Trauma Aware Coaching - Your Path to Flourishing Even With Mental Illness!
Counselling may the most common approach to dealing with mental health problems, but there is another, evidence-based, scientifically sound, and more energising way to deal with them. My Trauma Aware Coaching (Which I also call Mental Health Coaching or Wellbeing Coaching) helps you develop your wellbeing and resilience directly so that even with mental illness and past-trauma, you maintain consistently good mental health.
My mental health coaching is rare, and creates positive life-changing dynamics because it is based on excellent top-level research in relatively new fields. I predict, and intend to ensure, that it evolves into a major player in UK helping professions, used alongside talking therapies in the NHS.
Highly-Trained Wellbeing Coaches Are the Future
Very few coaches (less than 10,000 globally) are trained to level 7 (MSc) and above, whereas millions of counsellors are. This level of counsellor training is the standard met by, and expected by all, from service providers to clients. Coaching is not there yet, but I intend to change that.
From those 10,000 suitably trained coaches, if you include level 7 expertise in the science of wellbeing and mental health it's less than 1000. I'm one of those 1000. I'm trained to the same level and high-standards as a therapist (MSc) which is very rare in the coaching world.
In Methods that Don't Revisit the Trauma, What's Possible?
There is clear value in addressing past trauma and discussing current mental health difficulties. To share what you're struggling with when you're struggling is key in lessening shame and supporting self-acceptance. It is often difficult to do so safely if you're vulnerable with friends and loved ones... To be given that space and time. The unconditional positive regard that counsellors provide, the quality of that relationship, is a vital piece of the puzzle in lessening the various symptoms of mental illness.
Is this the only thing that matters though? Not everyone wants to keep delving into their trauma over and over again in order to heal it. It can be exhausting and many take breaks and then wonder if it's really worth going there again.
Maybe you've done lots of counselling over the years, experienced a reduction in suffering but are still struggling. Maybe you're in less emotional pain, but certainly not thriving.
It can be refreshing after diving into the past loads to focus directly on developing your wellbeing in a professional, structured, and evidence-based way!
A New Science for Developing Good Mental Health
I offer a different way of working that the image below ⬇️⬇️⬇️ highlights. Instead of treating mental illness, we focus on ways of flourishing/thriving with illness.
Using my unique approach you will learn from scientific studies and try a wide range of practical tools that you can apply each day that foster better functionality and better mood. We look at the science around ways of thinking that support positive change, using your underused strengths, how positive emotions like calmness, joy, and interest emerge, and what you are like when you're doing well.
With that new learning in place, coaching skills, methods and tools are used to help you integrate and embody the science into your way of life. In the diagram below ⬇️⬇️⬇️, I focus on building your resources helping you function better in a structured way. You won't be left floundering and wondering what you can do to improve. You are given concrete things to apply and we explore how you can apply it in your own way.
Think of it as a way to directly develop your wellbeing so you can enjoy life and being alive more. Where counselling will focus on your suffering and look to alleviate it (important), my coaching will get you to build the kind of thinking, emotions and behaviours that make you feel good and function well (equally important).
The PGROWTH © Model of Wellbeing Coaching
At the heart of my approach is my own PGROWTH Wellbeing Coaching Model, a fresh evolution of the classic GROW/GROWTH frameworks used by coaches worldwide, and adapted for working directly on improving mental health and wellbeing.
PGROWTH begins with Positive Priming—introducing insights from positive psychology/wellbeing research to spark emotions such as hope, interest, and inspiration.
These topics come, in part, from my own research. I published the first ever review in 2023 on the positive psychological variables that reduce the negative impact that comes from trauma and childhood adversity. This is ground-breaking work and by working with me, you will be one of the first in the world to work in this way... a pioneer in mental health services.
From this uplifting starting point, coaching moves through Goal, Reality, Options, Will, Tactics, and Habits. This process ensures that goals are not only clear and achievable but also naturally energising. By blending evidence-based wellbeing practices with structured coaching, PGROWTH empowers clients to build sustainable change, strengthen mental health, and create a more enjoyable self to be in.
Using this model helps with many of the obstacles associated with past trauma such as learned helplessness, self-doubt, and indecision. As the P in PGROWTH is related to excellent science and evidence it stirs hope and possibility. From that starting worries, fears and concerns, which are inevitable with past trauma, take on a new function, as guides to making positive life changes.
Working with Male Survivors of Sexual Abuse
Due to this research and my personal experience of going from being thoroughly defeated by mental illness to thriving with mental illness, alongside my coaching, I also run trauma-aware positive psychology groups for Survivors UK, a charity that supports male survivors of sexual abuse.
Final Thoughts
Those with trauma have a higher chance of alcoholism, drug use, self-harm, suicidal thoughts, depression, obesity, smoking, lack of exercise, sexual promiscuity, addictions and more. It can feel like there is no way out. Years of being stagnant despite your best efforts can leave you thinking nothing will work for me. I'm different.
I assure you, the chain of events that resulted in present difficulties started somewhere...
...and a new chain of events can re-direct that momentum and new outcomes can take their place. It can just be difficult to get the ball rolling. That's where my trauma aware coaching / mental health coaching comes in. There are very few people who have tried this working. Will you be one of the pioneers?
If you'd like to talk about it and give it a try, book a free consultation today.
