My mother is a psychologist and my father is a psychiatrist, both of whom specialise in relationship therapy. This led to a lot of interesting conversations about dating and relationship dynamics growing up.
Even so, when I started dating initially it seemed like a profound disappointment…I’d heard so many great things about love, sex and romance yet my first encounters left me wondering what all the fuss was about and if true love really even existed.
Turns out - it does, but it took me a while to figure out how to cultivate a truly nourishing relationship and attract a partner who could meet me in the ways I yearned to be met. You can read more about that story here.
Over time I've began to realise just how little relationship education is present in our society… Have divorce rates really increased to such a high rate because monogamy isn’t realistic? Or is it actually that we don’t have enough support and positive role models to guide us through this complex aspect of being human?
To this day I feel there is not enough education out there to help people successfully navigate this complex and important aspect of being human. My dream is to help change this so future generations can grow up surrounded by healthier models of relating as we step into a new paradigm of love.
Sessions run for approximately 45-60 minutes and can be conducted in-person (Melbourne, Brisbane & Sunshine Coast relationship coaching), over the phone or video conferencing with Zoom - an easy to use quality service that provides us with a private online meeting room.
The number of relationship coaching sessions you will have depends on the goals you set and how long it takes to reach those goals. I will work collaboratively with you to help you set and achieve your goals while facilitating personal growth through the coaching process.
During a typical coaching session you will have an opportunity to share any updates or ask any questions you might have relevant to your love life. Then, depending on what you need at the time we will spend the rest of the session engaging in content or therapeutic processes designed support your journey.
From time to time, we may also discuss "homework" tasks or exercises for you to do outside of our coaching sessions. This is aimed at helping you progress. It is voluntary and you have the right to determine the pace and rhythm of our work together.
I have a Bachelor Degree of Creative Industries (Queensland University of Technology) however it wasn’t until after graduating that I really discovered my real passion for relationship and dating coaching.
Since then, I've become an internationally credentialed Life Coach and gone on to train in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), Meta Dynamics (The Coaching Institute), Timeline Therapy (the Tad James Co.) and IFS inspired coaching - you can read more about that below.
I’m also very committed to ongoing professional development and each year continue to expand my skillset with additional training in various therapies. Plus, I have the rare honour of being continuously mentored by my parents - a psychologist and psychiatrist with over 30 years of experience, both of whom specialise in relationship therapy.
Still, experience is the best teacher. Over the years, I've worked with people who have NEVER been in a long-term relationship before, with people who have been in MANY different relationships (but were never fully satisfied in them) and even with people who have been in abusive marriages, where I've helped them to find a much healthier kind of love on the other side.
Wherever you sit on the spectrum, I look forward to helping you along this journey to epic love, in any way I can.
NLP stands for Neuro-Linguistic Programming. It is essentially a modality designed to help you learn about and work with the language of your unconscious mind. This study of excellent communication was created in the 1970s by Richard Bandler and John Grinder and later developed as an approach to personal development and psychotherapy.
In a nutshell, NLP is a methodology for learning how to achieve one's goals with sustainable results. It provides us with set of tools and techniques that enable us to work with our unconscious mind (rather than against it) and recover much more of our personal power in the process.
A core principle of NLP recognises that in order to sustainably change our behaviour and break free of patterns of self-sabotage, a shift needs to happen on both a conscious and unconscious level. This is why we can consciously know something we're doing is not serving us, yet will continue to play out the pattern until our unconscious mind gets on board with the change.
Timeline Therapy is a mild form of hypnosis that engages an individual's internal Time Line as a means for accessing and navigating the and working with the unconscious mind.
This modality can be used in a variety of ways, including to heal emotional traumas, eliminate unwanted thoughts, release limiting decisions, resolve difficult emotions and redirect unwanted behaviours. It also enables the possibility to create our own future by design. Best of all, Timeline Therapy can produce effective results in minutes - rather than days, months or years.
Internal Family Systems℠ (IFS) is a cutting-edge psychological model developed by Dr. Richard Schwartz. Although it has origins in psychotherapy, IFS is relevant to a range of applications and can be a profound tool to enhance the coaching process.
Many coaching models ignore or even try to dismiss wounded parts of the psyche and painful emotions that are not aligned or on board with a our intended goals and aspirations. This approach often leaves us with unresolved inner conflict that can hinder us from making real and lasting change. The IFS-Inspired Coaching method is devoted to honouring (rather than marginalising) the resistant inner parts of our psyche, knowing that their inclusion is essential for sustainable transformation.
Without this holistic approach, we may continue to feel stuck, disempowered and sabotage our goals as we cannot change what we don’t understand or acknowledge.
For this reason, IFS-inspired coaching provides a roadmap for us to practice self leadership and live from a more integrated place of being. As we uncover the hidden drives of our behaviour we become empowered to negotiate inner conflict with a more wholistic approach to decision making.
