Emotional growth and self-discovery
SHAPE your sober journey
If you’re ready to feel empowered, you’re beyond the first six weeks or six months of living without your substance or addictive behaviour of choice. You might be asking yourself questions like ‘is this it?’ or ‘what now?’. The initial excitement and energy that you had for giving up that habit may have worn off and life may be beginning to feel a little bit flat again.
Or perhaps you’ve noticed some new maladaptive coping mechanisms creeping in… like food, phone use, or online shopping for example. Something that’s replaced your primary addiction as a reward or distraction, and you’re feeling that yet again something is out of balance.
Habit change is just the first step in opening up your life and all its glorious possibilities. It’s so important that we continue to work on our personal and emotional growth, so that we keep on working towards our transformation, our full recovery and by that I mean recovering our true-selves, our full range of emotions. When we become conscious we can begin finding our way back home to wholeness. That is what my SHAPE coaching sessions are all about.
“Getting sober just exploded my life. Now I have a much clearer sense of myself and what I can and can’t do. I am more successful than I have ever been. I feel very positive where I never did before, and I think that’s all a direct result of getting sober.”
Jamie Lee Curtis
This is where we do internal work that keeps us living and loving life with freedom from alcohol. The four pillars of my ‘radical sobriety’ are self-acceptance, self-compassion, self-belief and self-love. With these principles in mind, we consciously nurture ourselves, prioritise self-care and learn to become our own best friend. This is the stage of sobriety where we can start adding things into our lives, we strengthen our foundations and sprinkle the glitter on top! Our aim is much higher than simply not drinking alcohol, our aim is to live our best life so that we can say with 100% certainty ‘there is no good reason why I would want to drink, my life is too good to ruin with hangovers!’In the SHAPE sessions I begin to work with life coaching tools like the Wheel of Life.
I take a holistic approach and will help you take positive steps towards finding more happiness and fulfilment and empower you so that your sobriety becomes sustainable and slip-ups become a thing of the past. I share resources and tools and there will be homework outside of the sessions if you want it. The direction our sessions will go in will be entirely led by you, within a framework that’s created by me.
“Perhaps the biggest tragedy of our lives is that freedom is possible, yet we can pass our years trapped in the same old patterns…We may want to love other people without holding back, to feel authentic, to breathe in the beauty around us, to dance and sing. Yet each day we listen to inner voices that keep our life small.”
Tara Brac
I’m here to partner you:
Imagine you’re training for your first marathon. I’ll be running by your side, map reading, carrying the backpack, and handing you water and snacks along the way.
I’ll be cheering you on, celebrating your successes, and helping you reach each milestone that you set.
“True power is living the realisation that you are your own healer, hero, and leader.”
Yung Pueblo
A coach can only take you as far as they have been themselves.
To maintain sobriety, it is important to really understand why we began to use alcohol or behaviours as a maladaptive coping mechanism. Over the past two years, I’ve been on a deep self-discovery journey; this began with having a diagnosis for ADHD. My diagnosis led me to research the underlying causes of this form of neurodiversity and through that, I found the work of Gabor Mate and began my therapy journey.
At the start of 2022 I began my Compassionate Inquiry training, an approach developed by Gabor. I understand that addiction is a symptom of trauma and both exist on a sliding scale. It’s not always easy to recognise our own trauma because it’s often only spoken about in terms of ‘big T trauma’, life-threatening events like war, a road traffic accident or a violent assault.
Most of us have some level of trauma when we use Gabor’s definition: “Trauma is a psychic wound that hardens you psychologically that then interferes with your ability to grow and develop. It pains you and now you are acting out of pain. It induces fear and now you are acting out of fear. Trauma is not what happens to you, it’s what happens inside you because of what happened to you. Trauma is the scarring that makes you less flexible, more ridged, less feeling and more defended. ”Until we begin to understand and heal those wounded parts of ourselves, they will continue to drive us in our addictive behaviours and provide the lens through which we view our entire lives. If you feel ready to do this deeper internal work, I blend my compassionate inquiry training with my coaching approach, to help you understand your limiting beliefs and see new possibilities. I will be here to gently guide you, to allow space whenever necessary for any wounded part of you to be seen and held in safety. You will always be in the driver’s seat and we will only go as far as you are ready to explore. I will provide the safety and support you need to take a compassionate look at what has been driving you, so you can clear the path for your future and find freedom from patterns of addictive behaviour for good.