone got roped in by catchy marketing?!
No, thank you! Our defenses go up. Our trauma responses start cooking, and all of a sudden we are at full volume in the comment section.
So Why the Hell am I Calling Myself a Coach?
Fair question! And if your defenses are up, I’m here to help you understand what I do, how I can help, and all the support options I offer.
But before I go there, I’m going to walk you through the genesis of it all. Buckle in!
How Becca went from Therapist to Coach
For me, offering coaching was not in the long term plan. Hell, becoming a therapist wasn’t even a thought that crossed my mind until someone told me it existed!
All I knew was that I loved to help people sort out the things that were getting in the way and the best way that I knew how to do that was to make it make sense.
As a therapist, I started out working with the prison system. Although, at the time, it was something that I thought I enjoyed, leaving that structure taught me so much more about what I could offer therapeutically to my community.
I got the opportunity to work at several different places during my provisional licensure:
✨ Inpatient psychiatric hospital (adults)
✨ The Suicide Hotline
✨ The Crisis Text Line
✨ a telehealth start-up company
✨ and then eventually private practice
During my start in private practice, I realized that I was starting to get several therapists as clients. I loved working with them! But there was a different element that I found myself interested in too: the systems that were keeping them stuck.
So it was there that I found the answer I had been looking for. I wanted to help people heal, but I also wanted to provide the practical and sustainable solutions that I heard were holding them back week after week in therapy.
I asked myself how I could do that and the answer was clear… coaching. The only problem was how to shape it in a way that was authentic to me and sustainable to them.
Separating Therapy from Coaching
As a therapist, I know that it can feel like being on a lonely island (and not Andy Sandburg’s version).
We listen to people’s most vulnerable moments daily, but when it comes to finding people that we can truly connect and feel safe with, it gets hard! I’ve been at family dinner and heard the comments:
💬 “You’re talking like a therapist”
💬 “Stop psychoanalyzing me”
💬 “You talk in emotional words too much”
💬 “Do you just expect me to not talk about me because you’re tired?”
At the end of the day, those comments aren’t the easiest to shake off. Especially when you have the stresses of business ownership on top of your client caseload.
Finding people that understand what we experience is vital! So, we post in Facebook groups, or look for memberships. The next thing we know, we’ve added more things on our list and we’re still spinning out.
I can’t tell you how many times I just wanted someone that spoke “business owner” and “therapist” and could help me with:
✏️ my to-do list
✏️ understanding the roadblock
✏️ if burnout was the problem
✏️ or who I could trust in our field
But therapy wasn’t made for that. Coaching was.
Therapy was made for me to heal from my past trauma, helping me connect the dots, and learning my values.
Coaching was made for strategy, connection, and building.
When I built my coaching business, I knew from my experience as a therapist and a business owner, there was one thing that consistently got in the way of sustainable businesses for therapists: a lack of clear values.
What Coaching Looks Like With Me
This is usually the moment where people expect a formula.
📐 A framework.
📐 A step-by-step plan.
📐 A “do this and your practice will finally work” moment.
I see a lot of those ads, but that’s not what I’m about! Why? Because formulas belong in math class, not in business coaching for therapists.
Of course there are things we need to do to get our businesses up and running, but once we are in the thick of it, who am I to say that how I run my business is what will work for the next person?
Just a heads up, I’m not that person.
So let’s start from the beginning. Most people come into coaching thinking they have a productivity problem or a marketing problem. What they actually have is a values conflict.
👉🏼 They’re seeing clients they don’t enjoy anymore.
👉🏼 They’re on insurance panels that don’t respect their time.
👉🏼 They’re saying yes out of guilt and no out of fear.
👉🏼 They’re comparing themselves to other therapists instead of listening to their own capacity.
So we slow it down.
I ask questions that aren’t about what you should be doing, but what’s actually happening.
🤔 Who drains you?
🤔 What do you avoid?
🤔 What do you keep forcing because it “makes sense on paper”?
🤔 What parts of your business feel heavy instead of aligned?
That’s usually when someone says, “I haven’t been able to think about it like that before.”
This Is Where Value Building Comes In
Values aren’t buzzwords to me. They’re a tool to help me figure out how to get past the roadblock in your business.
If your business feels chaotic, it’s usually because something you’re doing is out of alignment with what matters to you.
Once we name that mismatch in our coaching session, you’ll find yourself making clearer decisions for your business and creating boundaries that evolve with you as you grow.
Eventually, your to-do list will stop looking like a weapon and start looking like a companion tool.
What People Actually Leave With
People don’t leave sessions with me with a perfect plan. They leave with:
⚙️ context
⚙️ language for what’s been bothering them
⚙️ permission to stop comparing
⚙️ a clearer sense of what to change and what to stop fixing
Sometimes that looks like a master to-do list, one hard decision, or realizing the problem was never motivation to begin with. The best part about our sessions is that you’re in complete control. We work on what you need to work on!
Where to Start If You’re Curious
If your brain feels loud and scattered, the To-Do List Session is often the easiest entry point. If you already know what you want to work on, I have two options for individual coaching sessions that are available to book today and ready when you need them.
You don’t need to sign a long term commitment, just grab a session with me, ask your questions, and I’ll be in your corner.
You don’t need to become someone else to make your business work. You just need support that actually sees you.
