WHAT DOES A TRAUMA COACH DO?
You already know why you do this, but you can’t stop doing it.
The gap between understanding it and actually doing something different is the entire reason I have a job.
YOU’VE ALREADY DONE A LOT OF THIS
Years of therapy
You can narrate your own childhood like a case study. You know the words. You know the diagnosis. You know exactly which parent did what.
A shelf of books
Nervous system this, attachment style that. You could teach the material. But you still can’t get through a surprise call from a parent without abandoning yourself.
Every app, every journal
The habit tracker, the gratitude list, the breathwork you did twice already. However, your body still braces when you hear the phone ring.
So you don’t have an information problem.
THERAPY
Goes backward.
Where it started, why it happened, and what it did to you. A therapist can diagnose, treat, and take you into the parts of your history that need real clinical care.
That work is real and I’m not competing with it. If you have a good therapist, keep her.
COACHING
Goes forward.
What you’re still doing today in your kitchen, in your messaging app, in your marriage. We catch the pattern while it’s running and we build something to put in its place.
I’m not a therapist. I’m not diagnosing you, and I’m not treating anything. Most of my clients have both, and that’s the point.
WHY NOBODY INTERVENES
Nothing is on fire, and that’s the problem.
You’re functioning. So you get promoted, you get thanked, and you get handed more. Every time you carry it, you prove again that you can, which is exactly why nobody ever takes any of it off you.
High-functioning women don’t get a rock bottom. There’s no moment that makes this obvious to everyone around you. There’s just a slow fade, and one day you realize you can’t remember the last time you wanted something for yourself and said it out loud.
A coach is the person who names it out loud before the fade finishes.
WHAT WE ACTUALLY WORK ON
Five patterns. You’ll recognize at least three.
These aren’t personality traits, and they aren’t flaws. They’re survival patterns that kept you safe once, and they kept running long after the danger left.
FAWNING
You agree before you’ve decided
You say yes with your whole chest and resent it by dinner. Keeping the peace costs you every time and you pay it anyway.
HYPERVIGILANCE
You brace for what hasn’t happened
You read the room before you enter it. You hear a tone in a text message. Your body is on call twenty-four hours a day for a job that ended years ago.
OVER-EXPLAINING
You explain yourself to people who didn’t ask
You’d rather write three paragraphs than be misunderstood for thirty seconds. Being misread feels like danger, so you over-correct every time.
SELF-ABANDONMENT
Everyone gets a yes except you
The task is never the enemy. Dinner isn’t the enemy, your kids aren’t the enemy, your husband isn’t the enemy. What’s missing is one yes to yourself, and you haven’t given it in years.
CHAOS AS COMFORT
Calm feels like the moment before something bad
When things are good, you start scanning. You can’t enjoy it, you can only wait for it to end, so you stir something up and call it being realistic.
So what does a coach actually do?
Four moves. It’s the same four whether you’re in the workbook, in a group, or sitting across from me.
01
Name it
You can’t interrupt what you can’t see. Most women can’t name their pattern, they just know they feel unrecognizable by 4pm.
02
Interrupt it
Not once, and not in theory. In the actual moment, with a tool you practiced before you needed it.
03
Build the toolbag
Repetition, not inspiration. The goal is that the new response eventually gets faster than the old one.
“You don’t have a discipline problem, you have a regulation problem.”
AUDYE GONZALEZ
The four things women say to me right before they hire me.
“I already have a therapist.”
Good. Keep her. She’s working on what happened to you. I’m working on Tuesday at 6pm, when your mother-in-law calls and you hear yourself saying yes again. Most of my clients have both of us on purpose.
“I should be able to do this myself.”
You’ve been doing it yourself for years and you’re still here reading this. Doing it alone isn’t a virtue, it’s the pattern wearing a work-ethic costume, and it’s the exact thing we’d be working on.
“I don’t have the time.”
You don’t have time because you say yes to everything and you’re the only person who never gets scheduled. I’m not asking you to add a project. I’m asking you to change what you do in the four seconds you already have.
“I’m not bad enough for this.”
Nobody who needs this feels bad enough. That’s what high-functioning means. You look fine, you’re holding it together, and the fact that you can is exactly why nobody has ever asked you how you’re doing and waited for the real answer.
What I’m promising, and what I’m not.
I’m not going to heal you. Healing isn’t a service anybody can sell you, and I’d be suspicious of anyone who says otherwise.
What you get is pattern recognition, interruption, and a practiced toolbag. That sounds smaller than healing right up until you’re standing in your kitchen at 6pm, catching yourself mid-fawn, and choosing something else for the first time in your adult life.
Where to start
START HERE · SELF-PACED
Still Stuck
My 26-page digital workbook. Name your pattern, catch it, interrupt it, on your own time. Every woman I work with starts right here, including the ones who end up in private coaching.
GROUP · TWELVE WEEKS
The Clearing
A small group with three live calls a month. We take one pattern at a time until you’ve got a toolbag for all five. Doors open this fall, and my email list gets first access.
PRIVATE · BY INQUIRY
Settle For More
One-on-one sessions, and voice memo access between sessions so you’re not white-knuckling it alone until the next call. Apply by application only.
Anchored women don’t live in survival patterns.
You’ve built a life that only works if you stay overwhelmed. Let’s take that apart, starting with the first pattern you can name.
