LIFE COACHING - TRANSITIONS & RE-IMAGINING

Why Having A Coach Will Help You Focus On And Achieve Your Goals

Only you can create the focus to lead to your goals and dreams. I will help focus the focus, and help you imagine the possibilities. Here's an exercise to help in your initial musings. (Adapted from Michael Port)

What Are You Working On? What Are Your Goals?
State your goals in the positive. Be as clear as you can in defining your goals and place them in a specific time frame within which to achieve them.

How Will You Know When You Have Achieved Them? 

Use all your senses and visualize the results. Imagine how you will really feel and how different your interactions with others will be when you accomplish these goals.
What results will you see?
What feedback will you hear?
What feelings will you have?

Will you feel more... Fulfilled, Enlightened, Energized, Strengthened, Attractive, Spiritual, Interesting, Content?

What Will It Be Worth to You?!

The Core Benefits of Coaching – What You May Anticipate

• Renewed belief in yourself and your capacity to live a positive, balanced, brilliant and exciting future.

• A deep grounding in understanding and honouring your core values and intrinsic needs, as foundations for healthy and integrated choices in your life.

• Creating (not finding) complimentary balance among the various dimensions of your life. We won't speak of 'work/life balance'. That is a misnomer that tethers all your life to how it is defined by your work. Work is one dimension of many.

• Relief from anxieties, stress and self-doubt and the development of sustained peace of mind.

• Increased confidence in your ability to handle and master day-to-day challenges.

• More quality time and enjoyment with family and friends. Time and energy to pursue leisure activities and hobbies.

• A deep sense of focus, direction, satisfaction and fulfillment in your personal and professional relationships.

      Intense excitement about your future!!

Sampling of Transition Experiences:

• Employment to Unemployment/Retiring

• Health to Illness / Injury/recent diagnoses with chronic or terminal illness

• Workaholism to healthy balance of work, home, leisure

• Partnered/Married/Cohabiting/Common-law to experiencing Separation/Divorce/Widow(er)hood

• Questioning Sexuality to Coming out, living as a whole Gay/Lesbian, Bi or Trans person/acceptance in LGBTQ culture

• Children beginning school/ transitioning to “empty nesting”

• Persons of Faith to Humanist/Atheist

• High School student to University/College (student and parents)

• Member of a work team to being promoted/Management (defining new professional boundaries)

• Geographic stability to moving to another community with resultant feelings of displacement/ rural/urban isolation

• Mothers/Fathers with children at home to limited/no contact with their children

• Straight Parents to parents of Gay/Lesbian (adult) children

• Boredom and inertia to reclaiming a fulfilled and gratifying life of health/wellness/leisure 

DREAM BIG!

tim@walkingwithyou.ca

519-831-2082

147 Wyndham St. N. Suite 407 Guelph, ON. N1H 4E9

Grief & Bereavment Psychotherapy

Life Transitions Coaching

Adult  Psychotherapy

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PET COMPANION LOSS

INDIVIDUAL ADULT THERAPY

GRIEF & LOSS THERAPY

WELCOME

Your experience of mourning and grief is the normal and natural reaction to any major loss, and is unique to you. You are not pathological, or ‘sick’, and, while your heart feels broken, you do not need fixing. You are a griever.

The experience of your Grief Recovery is a journey and does not need to go on indefinitely. I propose working  together, for an hour once per week, beginning with 6 to 10 weeks, depending on the complex nature of your grief. (Often this extends longer when we are working with complicated, layered grief).

Together we will first hear your story, and acknowledge your pain. We will reframe many of the unhelpful (and hurtful) messages that you have been taught and learned about grief and grievers; 'don't cry', mask your feelings, 'be strong (for others!), replace the loss, 'keep busy!' and the most harmful, 'time heals all'.   We will take small correct and decisive action steps that will encourage and enable you to say the unspoken words, feel the unfelt emotions and move progressively toward the completion of your grief journey.

Completion does not mean forgetting… it means healing, bringing to conclusion the pain and confusion and isolation you are experiencing so that you may go on, from here, from now, to a renewed sense of strength, wholeness and happiness. 

You are a griever, fractured between your head and your heart. You are normal and your experiences are natural. Let's work together to complete this grieving time so that you may become a whole person once more.

I offer individual counselling for adults in search of meaning, courage, hope, creativity, healing and new skills to cope with and change as you face the challenges of relationships, life transitions, and personal, cultural, environmental and emotional upheaval.

We distinguish between loss and deprivation, shame and guilt, worry and anxiety, who we are and what we do.

I work with depression, anxiety, and uncertainty, primarily through the models of narrative therapy and Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT). I will walk with you through the ups and downs of your own unique story, and help you to ground yourself in your deepest gifts, values, and desires in order to face life's challenges with resilience, to heal

It hurts

How attached we become to our pets is as individual as we are. The bonds that we have are valid, worthy of understanding, and serve to explain the intense pain we feel when those bonds are broken. It is intense grief. 

People I encounter in my pet companion loss practice are often shocked to discover how hurt they feel when their pets die. Statements such as "I don't know what's wrong with me. I didn't feel this bad when my grandmother (acquaintance, friend, relative) died" are common. And so the question arises, why do so many of us feel the loss of a companion animal so intensely - is it normal to feel this way? Yes, it is normal…

Animal companions weave themselves into the fabric of our daily lives. With their constant presence, availability and devotion, pets are our best source of unconditional love, becoming for many of us the ideal child, parent, mate or friend. They listen without judgment or reproach, and never give advice. They accept us exactly as we are, regardless of how we look or feel or behave. They forgive us readily, and never hold grudges against us. No matter how much change we must endure in our unpredictable lives, our pets are always there for us. Studies show that we're likely to be even more highly attached to our pets if we associate them with important times in our lives or link them with significant others who are no longer with us; and if we've relied on them to support us or get us through a crisis.

Grief over the loss of a pet is often trivialized, and people who have not experienced it themselves may add to the problem by making insensitive remarks such as "It was just a cat" or "You can always get another". A further complication is that the owner may feel guilty over having chosen to have their pet euthanized.

When cherished companion animals die, we need to take some time to think about and remember how closely we were attached to one another. It is only when we identify how much our friends meant to us, and recognize how very much we've lost, that we begin to understand that we need a trained and sensitive companion to Walk With.

I will companion you on your journey of remembering, celebrating and releasing.

Coaching is a relationship. It is a partnership, an alliance between coach

and client. Together we emphasize a purposeful, future-oriented approach

toward your exceptional Personal Growth. We re-imagine and clarify your

goals and dreams through possibilities thinking, and align them within your

whole life. 

Coaching recognizes and honours that you are whole, creative and resourceful and that you are the expert in your own life. And so, together we uncover your core values, intuition and insights into the development of your own solutions to your questions. We acknowledge your freedom to design your own visions and strategies with confidence and courage, to make choices and act, and to accept responsibility and accountability for your life choices.

My Role As Coach

I work within a Personal Growth model that advances a life-long strategy of personal wellness and powerful possibilities for your life. On your journey of self-discovery my primary role as coach is to listen.

Hearing Your Story I :

• Help Clarify Your Focus - by asking powerful questions to generate your deeper self-awareness, recognizing your strengths and abilities. 
• Challenge You - through possibility thinking, to think beyond, aspire beyond, and act beyond your present attitudes, perceptions, and ways of doing things.
• Encourage Your Creative Visioning – to articulate and align your goals and dreams to the whole of your life.
• Hold You Accountable - to both your vision and your commitment to your designed action steps.
• Celebrate Your Achievements – by acknowledging your strengths, delighting in your perseverance, and celebrating your successes.

Together we dream big dreams for your extraordinary future.

What Part You Play in Coaching

To be successful, coaching asks you to consider...

• Your Focus – on yourself, your strengths and successes, and… asking the tough questions, facing the hard truths.
• Your Authenticity – coming wholly as you are, warts and all - to create results flowing from authentic desires and strengths.
• Listening - to your intuition, assumptions, judgments; to the way you sound when you speak. To being positive.
• Self Reflection - to challenge your existing attitudes, beliefs and behaviours and to develop new, healthier ones which bolster your confidence.
• Observing - the behaviours and communications of others and what you can learn from them.
• Your Intention - taking decisive action – even when it is uncomfortable, in order to reach for the extraordinary.
• Your Personal Confidence – in your values and beliefs. Confidence in maintaining your composure, commitment and determination in the face of disappointment and unmet expectations. 
• Celebrating your Courage - to reach for more than before, to overcome internal and external obstacles as you shift out of being fear-based into being in abundance. To engage in continual self examination, and grow toward fulfillment, success and happiness.
• Your Inherent Compassion - for yourself (and others) as you experiment with new ideas and behaviors, and possibly experience setbacks. 
• Being a Person of Humour - committing to not taking yourself too seriously.
• Your Purpose – what do you really want and who do you really want to be.

Pet Loss

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