Pondering Life with Dr. Phil Bennett: A Journey Through Loss and Renewal

Grief is a deeply personal and complex experience that can change the course of your life. Loss, whether of a loved one, a relationship, or even a chapter in life, can leave you feeling lost and uncertain. It’s during these moments of challenge that pondering life becomes a powerful tool for healing and renewal. I’m Dr. Phil Bennett, a grief coach in Colorado Springs, here to guide you through this transformative journey.

Understanding Grief and Loss

Grief is a natural response to loss, but it doesn’t look the same for everyone. Whether you’ve lost someone close or are struggling with a life transition, grief can manifest in various ways, including sadness, anger, confusion, or numbness. There’s no right or wrong way to grieve and no fixed timeline for healing.

As a grief coach, my role is not to judge or offer quick fixes but to provide the support you need to navigate these emotions. Together, we can explore your feelings, reflect on your experiences, and take steps toward finding peace and understanding.

The Power of Pondering Life in Colorado Springs

Life can feel unpredictable, especially in the wake of loss. Slowing down to ponder life offers an opportunity to reflect on what truly matters. This practice is not about dwelling on the past but about gaining clarity on what you need now to heal and move forward.

Through this process, we explore questions like:

●     What are the lessons in my pain?

●     How can I honor my memories while embracing change?

●     What does it mean for me to live a fulfilled life after loss?

Pondering life helps us connect with our deeper selves and create a new vision for the future. It’s not about forgetting the past but about finding ways to embrace life with renewed strength.

Grief Coaching: A Journey of Healing

Grief coaching is a specialized form of support designed to help you navigate the challenges of loss. It focuses on your unique experiences and needs, offering guidance tailored to your personal journey.

As your grief coach, I provide a safe, compassionate space where you can explore your emotions and uncover your strengths. We work together to develop coping strategies at a pace that feels right for you. Every person’s journey is different, and my grief coaching in Colorado honors your individuality.

Coaching for Stress: Managing the Weight of Grief

Stress often accompanies grief, adding another layer of difficulty. Whether it’s anxiety, anger, or exhaustion, these feelings can make the healing process seem overwhelming.

In my coaching for stress in Colorado Springs, I focus on helping you identify the sources of your stress and find ways to manage them. This can include mindfulness techniques, relaxation exercises, and practical tools to keep you grounded during difficult times.

My goal is to help you manage stress in a way that supports your healing, rather than letting it take over your life.

Renewing Your Life After Loss

Grief often leads to a turning point where you can begin to see the possibility of renewal. This moment may come gradually and look different for everyone, but it offers a chance for growth and positive change.

Together, we’ll work on building a life that honors both your grief and your potential for growth. This includes letting go of what no longer serves you, embracing new perspectives, and finding meaning in the pain you’ve experienced. Renewal is about creating a life that feels authentic and fulfilling after loss.

Support That Meets You Where You Are

Grief can feel isolating, and financial concerns should never prevent you from seeking help. If finances are a concern, I encourage you to reach out to me. I’m always open to discussing what you can afford and am committed to making support accessible to everyone, regardless of their financial situation.

Start Your Journey of Renewal Today!

Pondering life in the midst of grief is not about forgetting the past or pretending everything is fine. It’s about reflecting on your experiences, honoring your feelings, and opening yourself to the possibilities of the future. With the right support and my guidance in grief and loss coaching in Colorado Springs, grief can become an opportunity for healing and renewal.

If you’re ready to begin your journey, contact me today to reserve your appointment! Together, we’ll take the next steps toward a brighter path forward.

How to become a better parent — part 1 — the foundation of good parenting

People with good hearts often wonder what they can do to become a better parent, or to prepare for parenting. I’ve been coaching parents since the 90s and here’s my first thought on how to become a better parent: heal yourself. Learn to care for yourself. Grow.

Why does this matter so much? Let me state what may be rather obvious. The key component in parenting is the parent. It isn’t that an infant doesn’t have certain propensities, temperament, and uniqueness they bring, they do. But while these are factors, a loving, mindful parent can turn even the most difficult parenting journey into something beautiful, as they nurture their child’s natural beauty.

Let’s ponder for a moment the human brain, and look at what parents can get wrong, in order to understand the significance of the parent’s own growth and health. Parenting is a journey that starts before a child even comes out of the womb. There can be many reasons for this including the ‘story womb’ or culture we create in our home and life, but let’s start with science. I want to think for a moment about a part of our child’s brain called the amygdala.

The amygdala is fully developed at 8 months in the womb, meaning that before a child even enters the world they are capable of having their ‘smoke alarm’ trigger. The amygdala has been called the ‘smoke alarm’ of the brain because it’s a part of our brain that’s meant to keep us safe. Think of it as a primitive cortex that never forgets (in neuroscience terms that’s called ‘persistent dendritic modeling,’ most of our brain ‘forgets’ things but not our amygdala).

Here’s an example of how our amygdala impacts life. If I’m out hiking and suddenly jerk back, then take another look and think, ‘Oh it’s just a stick, not a snake,’ the sudden stop is my amygdala working to keep me safe. I love hiking and this has happened to me many times. Sometimes it is a snake, many times it’s not.

I want to highlight one thing in this above example to help us understand why this matters. Note that I jump back before I think. My amygdala is directly wired to my senses. This makes it’s response time way faster than the cortex or thinking part of my brain. I jump back because my eye sees something, a possible danger—snake—then I think, ‘Oh, it’s just a stick.’ I act before I think. This is meant to keep me safe.

Sadly, however, a childhood and/or life with stress and trauma can result in an overly active amygdala. This sets us up for a lot of anxiety in the world, and can torment us as both children and adults when danger is not present but our brain thinks it is. This starts in the womb, so if there’s stress in the mom’s life it impacts the fetus.

Our ‘smoke detector’ keeps us safe, mostly, but can also cause us to misread situations. Here’s a second important factor regarding how our amygdala functions. Not only does our smoke alarm not forget danger, it generalizes. If I was just bit by a dog, then my amygdala tells me I should perhaps worry about the next dog coming my way as well. All dogs now potentially become scary. If I don’t I have help processing having been bit, and have good experiences and relationships with dogs to overcome the negative, I can get stuck being afraid of dogs.

This generalization can work in both positive and negative ways in parenting. A safe and loving parent, who creates a secure attachment, results in a child who is most likely to assume people are safe and believe they will be loved. Yet the opposite is also true, an unsafe parent can leave a child with social anxiety and insecure attachments that generalize to the world around them as they grow.

The fact that our amygdala is faster than the thinking part of our brain means that as much as we want to believe we are living out of the present moments of life, we are always living out of the past first. Does that make sense? Our amygdala has been logging data, and tracking ‘danger’ our entire life. So any aspect of life that is followed by some hurt, injury, or pain can be logged in our brain, and then pulled up by our amygdala in a current event, before we actually have a conscious thought. We can act before we think, with the past dictating our actions.

Fortunately this isn’t the end of the story for us because our brains can be rewired, but it takes conscious thought, new experiences, love, and security to overcome our amygdala’s trained negative reactions to life. It takes being mindful of what’s happening in our brain and body, creating space between a current trigger and a response, and coming up with a new reaction that’s more ‘present’ and life-giving. If we can do this for ourselves as parents, then we create a new environment for our children, one of calm, safety, and security. We can do this even if we had a crappy childhood ourselves.

As parents we might want to believe that our unborn (or infant) child is not impacted by the chaos, violence, arguing, and overall negative energy we can land in as adults. We are wrong. As infants we are all impacted by the world and our mother’s environment before we even entered the world. Are you anxious? Do you have an anxious child? It’s worth thinking about how your own amygdala and responses to life are being watched and ‘absorbed’ by your children who have brains like a sponge, soaking up everything around them. We need to think about healing ourselves if we want healthy children.

In studying children who had parents who came out of the holocaust, it was determined that these children often carried ‘vicarious trauma.’ They experienced the world through their parent’s ‘eyes’ of trauma, and absorbed it themselves. While the children had not lived through the holocaust, they might act and live with similar responses to a ‘dangerous’ world, a style reflected in the way their parent’s related to the world. We can stop this progression of pain from previous generations by healing ourselves as parents.

A healthy parent helps create a healthy child. A parent with a well integrated brain, helps develop a child with a well integrated brain. A parent who is not whole, is not growing and working to become the best version of themselves, is not going to be able to start their child off on a better path than they themselves have gone down. It takes a growing, healthy parent to give our children their best chance.

So, why seek parenting coaching? Because it gives our children their best chance in this world for a whole happy life. By moving toward our own wholeness we help our children become whole.

Dan Siegel states that the best gift a parent can offer their own child is a more integrated brain of their own. There are not, and have never been perfect parents, but we are all on a spectrum somewhere from destructive and harmful parents to loving, safe, and secure parents. If we want to be ‘good enough’ parents, we need to be thinking about our own journey and the environment we bring our children into. We have either done our own work and provide our kids with a generally calm, loving, and safe environment, or we simply pass down to the next generation all the brokenness we ourselves inherited.

This makes me think of a piece of worse-case-scenario spiritual wisdom offer by Jesus when speaking to a group of unhealed humans. He basically states that when they convert someone to their way of living, they make this person ‘twice the sons of hell’ that they are. As parents we are ‘converting’ our children to a way of life, one that is healthy and whole, or broken. We can’t help a child be healthier than we are, but we can make them worse. Or we can be on a healing journey ourselves.

There’s no perfect time to become a parent, just love your child the best you can by loving and healing yourself on your own journey. There’s tons of hope. Become a parent, love yourself, love your kids. Being a parent has been one of the most fulfilling aspects of my life! If we all waited until we were pretty sure we wouldn’t screw our kids up, there would be no children in the world. Just become your best self as you journey through life, recognize how your past shapes your present, grow, be open to your children and let them reveal to you a world of beauty and life. If your story was difficult, don’t let that stop you from becoming a loving parent, just feel the ache of failures from the way your parent’s failed and offer something different to your kids. If we don’t feel our own pain, we’re likely to repeat the offenses with our own children. Reparent yourself so you can offer more to your children. Love. Live. Laugh. Parent. Grow. Becoming a parent can help us grow as never before if we’re open to all these things. Children can be stunningly beautiful part of our healing process if we’re open to them, and do our best not to reproduce the worst of what we’ve lived through ourselves.

All of life is really about seeing beauty, and discovering beauty even in brokenness and healing. When children come into the world they are beauty, and they can also help you discover yours.

Is personal growth a matter of life or death?

If you google, ‘Does growth matter?’ you actually pull up a bunch of articles on economic growth. Interesting. My decades of experience as a Psychologist, Life Coach, Chaplain, etc. set me to thinking about very different kinds of growth—the growth that results in us either being happy or miserable in life. If we want to live fulfilled, meaningful, and happy lives we cannot afford to not think about growth. This is the reason I label myself a ‘growth coach.’ Growth matters in economics, business, family, retirement, physical health… well, in everything.

I believe that growth matters throughout our lifespan. When we’re younger we recognize that we need to grow. For example, it’s obvious (when I look back) that I didn’t understand ‘love’ at age 5 or 10 in the same way I did at 15 or 20. Much less what I can still grow into understanding about love at age 40 or 80 after going through years of life, marriage, parenting, divorce, etc. while experiencing, pondering, and talking with others about the nuances and ramifications of love.

Yet sometimes as we grow older we seem to slip into believing we’ve ‘arrived’ and no longer need to grow, whether this is in one or many categories. We’ve evaluated the different options in parenting, religion, finances, relationships—you name the category—and have ‘arrived’ at our conclusions. We might not state this explicitly but it’s what we often live out. It’s a trap we ALL fall into. Our curiosity and openness with which we enter the world slowly erodes, and if life is painful enough hopes and dreams are replaced with cynicism and depression.

We might not think of growth as a matter of life or death, but it is. Literally. Science shows us that all of our cells are either in a growth or decay mode, all the time. There’s no such thing as a stagnating cell. If a cell is doing anything less than growing it’s decaying. If you leave something in decay mode for too long you end up with death. Our options are growth or death. I think this applies to all of life.

One of the easiest places to grasp this concept is in area of our physicality. If I am not active and engaging my lungs and muscles, doing my cardio and strength exercises, I lose what I’ve already gained. I can come back from a week of vacation and try to do my regular routine and feel sick to my stomach. In one week I can lose much of the progress I spent weeks gaining. Or consider rock climbing, I cannot truly enjoy climbing if I’m not regularly on the wall, I lose my strength and find myself unable to climb what used to be easy and bring exhilaration. If I don’t exercise throughout the winter, when I go to climb a 14er, or hop on my mountain bike, I struggle until I get in shape again or my body relearns balance. Professional athletes are always pushing themselves to be faster, stronger, etc. and they don’t do it by laying on the couch, they achieve it by dedicating themselves to growth mode. In my mind this all equates to the same thing, I’m either pushing toward growth or I enter decay mode.

Yet our bodies are not the only place we either grow or decay. I believe the same is true about other aspects of our humanity. For example consider a relationship which receives little effort. I think most would look at this relationship and see ‘decay’ mode, and recognize this is not the kind of relationship to hold up as an ideal. Sadly, many people look at their parent’s marriages and see exactly this. For those on the fortunate flip side, you might look at a relationship full of vitality, energy, curiosity and see an example of what you hope to achieve. This kind of relationship is in growth mode, and I guarantee you it’s taken hard work. You can tell when you listen to how one person speaks to another, looks in their eyes, body language, etc. if they are experiencing a relationship that is in growth or decay mode.

Or consider the mind. There’s an obvious physical aspect to ‘mind,’ and there’s a natural process the brain goes through called ‘apoptosis’ when neural networks are not being used. Simple example? I studied Differential Equations in college, then switched from engineering to psychology. Almost 40 years later, I would not be able to describe what ‘diff eq’ is anymore.

Let’s consider yet another level of life and call it spiritual (though I would agree with Zen Buddhists who might feel that assuming dualism between the physical and spiritual is not helpful). Regardless of what you think of (or feel) when someone says ‘church,’ or ‘Bible,’ or ‘Jesus,’ or ‘Christianity,’ try to throw out the worst for a moment and think of the Bible as an ancient book of wisdom. There’s a repeated theme in various parts of the Bible which plays out along these lines: people are told that if they have eyes to see they will see more, if they ears to hear that will hear more, BUT if they don’t use the faculties they have, they will lose even the little they now possess. These statements are fascinating to me and I believe absolutely true, i.e. science and experience fully support them. As a Psychologist, Coach, Chaplain, father, family member, etc. I have witnessed so many people over the years who are close minded and don’t want to grow. As a result, they lose even the little they started out with regarding wisdom in any category of life. If we think we have and know it all, there is no reason to keep our eyes and ears ‘open.’ Anyone who has thus ‘arrived’ is actually in decay mode.

Buddism has a similar idea in the beginner’s mind concept. The expert knows everything, and it’s the beginner’s mind of openness and readiness that is applauded. “If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything; it is open to everything. In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; in the experts mind there are few… In the beginner’s mind there is no thought, ‘I have attained something.’” (Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind). I love how this is represented in the character of Jake Sully in Avatar. His recognition that, ‘My cup is empty. Trust me.’ is what made him able to learn and grow. Emptiness leaves room for growth.

Finally, let’s go back to science and our ‘beginnings,’ and consider how Patricia Kuhl, who studies infant brains and linquistics states that infants have a ‘celestial openness.’ When we enter the world we are open. We know we have not arrived. We very quickly start to lose our curiosity and openness. In any area of life where we become ‘closed,’ we lose our ability to grow.

Thus, if we are convinced we have arrived, we need to reverse out of it and recognize that we have not, or we will decay. Life is growth or decay. GK Chesterton said that everyone wants to be progressive, but the most progressive person is that one who, when they recognize they are on the wrong road, turns around. So let’s try to turn around and back out of any roads where we feel we have “arrived.” Arriving at the end of a road is called a dead end for a reason. It’s the same for all of our humanity. Let’s try to stay away from dead ends, and move instead toward openness, curiosity, and growth.

I recognize that even this thought of growth or decay can be overly dualistic, but hopefully you get my point: If we are not open and actively growing, the most likely result is decay and death. So yes, I believe that continuing to grow is literally a matter of life or death in way more than economics.

What hinders creativity in our workplace and life? What fuels creativity?

I took this photo following Crystal Pite’s ballet in the Oslo Opera House this summer - Light of Passage. This ballet exemplifies the power of a creative mind to fuel us and usher beauty into our world. Are you desiring to release your creativity? In my work as a Life Coach and years working as a Clinical Psychologist, I’ve noticed a few enemies to creativity lurking in many of our lives.

As humans we don’t have limitless energy or resources. This means that our brains only have so much energy to expend into the world around us. Is the world (professional life, personal life) sucking your energy and thus limiting your ability to grow and create? There can be many reasons for this but let’s explore a few.

I was speaking to a business entrepreneur recently who was wondering why she cannot release her creativity, and thus lives in constant frustration. In her case, we explored how she struggles with sensory integration issues. As we explored her present life, it became clear that since she was young she was undone by visual and auditory stimuli. Her sensory systems were hypersensitive to light and sound. She unconsciously found some helpful tools along the way, for instance yoga and breath exercises. She had been to several Ashrams in India and in this context had finally achieved temporary peace for herself. Meanwhile in the US, she works in the business and finance world with computer screens, noise of coworkers, etc. She shared how she struggles to focus in this world, and comes closest to to creative self when she’s at home practicing her yoga. She had never consciously considered her hypersensitive sensory systems as a limiting factor in her creativity and growth. But the truth was, her sensory systems had been robbing her of energy, limiting her ability to generate ideas and produce her entire life. As we reflected on her story, she gained new hope that by altering her environment and understanding her unique needs, she might be able to move forward with a renewed entrepreneurial energy.

However, biological factors are only one limiting factor that can diminish our creative energy.

Another factor can be the exhaustion created by broken relational and emotional realities on our journeys. Our families, friends, and cultures can either promote health and growth, or leave us with wounds from which we slowly bleed, again limiting our ability to move into the world pursuing creativity and growth. Attachment research explores how our relational histories impact us. Secure attachments energize us and give us an ability to adventure into the world, while insecure attachments create unique limiting factors we have to learn to overcome in order to release our most powerful self.

Or consider how your internal narratives can release you to function powerfully and creatively, versus restrain you. Ponder the narrative of cultural scarcity. Do you live or work in an environment where scarcity rules instead of abundance? Scarcity of time, resources, help, support? When we live in a world where a narrative of scarcity runs through our brains, instead of seeing possible resources all around us, we see limits. How do you think this will impact your functioning and creativity as you engage the world?

Shame, struggles with vulnerability, and a whole host of emotional factors can also limit our creative capacity. Just consider for instance the amount of energy required to shield ourselves if we are anxious and use vast amounts of resources to guard ourselves from everything we’re anxious about. An anxious person cannot live out their fullest creative self, because the vulnerability they experience requires directing energy toward their forcefields — picture the Star Trek Enterprise being under attack, shields up! Do you guard against being vulnerable? Then you’re going to greatly limit your capacity for creativity. If you don’t believe me, consider this great quote from researcher Brene Brown, “‘Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity, and change!”

Rigidity versus flexibility also requires extraordinary amounts of energy. Picture a tree standing rigid in a storm, versus one that flexes and moves in a hurricane. If we have strong roots we can simply direct our energy there to keep ourselves grounded and secure. This can perhaps help you understand how a rigid, versus flexible and adaptable brain, can also function under stress. A rigid brain is greatly limited in it’s response to stress. A flexible, adaptable, open and curious brain is capable to responding to stress in much the same way a well grounded tree can — moving with the flow instead of breaking under pressure.

What fuels creativity? Many things can but let’s consider personal connections. Connection fuels creativity (even though it can also limit us if those around us are toxic). Think of this like a fire. A single coal of wood burns out, but place coals by each other, add more wood to the fire, and it roars. We are also like this as humans. When we are connected to others whose ideas are different from ours and we’re in conversation, we can see things from a new perspective. It’s like touching a flame to a piece of wood that’s ready to burn. What fuels connection? Openness and curiosity!

So what is needed in order to unleash our creativity? Connection with healthy others, the ability to be authentic and bring our true self to the conversation, understanding and being mindful of our own biological resources and needs, embracing vulnerability so that all our resources are not used up by self-protection, and curiosity and openness just to name a few.

The bottom line is that if we’re enough, we can be more open to others and their ideas and thoughts. We’re not afraid of change, or growth, or of being destroyed because, ‘I’ve built my whole life or company around this idea or thing and can’t let it go.’ We’re well grounded and able to bend with the stresses of life, resulting in extra resources for creativity.

If you’re ready to discover how to release your best self and embrace creativity, seek out someone like myself to help support you on your journey. A good coach can help you discover the limiting factors in your life. Then you get to do the hard work of moving those obstacles out of your way, and discovering just how powerful and creative you can be!

Relational Discernment Coaching

What do you see or ‘discern’ in the photo above? This bronze sculpture resides in a hotel lobby in Oslo, and was profoundly moving to me when I saw it. But what you don’t see from the perspective of this photo, and you only see as you have a wider shot is that he has no legs. She is supporting him as he clings to her. We all ‘discern’ out of what we ‘see’ at any given time of life, and unless we never move or grow and remain fixed in the same spot with the exact same focus, any given point of life and time brings something new to notice, see, and discern.

Someone I love dearly, who years ago said to me, “I don’t believe in divorce,” recently went to a Discernment Coach. They did this to determine if perhaps they should be more open-minded about the statement they made years before. I was delighted for them that they made this choice. It manifests growth. No matter what perspective we come from in life, we should always be open to the possibility of change, the possibility that one day the circumstances of life might lead us toward new ways of thinking. We believe in change at the physical level, i.e. the pants I wore at age 5 are not likely to fit me at age 25. So we should also recognize that our thoughts, beliefs, awareness of self and the world, can and will change as well—if we are growing.

When I am coaching individual’s or couples I always coach from their needs and awareness. Some people come to me determined to stay together, and as this is their goal this is what I am delighted to help them work toward. Others have already come to the conclusion that they need to go through the hard journey of choosing a new path, and I coach them on how to best walk this path. Yet some are in the moment of life where they are trying to discern how to move forward. This is where discernment coaching comes in.

Discernment coaching encourages someone to be thoughtful about many things but here’s just a few:

1) Who they’ve been and the narratives that directed their life in the past

2) Who they’re becoming as they perhaps deconstruct old narratives and are embracing new ways of being in the world

3) What things in their world seem to be suffocating them and draining them of life and how to work toward change

Good discernment coaching doesn’t direct someone, it helps them find their own direction based upon what they are learning about themselves as they grow and change. There are many reasons this can occur, but it’s generally a sign that the psychological / intellectual / cultural / religious / etc. “clothing” they’ve been wearing has grown too small. It’s not guaranteed that these wrestlings will lead to wise and good choices, but having a good coach can make all the difference in the outcomes of these wrestlings.

So if you’re changing, and growing, and needing a new set of “cloths” I hope you’ll seek out a discernment coach whether that’s me, Dr. Phil Bennett, or someone else. Find someone who has some life wisdom to filter through what you bring and help you sort it out, and with whom you make a good connection, who you grow to respect and trust — these qualities will always be the basic recipe of good coaching. Whether you live here and desire a Discernment Coach in Colorado Springs, or are looking for a Discernment Coach in Colorado, or live anywhere in the world and are happy to use technology, look for a Discernment Coach who sees and understands you. A coach doesn’t have to be just like you, they only need to see you, so they can reflect things they see in you, back at you and help you see yourself more fully.

Discernment coaching can be for relationships, or for intrapersonal issues like better understanding your sexuality, or many other things. We often have aspects in ourselves we’ve been afraid to recognize or own because of pressures around us, but if something is inherent to who you are and you deny it, this only leads to death, like a plant that denies it has a need for sunlight or water. There are many reasons to seek out a discernment coach. If what you discern in the process requires a harder road than simply remaining in the status quo of your life (whatever that means), just realize that most things in life that are worth much require a lot of work to achieve. As someone once say, “digging for diamonds is hard work.”

How Can A Life Coach Help Individuals Overcome Depression?

Dear friends, I want to take a moment to explore a topic that weighs heavily on many of our hearts—depression. It's a battle that far too many of us face, leaving us feeling lost, hopeless, and trapped in a world devoid of joy. Depression leaves the world feeling dark, but darkness and light are not mutually exclusive any more than winter and sunlight are. Today, I invite you to join me on a deeply personal journey, where we will explore the transformative power of a life coach for depression and how I can help guide you toward a life filled with warmth, love, and renewed purpose.

• Embracing the Depths:

When depression consumes your soul, it's all too easy to lose sight of who you truly are. It is not uncommon to want to isolate oneself in the darkness, but it's also possible to create a safe space. A space where you can open up, allowing your emotions to flow freely without fear of judgment. Together, we can explore the wounds that drive your depression and encourage step-by-step movement in a forward direction, creating momentum for living out of your strengths.

• The Power of Connection:

In this journey, I want you to understand that you do not have to be alone. As a life coach for depression, I walk alongside you, my unwavering presence reminding you that you are seen, heard, and valued. Through our genuine connection and heartfelt conversations, we will forge a bond built on trust and empathy, creating a supportive foundation for your healing and growth.

• Unleashing Your Inner Warrior:

Depression may have cast a shadow over your spirit, but within you lies an inner warrior—a force waiting to be unleashed. Beauty is our essence, but when we're depressed, we do not believe this. Together, we will embark on a quest to rediscover your beauty, explore your passions, awaken your strengths, and reclaim your sense of purpose. With my unwavering belief in your potential, you can choose to rise above the darkness and embrace a life filled with renewed joy and fulfillment, all the while strengthening your ability to broaden your support systems so that one day connecting with me is no longer necessary.

• Nurturing Self-Compassion:

My dear friend, I want you to know that you are deserving of love and compassion, especially from yourself. As your life coach, I will guide you on a journey of self-discovery and self-acceptance. Together, we will work on treating you with the kindness and tenderness that you so readily give to others. Through gentle introspection and personalized strategies, you will learn to nurture your spirit, building a foundation of self-love that will sustain you through the highs and lows of life.

Conclusion:

I want to extend my hand and offer you the support you need. As a retired Psychologist and now Life Coach with decades of training and experience, I, Dr. Phil Bennett, am here to walk with you on this path of healing and transformation. Together, we can navigate the twists and turns of your journey, leading to resiliency over depression and embracing a life of authentic joy and purpose. Please reach out to me today, and let's embark on this transformative journey together. Recognize that you do not have to be alone, whether it's me or someone else; find the best life coach for you. A life coach for anxiety or depression can help you toward the light of a brighter tomorrow.

What Is The Role Of A Corporate Resilience Coach In Today's Business World?

Hello friends! I want to take a moment to connect with each and every one of you and explore with you what a resilience coach can do for you. In the corporate world, where challenges and uncertainties abound, I, Dr. Phil Bennett, am ready to be your steadfast guide. Corporate resilience coaching can empower you to flex your emotional muscles and overcome obstacles that come your way. So grab a cup of coffee, sit back, and let's embark on a journey exploring the powerful role of a corporate resilience coach in today's business world.

• Fostering Team Cohesion:

Ah, teams—the beautiful yet complex tapestry of personalities and dynamics. As a corporate resilience coach in Colorado, I understand the delicate balance required to weave together a harmonious and high-performing team. I will help you break down communication barriers, dissolve conflicts, and create an environment where collaboration thrives.

• Building Resilience:

Life in the corporate world has its perks, but it can also be a whirlwind of twists and turns. When exhaustion, discouragement, or disillusionment creep in, you can learn to be resilient. As your corporate resilience coach in Colorado, I will be your trusted partner, helping you discover the hidden strength within you. Together, we will learn how to adapt, overcome, and grow through the challenges that knock on your door, transforming setbacks into stepping stones.

• Enhancing Leadership Skills:

Being a leader in today's corporate landscape is no easy task. It can be like navigating a treacherous mountain trail filled with obstacles and uncertainties. Leaders are not supposed to have to walk this path alone, any more than you expect team members to do so. Perhaps you already have a mentor who navigates all these obstacles with you, but if not, a coach who can give you the necessary tools to inspire and lead your team with insight, compassion, and strength. Together, we can navigate moments of uncertainty, fostering a culture of resilience that permeates every corner of your organization.

• Managing Stress and Burnout:

Any leader who is required on a daily basis to navigate people, conflicts, deadlines, and budgets encounters stress, a precursor to burnout if not managed well. We can explore effective stress management techniques, learn practical strategies to manage stress, find balance, and prevent burnout. With my guidance, you can transform stress into fuel for success, reclaiming your joy and vitality in the process.

Conclusion:

I want to leave you with an empowering thought: resiliency is not just a concept; it's a way of life. With my coaching for stress in Colorado Springs, you can unlock a level of strength and resilience you never thought possible. So, take that leap of faith and reach out to me today. Together, we will embark on a transformative journey where storms can be weathered until you return to moments of calm. The storms will always be present, but discovering that you can come through them not simply exhausted and surviving but with growth and hope can transform life. My years of training and experience as a Psychologist and Life Coach provide me with a solid foundation to guide you toward nurturing your inner resilience and creating a future filled with potentially boundless success and fulfillment.

Strengthen Your Relationship with Couples Relationship Coaching

Healthy relationships require effort and dedication from both partners. Whether you've been together for a few months or several years, every couple faces challenges that can put a strain on their relationship. If you're feeling disconnected from your partner, struggling with communication, or facing any other relationship issue, couples relationship coaching can help.

Look at the five ways couples relationship coaching can strengthen your relationship:

Improved Communication:

Communication is key to a healthy relationship. Couples relationship coaching can help you and your partner improve your communication skills by teaching you how to listen actively, express your needs and emotions clearly, and resolve conflicts in a constructive way.

Better Understanding of Each Other:

One of the biggest challenges in any relationship is understanding your partner's point of view. Couples relationship coaching can help you and your partner develop empathy and compassion for each other by teaching you how to see things from each other's perspective.

Increased Intimacy:

Intimacy is an important aspect of any romantic relationship. Couples relationship coaching can help you and your partner improve your physical and emotional intimacy by teaching you how to express your love and affection in meaningful ways.

Deeper Connection:

A strong emotional connection is the foundation of a healthy relationship. Couples relationship coaching can help you and your partner build a deeper connection by teaching you how to show appreciation for each other, support each other's goals and dreams, and create shared experiences that strengthen your bond.

Conflict Resolution:

Every relationship faces conflict at some point. Couples relationship coaching can help you and your partner resolve conflicts in a constructive way by teaching you how to communicate effectively, listen actively, and find solutions that work for both of you.

Conclusion:

Couples relationship coaching can help you and your partner strengthen your relationship in many ways. By improving your communication, increasing your intimacy, and building a deeper connection, you can create a strong and lasting relationship that can withstand any challenge.

I also want to highlight that couples relationship coaching is not just for couples who are experiencing problems. Couples coaching is preventative and can be beneficial for couples who desire to strengthen their relationship and prevent future issues. Taking advantage of couples coaching in Colorado can provide you with personalized and effective coaching services that can help you and your partner create a stronger, healthier relationship.

So, if you're ready to take your relationship to the next level, consider couples relationship coaching with me today.

What Makes Resilience Coaching a Game-Changer for Professional Achievement?

Resilience coaching for professionals is gaining popularity as people are recognizing the importance of mental and emotional fortitude in achieving professional success. Resilience is the ability to recover from setbacks, adapt to change, and maintain mental toughness in the face of adversity. In today's competitive world, resilience is a key attribute that can give you a distinct advantage in the workplace.

In this blog post, we will explore five reasons why resilience coaching is a game-changer for professional achievement.

Develops Mental Toughness

Resilience coaching helps professionals develop mental toughness by teaching them how to handle stress and pressure healthily. It provides tools and techniques to manage emotions, build self-confidence, and overcome negative self-talk. With mental toughness, professionals can navigate challenging situations with grace and resilience.

Promotes Emotional Intelligence

This coaching promotes emotional intelligence by teaching professionals how to recognize and regulate their emotions. It helps them understand the impact of their emotions on their behavior and relationships. Emotional intelligence is essential for effective communication, conflict resolution, and building strong relationships with colleagues and clients.

Encourages Growth Mindset

It encourages a growth mindset by helping professionals embrace challenges and setbacks as opportunities for growth. It teaches them to view failure as a stepping stone to success and to learn from their mistakes. With a growth mindset, professionals are more resilient in the face of obstacles and are more likely to achieve their goals.

Improves Decision-Making Skills

Resilience coaching improves decision-making skills by helping professionals develop a clear and focused mind. It teaches them how to prioritize tasks, manage their time effectively, and make decisions based on their values and goals. With improved decision-making skills, professionals can make strategic choices that lead to professional success.

Builds Confidence and Resilience

Last but not least, resilience coaching builds confidence and resilience by providing a supportive and empowering environment. It helps professionals identify their strengths and build on them while also addressing areas for improvement. With increased confidence and resilience, professionals are better equipped to face challenges and achieve their professional goals.

Conclusion:

Resilience coaching is a game-changer for professional achievement. It provides professionals with the tools and techniques to develop mental toughness, emotional intelligence, a growth mindset, decision-making skills, and confidence and resilience. Business resilience coaching services can help professionals at all levels of their careers achieve their full potential and thrive in their professional lives.

If you want to learn more about resilience coaching for professionals, consider working with me, Dr. Phil Bennett, a life coach, growth coach & retired psychologist. With years of experience in helping professionals achieve their goals, I can provide you with the guidance and support you need to build resilience and achieve success. Reach out to me today!

How Can Loss Coaching Help You Navigate Your Grief?

Have you ever lost someone close to you and felt like your world was falling apart? Maybe you've experienced a sense of overwhelming sadness, confusion, or anger. If you're nodding your head right now, you're not alone. Grief is a natural response to loss, but it can be a difficult and complex journey to navigate on your own. That's where a grief coach can help.

Grief coaches are trained professionals who specialize in helping people cope with the emotional, physical, and spiritual effects of loss. They provide grief and loss coaching where you can freely express your feelings, explore your thoughts, and work through your grief without any fear of judgment.

Here are some other ways that working with a grief coach can help you navigate your grief:

• Creating a personalized plan:

Your grief coach will work with you to create a customized plan that addresses your unique needs and goals. They will help you identify your strengths, coping mechanisms, and areas of growth to help you move forward in a positive direction.

• Encouraging self-care:

Grief can take a toll on your physical and emotional well-being. A grief coach can help you prioritise self-care activities, such as exercise, healthy eating, and getting enough sleep, to help you feel better and cope with your grief more effectively.

• Providing emotional support:

Grief can be an isolating experience, but a grief coach can provide you with emotional support and validation. They can help you process your emotions, express your feelings, and develop healthy ways to cope with your grief.

• Offering coping strategies:

A grief coach can help you develop coping strategies that work for you. They can teach you mindfulness techniques, relaxation exercises, and other strategies to help you manage your stress and anxiety.

• Providing a non-judgemental space:

A grief coach provides a safe and non-judgemental space where you can express yourself freely without fear of criticism or judgement. This can be incredibly healing and empowering, helping you process your emotions and move forward with more confidence and self-awareness.

Conclusion:

If you're struggling with grief, just remember that you don't have to navigate this journey alone. As a grief coach Colorado, I'm here to support you in any way I can. With my personalized approach, compassionate support, and practical tools and strategies, I can help you move through your grief and find healing and hope on the other side. Contact me today to learn how I can help you navigate your grief, relational, career, retirement, and any other journeys with greater ease and confidence. Trust me, together; we can create a plan that honors your unique needs and helps you move forward in a positive direction.

Life Coaching for Self Regulation and Recovery from Stress: The basic importance of polyvagal theory in Life Coaching

This picture of a blooming cactus in the desert reminds me that beauty can bloom in the midst of great stress. Life is stressful, and nature continually reveals how a stressful environment does not have to result in some form of death to our humanity —resiliency, thriving, regulation, recovery and beauty are always possibilities.

Understanding neuroscience and how our nervous system impacts our ability to thrive in this world can be deeply healing. In my mind it’s key to being able to be kind to ourselves (self-compassion), by understanding how our entire being has been shaped by our journey since before even our birth. Self compassion allows us to recognize that we are not fundamentally ‘flawed,’ ‘wrong,’ ‘bad,’ or ‘not enough’ (put your negative word or phrase in here) as we struggle through life. When we understand how our bodies and brains have been shaped by our interactions with our caregivers and environment, we can see that there’s beauty even in our mess — a body and brain that have been shaped, can be reshaped. As we grow in our mindful awareness of how we are reacting to life, we can learn to self-regulate even if our stories have not thus far made this easy.

Self regulation is a basic necessity for creating and living a life we can enjoy. Dysregulation impacts our ability to study and learn, to problem solve and make good choices, to connect with others, etc.

Let’s start by picturing ourselves as we first come into the world. We come into the world dysregulated with a largely undeveloped cortex or thinking brain — our brainstem and nervous system have developed and allow for the basics of living life outside the womb. Good caregiving and safe environments result in a shaping of our developing systems toward self-regulation when we dysregulate.

Picture yourself as a hungry infant, or one that needs a diaper change, or has gas. All you know how to do is cry in an attempt to get your needs met. You are dependent on ‘other.’ If you have a caregiver who’s attuned, they come and explore possible reasons for your cry until it’s resolved, comforting you as they explore the problem. They speak to you in calming words and soothing tones. Their facial expressions soothe instead of frighten (something your innate ventral vagal and social engagement system can read from birth). They are safe and soothing, and soon you are relieved of your discomfort, your needs are met, and you return to a state of regulation. Or picture the opposite, an irritated even angry caregiver who is dysregulated themself — they teach your system dysregulation. Our interchanges with this spectrum of possible caregiving behaviors occurs thousands of times as infants and toddlers, and if generally we are heard and seen, our brain and nervous system develop into a well oiled system with neural pathways that move from dysregulation to regulation time and again. Our cry is our first form of voice. (The right hemisphere in our brain is developing like crazy in the first 18 months of life and is central to emotional and relational attunement)

Good enough caregiving sets us up well for life. Excellent caregiving prepares us even more thoroughly to cope with the stress of life. Crappy caregiving makes it very difficult to develop self-regulation and manage stress.

Now picture yourself a little older. At close to 2 years of age your left hemisphere comes more fully online and language turns from sounds and babbles to words. You’re developing language skills, but you’re still in a world that at times meets your needs and at others doesn’t. You are gaining a stronger sense of voice, but you’re upset because a sibling took your toy, or you fall and skin your knee and scream in pain, or you wanted juice not water, or you made it clear that you really needed the candy bar in the grocery store but you didn’t get it so now you’re screaming and kicking on the floor in full tantrum mode. The spectrum of caregiving behaviors we receive in response to our development struggles continues to deeply impact us as we grow.

Our brain will continue to developmentally move back and forth, emphasizing left or right hemisphere development as we grow into adolescence. Our body, in its entirety, is wiring itself as we experience life. Life comes at us, and our nervous system and brain respond. If our environment is ‘good enough’ and we receive nurturing in any form, we will develop tools to manage the world with varying levels of self regulation. If we receive less than ‘good enough’ caregiving we can recognize that we are perhaps ‘a mess’ as we grow into adulthood. We long to feel better, more secure, more stable, manage stress better, etc. Let me put this simply: we are all ‘a mess’ because there are no perfect parents in existence. Even if we had great parents we are still impacted by the world. We all struggle.

Neuroscience explores the realities of brain integration on our journey and how this impacts our ability to regulate. Polyvagal theory focuses on another important aspect of self regulation: the development of our autonomic nervous system (present from birth and shaping us daily) and how this impacts our ability to self-regulate. During all developmental moments of attunement or misattunement, being seen or unseen, being heard or unheard, being hurt or soothed, our autonomic nervous system is also shaping who we are becoming.

So let’s take a quick look at exactly what polyvagal theory helps us understand about our struggles in this world and how we can move forward. First some basic background. Our autonomic nervous system is made up of two branches, the sympathetic and parasympathetic. As we engage the world, our nervous system responds to our environment through three basic pathways: Sympathetic (mobilizes us for action with adrenaline and fight or flight reactions); Parasympathetic (dorsal vagal pathway — under perceived severe threat conserves energy, immobilizes us, and has an analgesic effect numbing us to both our physical and psychological pain); Parasympathetic (ventral pathway — supports our social connectedness, curiosity, awareness, presence, compassion, and reciprocity that make enjoying ourselves and this world possible).

So you might ask why does any of this matter? Do you have trouble maintaining soothing relationships? Do you feel trapped or insignificant? Do you have trouble calming yourself and going to sleep? Do you wonder why when you get upset you lose your words or don’t hear everything that’s said? Do you wonder why you don’t respond well to others when they’re critical of you or frustrated? Do you ever feel like collapsing and simply crawling into bed even though a few minutes ago you were not tired? Do you feel like attacking others or reacting in rage? These are all directed by our nervous system’s responses to life.

Our stories tend to set us up with a primary response to life’s stressors (we may be more chaotic in our responses if we’ve been through severe trauma). If we have a dorsal response, sometimes called a ‘dorsal dive’ to stress, we can go from being energized and engaged with words and thoughts, to a blank mind with no words, and no energy, but rather a desire to crawl away and hide in a matter of moments. If we have a sympathetic tendency, we can shift into fight mode easily and lose our ability to see the world as safe, neutral faces get translated as dangerous, etc. When we are hyperaroused, our inner ear muscles literally shift into listening for danger alerting sounds, and cortisol floods our system putting us on high alert at every level. When either of these responses dominate our lives we can struggle to stay engaged, maintain calming connection, keep the thinking / problem-solving part of our brain engaged. When life triggers us, our ability to be curious, present and aware tanks.

The ventral vagal wiring of our nervous system is what makes meaningful, reciprocal, compassionate, curious connection possible. When this nerve has good tone so to say, we can put the brake on our more primitive and destructive responses to stress, criticism, anger, etc.

If you can see yourself in any of these less helpful modes know this: there is hope! My approach to Life Coaching utilizes education, mindfulness, and exploration of your journey to help you overcome imperfect journeys. I know there’s hope because it’s the journey of my life as well as yours. We can all strengthen our understanding of self and how we respond to the world, opening the door to new responses and patterns. We can explore tools to be mindful of key moments and learn how to make choices that lead to growth. Mindfulness creates space between our experience and our knee jerk response, nurturing an increasing ability to regulate ourselves in the key moments of life. We can move from struggling to survive to thriving. I hope you’ll give me (or someone else) a call if you see yourself in any of the realities I present above and long to heal and change.

Life Coaching for Dysthymia: a low grade depression which slowly robs life of joy

Our world tends to beat us up, and we can be like frogs in a boiling pot, not realizing we’re being robbed of life. Even low grade depression (you can substitute anxiety, fear, etc. throughout this blog as well) robs us of hope, dreams, motivation, a thirst or lust for life, and reduces our activity levels until we look back one day and don’t know what happened to us. Where did our joy as children go? We might not even realize the downward trajectory of depression unless life-giving events occur and we suddenly realize our head’s above water and we can breathe and laugh again. Have you forgotten what if feels like to laugh? have joy? delight in adventuring into the world? Remember there is no in-between state, we are either living or dying, we are either in growth or decay mode. A stagnant life is death as our cells atrophy. But it’s our efforts toward life which matter more than our up and down journey in our struggle to embrace life.

Look at children, they are regularly heading into life. I often looked at my children when they were young (see picture above of my 2 sons and a neighbor boy), and wished I could still laugh and play like they did. The burdens of graduate school, marriage, parenting, working, and providing took me from being a carefree white-water guide in my early 20s to a ‘successful’ adult who realized I was already missing something. Don’t hear me wrong, there were still many moments in life I enjoyed, the picture above represents one such moment — resiliency is being able to enjoy life even while it may be slowly beating us up. But ongoing losses of dreams, hopes, and carrying a multitude of burdens can slowly leave us wondering if this is all there is to life. We can be too afraid to change our lives and seek something new, or have simply lost our energy, light, and drive. I have lived enough life now to have dropped into this slowly depressed state, and to also discover again what it means to live in spite of all the burdens. My burdens don’t even always change, but how I handle them can change when the thing itself does not.

If you are depressed it could be due to large events like a loss of someone you truly loved, but it can also be due to the pile up of small events. Ponder the image of carrying a backpack around that life slowly adds small rocks to, until it becomes so heavy each day is a burden. We can grow so used to the weight that we forget what life was like when we didn’t have to carry it all around.

We all have limited energy, and when the additional weight of life siphons us of this energy, we lose our ability to have joy and delight in life. It’s fascinating thinking of energy as literally the light we give off. When we are around people who exude light, I believe the energy of that light can transfer to us, just like people can suck life/light from us as well. Simply ponder your relational experiences for a moment if you doubt this.

Look at this image below that my youngest son recently shared with me. We see clearly that light is manifested through heat, i.e. light is energy, heat is energy. I’d list its source but I have no idea what it’s from. Note the darkness of depression and the light of happiness. Neutral feelings leave us black, i.e. no light/heat/energy is emanating from us into the world, but when we’re depressed we are literally moving in the opposite direction away from light, our temperature drops in the limbs, and we are literally cold. We suck energy instead of give it.

I love when science and spirituality line up, so ponder this for a moment. Look first at the image above and what science tells us about our humanity and our connection to light. Then ponder ancient wisdom: Islam and Baha’i writings have a theme of God being reflected as the light of a lantern or lamp; Buddhism and Hindu thought place a guiding light within us; Christianity and Judaism have many reflections on God as light and humanity as light. Moses meets God and afterward is radiating light so powerfully he puts a veil over his face. Jesus says that we humans are light even as he is light. Native American spirituality reflects the truth that if we take, we must give, there are consequences to consuming without giving equally in return.

Light. Energy. It’s our beginning and our end if we grow and move toward life. It’s the opposite of death, and in my work as a Psychologist, Life Coach, and Hospice Chaplain I can tell you everyone dies — but there are humans who have sucked the life out of the world around them, and there are others who die radiating light, and their life still echoes and ripples light long after they are gone.

We are all formed of light and energy and we are either living such that we receive it from others and light up, and/or we are someone who has grown to the extent that we might be thought of as our own little nuclear power plant, capable of radiating life to others — receiving light and radiating light. Don’t we all know this from our experience? What happens when you sit with someone who drains you of energy or who leaves you feeling energized? Why do you seek out your best friends? Why do you avoid people? Why do you enjoy yourself or wish you could get away from yourself? Ponder these thoughts in terms of light and energy.

Depression suffocates light and energy. Depression literally sucks the life and energy out of self and potentially the surrounding world. If you’re depressed, this doesn't mean you're a bad person, that the siphoning is intentional, or that you don’t desperately long for something else. Your story matters, and in all likelihood you have a beautiful heart and long to be a source of life even while you’re stuck. I have worked with so many people over the years who were depressed and have lived through great sorrows and traumas, but so longed to live again in spite of how life beat them up. So what do we do if we want to try to overcome the depression that slowly robs us of life? Know this: if you desire to be a source of life and overcome depression it’s entirely possible!

First seek out people who radiate light. If you feel like life has left you dark and cold seek out heat, seek out light! Good friends, pastors, Imans, monks, shamans, coworkers, corporations, and nations are sources of light and energy to others. Wise and growing people radiate light. If you are seeing a therapist, or life coach, or a pastor, or friend who doesn’t help you discover your own light something is wrong. If you’re a parent who doesn’t radiate light to your children, nurturing and fueling theirs, something is off. We are made to radiate light! So if you’re not radiating light and life seek out help and guidance as to why.

Second, become mindful of your story both past, present, and future and the narratives you listen to as you live. Learn to recognize the rocks you carry through life, and how to either transform them or cast them away.

Third, rewire your brain by using mindfulness, creating new narratives and new neural networks in your brain. Our brains all have superhighways, pathways we are prone to go down, ways we’ve been shaped by our journey, and we can create new ones with hard work.

Fourth, perhaps ponder how spirituality can be an important part of life — again, either fueling you or making you someone who sucks the life out of others. Jesus said of the Pharisees that the people they converted turned into twice the sons of hell that they were. True spirituality can nurture and fuel life, just like false spirituality and religion suck and destroy life. If you are a religious person, ask yourself if your theology and anthropology leaves people more or less alive after interacting with you. And perhaps pay attention to what happens in people’s lives you touch as well, we can all be great spin doctors wanting to believe our way is the best way. In my opinion, more open people are the safest people, and the more rigid someone is the less safe they are to people who are different.

I love working as a chaplain in hospice because I get to work with people from all different backgrounds. People will often tell me they are not religious and I’ll tell them that it’s totally fine, because religion has hurt and offended many people. I’ll also suggest that most of us are still spiritual. We look out at the world and can’t help but wonder if there isn’t something bigger when we look at the stars, or ponder the beauty and intricacy of the natural world and humanity. Spirituality can encourage deeper thinking and questioning if nothing else, and for many it provides a hope that can break through our experiences in this world.

Science might be able to tell us how love reflects light in our bodies, but it can’t explain why love exists in the first place. Albert Einstein once said, ‘Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.’ I would change this to, ‘Science without spirituality is lame; spirituality without science is blind.’ There is a place for science and spirituality in our lives, always.

Fifth, sixth, seventh… there are ultimately many things we can do to fight depression, and often they are as unique as we are as individuals. So connect with others, learn about yourself, and learn to hope again. Learn about your unique beauty, struggles, and journey.

The reason I love Life Coaching (in my hometown of Colorado Springs) is that this is exactly what I get to do. Whether sitting face to face, or working online with someone hundreds of miles away, I get to help people realize who they are (light/energy) and what and/or who in life energizes them, as well as what rocks need to be transformed or come out of their backpacks because they suck their life energy. This requires thoughtful exploration and a growing ability to be mindful in our daily lives.

As a life coach, promoting growth, I try to guide people into awareness of what others have done or are doing with their beauty, what they are doing with their own light and beauty, and whether the relationships around them are fueling growth or literally turning them dark. I get to help people recognize the road blocks in their journey which have left them like frogs slowly boiling to death. Life coaching is an avenue to help people discover their light, perhaps for the first time, and recognize what has robbed them of light and life, as well as how to reclaim themselves and the energy and light they bring when they become their true self.

How can a Stress-Reducing Coach help you Find Inner Peace?

Do you find yourself constantly under stress, unable to relax or find peace? Are you tired of feeling anxious and overwhelmed? If so, it may be time to consider working with a stress-reducing coach. Here are eight ways that a stress-reducing coach can help you find inner peace:

1. Identify the root causes of your stress:

A stress-reducing coach can help you identify the underlying causes of your stress, whether it's work, relationships, or other factors. By understanding the root causes, you can work to address them and reduce your stress levels.

2. Develop coping strategies:

Coping strategies are essential tools for managing stress. A stress-reducing coach can help you develop coping strategies that work for you, such as meditation, breathing exercises, or journaling. At times it’s necessary to explore whether the coping strategies you now use are helpful, and perhaps moving on to something else, like buying a new larger pair of shoes so we can keep growing.

3. Improve your self-care:

Self-care is critical for managing stress. A stress-reducing coach can help you develop a self-care routine that supports your mental and physical health, such as exercise, healthy eating, and proper sleep.

4. Learn to set boundaries:

Setting boundaries is an important skill for managing stress. A stress-reducing coach can help you identify areas where you need to set boundaries and develop strategies for doing so.

5. Practice mindfulness:

Mindfulness is a powerful tool for reducing stress and finding inner peace. A stress-reducing coach can teach you mindfulness techniques that help you stay present and focused.

6. Manage your time:

Poor time management can lead to stress and feeling overwhelmed. A stress-reducing coach can help you develop time management skills that allow you to be more productive and reduce stress.

7. Gain perspective:

Sometimes, stress can be caused by a lack of perspective. A stress-reducing coach can help you gain perspective on your situation and see things more clearly.

8. Get support:

Finally, a stress-reducing coach can provide you with the support you need to overcome stress and find inner peace. They can offer encouragement, guidance, and accountability as you work towards your goals.

Wrapping Up:

If you're feeling stressed and overwhelmed, my coaching for stress in Colorado Springs may be just what you need. I can provide you with stress-reducing coaching to help you find inner peace and balance in your life. With all my experience and techniques, I will work with you to identify the root causes of your stress and develop effective strategies for managing it. If finances are a concern for you, I’d be delighted if you still reach out. I’m always willing to have a conversation about what someone can truly afford.

Contact me today to reserve your appointment!

How can you Overcome Career Obstacles with Career Coaching

Are you feeling stuck or burnt out in your career? Have you been facing constant obstacles that hinder your progress? It's natural to feel lost and unsure about the future, but you don't have to go through it alone. Career coaching services can be an invaluable resource for individuals seeking guidance and support in their professional lives

My take on career coaching is a belief that there are two main branches, one is 'coaching the outside factors' and the second is 'coaching the inside factors'.

Coaching the outside factors revolves around technical expertise, business acumen, etc. For these things, you probably want to seek a mentor in your specific field. However, if you want to know about coaching the inside factors, continue scrolling through this blog.

Below I've outlined some of the main ways career coaching can help you overcome obstacles and reach your goals. Along with it, I'll also focus on what's hindering you internally from career growth, thus, fueling your personal growth as well. This is because career coaching and personal growth coaching fuel each other, thereby working together to bring growth to your entire life.

1. Identifying your strengths and weaknesses:

A career coach can help you assess your skills, values, and interests to determine the best path for your career. By identifying your strengths and weaknesses, you can make informed decisions about which opportunities to pursue.

2. Setting clear goals:

Career coaches can help you set specific, measurable goals for your career. These goals can be short-term or long-term and can help you stay focused and motivated.

3. Creating an action plan:

Once you have identified your goals, a career coach can help you create a plan of action to achieve them. This can include developing new skills, networking, processing internal factors that are blocking you, and applying for new positions.

4. Overcoming self-doubt:

Many individuals struggle with self-doubt and imposter syndrome in their careers. A career coach can help you identify and challenge these negative beliefs, giving you the confidence to pursue your goals. Working on self-doubt, self-defeating narratives, limiting beliefs, etc., is a core element of coaching the inside factors.

5. Developing effective communication skills:

We all know that effective communication is crucial in every sector, and even a small communication defect can limit our ability to connect to others. As a result, these faulty connections limit our ability to be effective. A career coach can help you improve your communication skills, both in the workplace and in job interviews. Not only this, but they will also work on the how’s and why's of communication and connection, which is another core value of coaching inside factors.

To help you understand this point, here's a short info on it:

Our communication styles are shaped by our relational styles, and understanding why we choose these styles can be beneficial. Our ‘normal’ communication style may no longer serve us as adults in the workplace, and we may need to adjust it. It's important to recognize when our communication style hinders rather than helps us. For example, relying on humor or being a peacekeeper may not always be effective in addressing tension. It's essential to balance our natural abilities and use them effectively. Coaching can help you develop healthier more effective communication and connection skills by embracing new approaches.

6. Managing stress and burnout:

Career coaching can help you identify and manage stressors in your professional life, preventing burnout and promoting overall well-being. Burnout is a major reason people give up on a chosen career path. So finding a way to balance what we are required to do, what may drain us of energy and resources, and what nurtures us and restores our energy is vital in preventing career burnout. In short, if your career simply drains you of energy, we can work to help you discern what may be more life-giving.

7. Navigating career transitions:

Whether you are transitioning to a new job, considering a transition, or changing careers entirely, a career coach can provide guidance and support to help you make well-thought-out decisions and, thus, hopefully, successful actions.

8. Networking:

Networking is essential in any career, and a career coach can help you develop a networking strategy to expand your professional connections. Some people become overwhelmed or distressed when thinking about connecting with more people, and may hate networking. This is where coaching inside factors is of vital importance. Career success requires that we understand how we come across to others, and whether our approach promotes our career growth or limits our success. Networking success requires that we understand what triggers us when we are engaging interpersonally. Triggers that may hinder solid, growing connections with others. The best career coaching fuels an ability to make deep, meaningful connections and expand your network, as you become more relationally and professionally astute.

9. Improving time management skills:

Time management skills are crucial for success in any career, and a career coach can help you identify strategies to improve your productivity and time management. 

For example: Do you procrastinate? I can help you understand why and develop new neural networks to overcome your hesitations toward action.

10. Holding you accountable:

A career coach can hold you accountable for achieving your goals and provide support and encouragement along the way. If you are someone who desires to be held accountable and/or better understand why at times, you may push away from accountability, you can make forward progress through career coaching.

• Conclusion:

Career coaching services can provide invaluable support for individuals seeking to overcome obstacles in their professional lives. Growth in your professional life can lead to growth in your personal life as well. By identifying your strengths and weaknesses, setting clear goals, and developing a plan of action, you can achieve success in your career and life.

So, whether you're looking to advance in your current position, change careers, or develop new skills, I would like to guide you on your journey to personal growth and professional success. Finding the best coach for you is a journey, and it all starts with a conversation. Connection, trust, and rapport are at the core of developing an effective coaching relationship. As you can see from my 5-star reviews, I have been highly successful with many clients over the years. But it's up to you to determine if I am the best coach in Colorado Springs for you. I provide people with relational coaching, resiliency, transitions coaching, growth and mindfulness coaching, personal growth coaching, and more.

To schedule a session or learn more about possible coaching avenues, leave me a message anytime, and I'll call you back as soon as I can!

Is Coaching better than Therapy? or Therapy better than Coaching? Some thoughts to ponder...

Trying to decide whether to go to a coach or therapist for help? Reasons to consider a coach instead of a therapist:

There’s lots of conversation on the internet about seeking a coach or a therapist for healing and growth. How is one supposed to decide what’s best for them? Here are some important topics to consider when trying to resolve whether to approach a therapist or a coach for help. As well as reasons I prefer being a Life Coach to my old job of functioning as a Psychologist. I spent years coming to these conclusions, so here’s some things to ponder when making your decision:

1) Licensed therapists can diagnose mental health disorders, coaches cannot. Is this good, bad, neutral? You decide.

I spent years working as a clinical psychologist doing psychological testing, diagnosing, and providing therapy. But as the years went by, I grew tired of a field driven by the DSM, insurance, diagnosis, etc. When someone arrived in my office, I had to come up with a diagnosis the first session for insurance purposes. Now diagnosing can be helpful, and provide a quick method of speaking about generalized categories for what someone is experiencing, but it can also be limiting. Take depression or anxiety for example, diagnosing these can enable someone to go to a physician and receive medications. But it can also leave someone feeling as if something is fundamentally wrong with them. I would often tell people that I was more concerned about someone who wasn’t aware of having any anxiety or depression, than those who struggled with depression or anxiety. Emotions are like physical pain, telling us something is wrong (or right) with life. Unfortunately, people can receive a diagnosis and feel like ‘something is wrong with me,’ instead of simply being able to affirm ‘this is a natural outcome of what’s happened or is happening to me.’ I do not consider it a disadvantage to me in coaching that I no longer spend time diagnosing disorders in the DSM. Labels have helped some and hurt others. You decide.

2) Notice the highlighted word above, disorder. Disorders or failures in brain integration?

As a coach, I work from the frame of brain integration, in addition to an awareness how our brains and bodies can struggle with particular issues for real reasons. Our brains are deeply shaped by our environment. Our environment can even direct how our genetic predispositions manifest — see the field of epigenetics. Or consider how children’s brains are literally altered by the violence around them, when their brain is constantly flooded with stress hormones in the book ‘Ghosts in the Nursery.’ Disorder? Or simply the outcome of a deeply heartbreaking environment? You decide.

In my years functioning as a psychologist and teaching, I learned a lot about neuroscience. What I learned, convinced me that much of what’s occurring when we struggle to regulate our emotions is an issue of brain integration versus a brain disorder. It’s about how our brain was wired as a result of our environmental circumstances. Now the beauty of this is that we can rewire our brains. We can create a different environment for our brains and thus bring healing. Of course some will disagree and say it’s about genetics, chemicals, or _____ (you fill in the blanks), just as for years there were disagreements about whether the world was flat or round. In the field of psychiatry, you have Dr. David Burns, who writes that he doesn’t believe, from his review of all the research on psychotropic medications, that there is proof of efficacy. On the other hand, you have Dr. Daniel Amen, who uses imaging of the brain to show clients what their medications do to help their brains.

I don’t think this is simply a black and white issue, we are complex. But consider bipolar disorder as an example. It’s fundamentally a dysregulation of emotions. Psychiatry states that it’s a chemical imbalance that needs to be dealt with through medications one takes for the rest of their life. Medications can help people (and some people may need them just as somebody needs a cast with a broken bone), but medications don’t reintegrate the brain.

Neuroscience provides an alternative framework. Bipolar disorder is about failures in brain integration (see for example, Psychiatrist, Dan Siegel who’s written about an adolescent with a Bipolar Disorder diagnosis, verified by several psychiatrists, who was helped through mindfulness as opposed to medications). I agree with those who believe our failures in integration have a lot to do with our environments as we come into the world and grow, in other words how our brain fails to integrate.

Hear this term ‘integrate’ as ‘different parts of our brain communicating well.’ When our brains are dysregulated they are not well integrated, that is to say, the thinking part of our brain (cortex) struggles to control the subcortical parts of our brain (parts we share with animals like dogs and lizards), or our left (more analytical) and right (relational/emotional) hemispheres do not communicate well. (Our brain is more complex than this but these can be helpful models) Disorder? Integration? Each person needs to decide, but I prefer to work with people from a framework of brain integration as a coach. We can all achieve better brain integration whether we are a struggling adolescent or a successful CFO of a Fortune 500 company. Failures in integration don’t have to be the result of abuse or poor parenting, they often simply flow from one generation to the next because of deficiencies in a previous generation’s knowledge, functioning, and/or modeling resulting in little ability help the next generation achieve the best possibilities for their brains.

3) The above distinctions highlight an important difference between coaches and therapists. Therapists begin with a diagnosis and therefore an assumption of pathology. The DSM which forms the foundation for therapy is a book of ‘disorders’ and thus pathology. While I can’t speak for other coaches, I know that in transitioning from therapy to coaching I am allowed to function from what I believe is most true about individuals: our inherent beauty provides a foundation for our growth. Take for example the ‘beauty’ of brain plasticity. Plasticity means that our brains can change during our entire life, from age 1 day to age 100 and onward. This is beautiful and it’s inherent in our very being.

The importance of this distinction became evident to me when I became a father. A good parent highlights a child’s essential goodness. We don’t grow into more complete and whole people by emphasizing our pathology, we do it by nurturing and living out of our core beauty and goodness. A child grows by believing in what they are capable of, not by being told everything that’s wrong with them! (Not that lovingly teaching our children about their deficiencies is not also a necessary aspect of parenting).

Is it more important that you believe in how screwed up you feel now, or in what you’re capable of? You decide.

4) Mindfulness techniques, which can help us integrate our brains, do not originate in therapeutic models. Now this is not to say that therapeutic models are unhelpful. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, attachment theories and other modalities are helpful models of healing. I did therapeutic work for so long, that some of these ways of thinking (ones I felt were important and helpful) are simply part of how I function as I move about the world, relate to my kids, etc. But the modalities of mindfulness, which help our brain become more integrated found their origin in Buddhism. Mindfulness did not come from some therapeutic framework developed in the last two hundred years, which now requires special training and endorsement to implement in order to get paid by an insurance company.

So much of our ‘healing’ in ‘mental health’ is ultimately about control, those lobbying for power in Washington as each field tries to make sure they can maintain power and jockey for position, as well as promote safety through regulation. Even the coaching field is not likely to remain unregulated forever as people will grab for power. But for now it is and that’s one of the things I appreciate. Mindfulness is free for all, and research shows that it’s a foundational key to our integration and thus healing. I can help you with mindfulness and help you become mindful of many things in your life that can lead to growth, but you don’t need me to begin to do mindfulness. I use the Calm app myself, a Muse headband, and Mendi headband for some helpful biofeedback and aid in mindfulness. Try them out!

5)  The above thoughts blend with my next — therapists are regulated, coaching is not. Good? Bad? Neutral? You decide. There is no governing board over coaches. As a result it can be like a crap shoot looking for a good one. But at the same time it’s really a crap shoot looking for a good therapist as well.

Over the years, as I pursued growth myself, I went through individual, group, and couples therapies, and experienced various modalities (from CogB to EMDR), I met a couple of great therapists and several not so great ones. One positive for therapists, is that education, training, licensure, etc. are all part of their process. However, education and licensure do not guarantee that someone can be helpful to you! Some of the most intuitive and helpful people I’ve met in my life had no formal training. In the west, we live in a world that is regulated, and as a result we miss out on much that is good that doesn’t ‘qualify.’ Regulation has its strengths and its weaknesses. You decide what fits for you best, or what you’re most comfortable with.

Here’s the truth about us all: therapists, psychologists, physicians/surgeons, pastors, coaches, CEOs we all originate from the same place: a broken world where there is suffering and disease of all sorts. We are all broken. So in seeking help you are never approaching someone who’s perfect. What anyone needs is a therapist or coach who has been on a healing path themselves and has some ability to guide others toward healing. I love that coaching offers those who are naturally gifted with insight and wisdom (gained through life experience and simply who they are as a person), an avenue to help others. Find someone you really connect with who listens, and offers helpful reflection and helps you rally to live your best life. It may be a therapist. It may be a coach. It may be a pastor, monk, or shaman. But what you really need is simply to start conversations and look for someone with wisdom, insight, and an ability to guide you toward your best, most whole, integrated self.

6) Is being able to bill your insurance a good thing? Therapists, in coming up with a diagnosis, can bill insurance companies while Coaches cannot bill insurance. Now who wouldn’t want to use insurance if you could? It makes sense, and if you think you have a viable DSM diagnosis and don’t mind being given a label use your insurance. But it was also quite common over my years practicing therapy to find that by the time a person’s deductible was covered the year was almost gone and they would have to start all over again the following year. Let’s face it, not many of us have great insurance benefits, and you’re constantly starting your deductible over each year anyway. You have to pay a coach completely out of pocket, but this doesn’t have to be a bad thing.

Over the years I grew to be able to tell who would grow and change and who would not. It was simple: the ones who were motivated to grow are the ones who grew. I can be very invested in people growing, but it does no good if you yourself are not invested. Motivation is everything and a willingness to invest in and pay a coach or therapist out of pocket manifests a desire to grow. We invest in what we believe in. Science shows us that if something costs us something we tend to value and invest in it more ourselves, this heightens the possibility of change. So is being able to bill insurance good? Bad? Neutral? You decide. It doesn’t have to be the same for everyone. What matters most for change is motivation.

Conclusion: Things to keep in mind as you seek out a coach or therapist:

1. Find someone who is not just knowledgeable but wise, who has gained experience and thus has a broad perspective. The more narrow one’s perspective the less they can see and thus help. For example, there are so many specialties in medicine because there’s too much knowledge for any one person to understand everything (blood, cancer, surgery, etc.), and even then a physician can’t understand everything an electrical engineer or an astronomer does — but don’t you wish you could understand multiple fields of study? Seek out someone with as broad of a perspective as you can find, who also has specific knowledge to help you change in areas that matter to you. Think of this framework as finding someone who can see an entire elephant (or has a better view of it at least) than someone who can only tell you what the tail of an elephant is like or it’s ear. If you know what part of the elephant you need to study then seek them out, but if you’re wanting to really understand a broader picture of your struggles in life and how to move forward, seek out someone who has a better view of the ‘elephant’ so to say.

2. Seek out someone who connects with you. We each need to feel seen. It’s the relational elements of connection that are as much about healing as other things like expert knowledge. Years ago, Irvin Yalom wrote about the kind of ‘secret spice’ of cooking and how a good therapeutic relationship (and I would add coaching relationship) requires that secret spice. Find someone with whom you feel comfortable, safe, feel seen by, and who provides helpful outcomes for you over time.

3. Don’t assume you’ll change overnight. There may be some things which might shift for you quickly due to insight, etc. but other things, which are built into your body and thus brain will take longer. It took you years to get where you are, so don’t hold on to a fantasy for an instant cure. Our brains took time to wire and rewiring takes time even though we CAN do it. Change is like anything else, the more energy and time you invest in something the better you get at it.

4. Self help books versus coaching or therapy with a human. Patricia Kuhl, who specializes in infant linguistics, discovered that even as children learn a language there’s a massive difference in learning when a child learns a language from a face to face interaction versus watching the same thing on TV. Sitting with humans helps us learn, it’s how we’re made. A book can help the analytical part of your brain, but this is only part of who you are. The right hemisphere is the first thing to come online for infants. This is the part of your brain that attunes to relational realities, connection, emotional attunement, etc. We need humans to strengthen this part of our brain, not TV, not self-help books. So whatever you do, don’t believe you can learn everything you need to know from a book. Books can be helpful, but we need people to actually heal, people who attune to us and guide us.

Best of luck on your journey to find the therapist or coach who is the best fit for you!

Mourning in a coffee shop

Mo(u)rning in a coffee shop

Saturday morning

I sit amidst the wisdom and dreams

of many

sipping coffee in The Tattered Cover

a small girl runs and laughs

oblivious to those around her

the world is safe

she can be free

she can speak and vocalize

she can run and dance

comfortable in her self

I grin with delight

seeing this spectacle of beauty

striped black and white pants

large yellow crocs

stuffed animal grasped firmly like a football

dancing in her bright pink coat

parents no where to be seen

witnessing her

I laugh even as

I begin to mourn

oh to be comfortable in our skin as this child

she has not yet learned to hide from the world

she has not yet learned how unsafe it can be

oh to be like a child again

with the innocence and purity of youth

yet

wise with age and journey

living peacefully with tensions

because

though the world is not safe

somehow I am

to gain a freedom to be ourselves

in a world where hurt

regularly defeats love

freedom

a freedom lost through life’s long years

a freedom perhaps we can reclaim

oh to be a child

like the one running before my eyes

to smile and laugh

comfortable in our own skin

unbroken by a broken world

unsurprised I hear her name called

it is Emma

now, another girl appears

and my mourning doubles

the older sister

sitting with a book

stands now to call below

to Emma

who has traversed the stairs

a harsh reply shoots up,

echoing in the rafters above

as mom silences this child

“stop being disrespectful”

“sit, be quiet and read”

unnamed beauty

she obediently sits back down with her book

quiet, meek, silent

I remain in stillness

I listen and observe

I hear Emma’s voice below

sadly her unnamed sister’s voice is never heard

I mourn the loss of childhood’s best

I mourn the loss of playful innocence

oblivious to the critiquing world around

I mourn the lost voice of the older sister

already learning by 5 or 6

be silent

while her sister runs free

unexpected mourning

mo(u)rning in a coffee shop

oh to be a child

to gain the wisdom we can through years

yet not to lose our first embrace of the world

delight and sorrow

feelings and words mingling

with the aroma of my coffee

and quiet mo(u)rning meditations

Surprising Benefits Of Working With A Stress-Reducing Coach

Do you ever feel like you’re constantly on the go and can never seem to catch a break? It’s no secret that our modern-day lives are filled with stressors and pressures that can take a toll on our mental and physical health. But what if there was a way to reduce stress and improve overall well-being? That’s where a stress reduction coach comes in. In this blog post, we’ll explore the surprising benefits of working with a stress-reducing coach.

1.Develop personalized stress management plan

Stress-reducing coaches work with clients to create customized plans for managing stress. This can include techniques such as mindfulness, meditation, exercise, and breathing exercises. By working with a coach, you can develop a plan that works best for you and your lifestyle.

2. Improve overall well-being

Chronic stress can lead to a range of health problems, both physical and mental. By reducing stress levels, you may experience improvements in areas such as sleep, digestion, and mood. Exercise, diet, and social relationships are also important factors to explore if one desires to counteract the destructive impact of stress. A Stress Reduction Coach can help you identify areas of your life that may be contributing to stress and work with you to find solutions.

3. Increase self-awareness

Working with a Stress Reduction Coach can also help you become more self-aware. By identifying your personal stress triggers and patterns, you can gain insight into your own behaviors and learn how to manage stress more effectively.

4. Achieve greater focus and clarity

When we’re stressed, it can be difficult to concentrate or make decisions, and all the details of life can overwhelm us. A stress-reduction coach can help you develop techniques for achieving greater focus and clarity, which can be especially helpful for those who struggle with anxiety or ADHD (Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder). Neuroscience reveals that we can improve our focus and rewire our brains.

5. Build resilience

Resilience is manifested in one’s ability to bounce back from adversity. By seeking a Coach for Stress Reduction, you can develop the skills and mindset needed to handle stressors and challenges in a more effective way. This can help you build resilience and become better equipped to handle whatever life throws your way. Coaching for stress reduction is also coaching for resiliency.

Conclusion:

Working with a Coach for stress reduction can have a significant impact on overall well-being. By developing a personalized stress management plan, improving self-awareness, and building resilience, you can reduce stress and improve your ability to handle life’s challenges.

The reduction of stress is part of personal growth. So if you’re interested in receiving stress-reducing coaching or searching for a personal growth coach who specializes in stress management, I might be a great choice for you. With my support and guidance, we’ll help you achieve greater balance and live a healthier, more fulfilling life.

For more information, and to begin a conversation about your needs, give me a call now!

From Darkness to Light and Death to Life

From Darkness to Light and Death to Life: The Role of Grief Coaching in the Journey to Recovery

Grief and loss are an inevitable part of life. Death doesn’t have to lead to growth, but it can. Death can either harden and solidify everything that is already broken, or it can become a cradle for life. Yet dealing with death is an overwhelming experience. It is natural to feel lost, angry, and helpless when faced with the death of a loved one, a significant change in life circumstances, or any other traumatic event. In such times, grief and loss coaching can play a crucial role in helping you navigate the journey to recovery.

Have you recently suffered a significant loss and found yourself struggling to move forward? Loss and grief produce enormous amounts of stress for which it’s worth seek coaching. Are you feeling overwhelmed by the grief and finding it hard to cope with your emotions? If so, then it might be time to seek the assistance of a grief and loss coach. Here are some ways in which a grief coach can help you on your path to recovery:

1. Offers a safe space to express your emotions:

Grief and loss can bring about a range of complex emotions, including sadness,  relief, anger, guilt, and anxiety. People are even troubled after loss when they begin to experience happiness or joy, and can experience guilt for feeling good. A grief coach provides a supportive and non-judgmental environment where you can express your feelings without fear of being misunderstood or judged.

2. Helps you gain clarity and perspective:

Grief and loss can often cloud our judgment and make it hard to see a way forward. A grief coach can help you gain clarity and perspective by asking the right questions and guiding you toward a deeper understanding of your feelings.

3. Provides practical tools and techniques:

Coping with grief and loss requires more than just emotional support. A grief coach can provide you with practical tools and techniques to manage stress, anxiety, and other symptoms of grief.

4. Helps you rebuild your life

The aftermath of a significant loss can often leave us feeling lost and directionless. A grief coach can help you create a plan for taking each step into today and tomorrow, and rebuilding your life.

5. Supports you through movements of grief:

People often speak of ‘stages of grief,’ while obviously not wrong, this is linear thinking. In reality, grieving is a process that has different ‘movements,’ more like a symphony. One moment we can weep, and seconds later we may smile or laugh with a happy memory. Grief is not linear, and there is no order to grief. There is also no timeline or closure for grief. Everyone grieves in a unique way due to culture, beliefs, personal history, traumas, unresolved previous loss, etc. A grief coach can help you understand and navigate your individual journey through grief, and provide support at each step of the journey.

6. Encourages self-care:

Grief and loss can take a toll on both your physical and mental health. A grief coach can help you prioritize self-care and find ways to take care of yourself amidst the challenges.

7. Provides a sense of hope:

When dealing with grief, it can be hard to see a way forward. A grief coach can offer hope and encouragement and remind you that healing is possible.

8. Offers a fresh perspective:

Sometimes, talking to someone outside of your immediate circle can provide a fresh perspective on your situation. A grief coach can offer a new way of looking at things and help you see the possibilities that lie ahead, as well as sort through the complicated paths behind you that have set you up for your present responses. Neuroscience tells us that our brain is wired such that we’re always functioning out of the past before the present.

9. Nurtures your efforts to establish a supportive community:

Sometimes we stop talking about grief because we are afraid our friends or family are tired of hearing about our pain, even though we cannot stop hurting. Grief and loss can be isolating. It can be hard to find people who understand what you're going through, and even the most well intentioned family and friends may actually increase pain instead of embracing you in comfort. A grief coach can nurture your journey of discovering supportive community.

10. Helps you process your memories of the one you lost:

Our memories will remain alive after a loss. A grief coach can help you find ways to be true to your memories of the loved one, yourself, and come to a healing and resilient place. Humans are complex, and often our relationships are a mixture of the lovely, and the ugly or difficult. If you lost a beautiful and life-giving relationship, coaching can help you honor this love and move forward embracing it’s gifts. If however, the relationship was negative or destructive, a coach can help you process the loss of what you longed for but which never existed. Most relationships contain both light and darkness. Regardless of the quality of your lost relationship, grief coaching can help build new foundations out of which to live your life, thus strengthening your ability to move forward and flourish.

11: Coaching can help you manage your stress

Grief produces stress that eats away at our health. So in providing coaching for grief, I am also providing coaching for stress in Colorado Springs. Nothing in your life is likely to remain the same after a death or loss, and sometimes there are financial stressors on top of all the relational and emotional stressors you’re experiencing. Stress adds to stress until you don’t feel like you can’t bear the load. Coaching can help you learn to manage the stress that results from loss and grief.

Conclusion: Eleven possible reasons to seek coaching for loss and grief in Colorado Springs

Grief and loss coaching can be an invaluable resource for anyone struggling with the aftermath of a significant loss. If you're lost in the pain of grief, it's could be life changing to ask for a consultation and begin coaching. If  you’re interested, don't hesitate to call me and leave a message anytime. A conversation is the very best way to establish trust, and provide you with new insights into how to continue to grow through the loss. Embracing loss, instead of repressing it, or getting busy and running from it, allows loss to be composted into the soil of your life and produce fruit and life for tomorrow. Get in touch today!

Why Consider Pursuing a Grief Coach in Colorado?

Grief can expand our view of life and enlarge us, but it is a painful journey no one would deliberately choose. Neuroscience reveals that our brain processes social and relational pain in the same regions as physical pain. Bereavement and grief create literal physical pain. Losing a loved one is never easy, and the pain can linger for a lifetime even though the wound can heal to the naked eye (see final note below).

This long journey means that bereavement can be a lonely and isolating process, and sometimes it may seem like the pain will never be assuaged. If you are in this pain, consider pursuing a grief coach.

Grief or Bereavement Coaching can support you through the mourning process, help you to find healing, and provide you with the tools and resources you need to overcome the pain of bereavement. Here are eight ways a grief coach can help you overcome the pain of bereavement:

1. Provides a Safe Space to Share and Process Your Emotions

They provide a safe and supportive environment for you to share your feelings and emotions without fear of judgment or rejection. For example, as time passes, people who have lost someone feel like they are a broken record, a good coach will help you understand that repetition is one of the ways we work through traumas. Repetition is our way of seeking out meaning and a different ending to the trauma of loss that we’re experiencing. A Bereavement Coach will listen to you and help you to process your “stuck” emotions, helping you to find your way through the grieving process.

2. Helps You to Find Meaning in Your Loss

“If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be meaning in suffering (read loss)” Victor Frankl.

A bereavement coach can help you to find meaning in your suffering and loss and identify the lessons and opportunities for growth that can come from the pain of bereavement. No one would choose suffering as a way to grow, but a grief coach can help you to find a sense of purpose and direction, even in the midst of your suffering. Death does not have to lead to life, but nature reminds us each spring that life is possible after death.

3. Supports You in Developing Coping Strategies

A grief coach can support you in developing effective coping strategies to deal with the pain of bereavement. Exploring the source of any negative or destructive coping mechanisms, and encouraging you to choose healthier ones. They will work with you to identify the tools and resources that will help you to manage your emotions and overcome the challenges of grief.

4. Encourages Self-Care and Self-Compassion

Grief can be exhausting, even avoiding grief can lead to overactivity and exhaustion. At times people neglect their own needs and well-being. and need encouragement to participate in activities which nurture their own health and growth after loss. A grief coach can gently rally you to prioritize self-care and self-compassion, supporting you in finding the time and space you need to heal.

5. Provides a Non-Judgmental Ear

A grief coach is someone who is there to listen to you without judgment. You get to feel what you feel, say what you need to say, and be honest with yourself even if it feels like the world around you wants you to hide what’s really happening. Grief makes us fragile, angry, fearful, and can manifest the entire spectrum of emotions. A good Bereavement or Grief Coach will help you say, “This is where I am today. I will not always be here. How I feel now doesn’t need to be my identity, but I get to honor my experience today. Change is inevitable, this too will pass.”

6. Helps You to Build a Support Network

Grief can be isolating, and it can be hard to know who to turn to for support. The best grief coaches can help you process which relationships in your life are helpful, which need some honest conversation but hold potential, and which should perhaps have clear boundaries around them. An empowering Coach supports you as you look to bring growing health to your entire life. Healthy relational support means a healthy life. Science consistently reveals that the number one factor for strengthening our long term health is a healthy relational support network.

7. Helps You to Manage Stress and Anxiety

Grief can be a very stressful and anxious experience, and it can take a toll on your physical and emotional well-being. A grief coach can help you manage stress and anxiety, providing you with tools and resources to help you stay calm and grounded in the midst of your pain.

8. Supports You in Rebuilding Your Life

Loss shatters lives, and a grief coach can support you as you struggle to find and maintain forward momentum, helping you to come to terms with your loss and reach acceptance of the things in life you have control over, and those you do not.

Final Note:

If you are struggling with the pain of bereavement, consider contacting someone who does grief coaching in Colorado. In my decades of work as a Psychologist, Coach, and Chaplain for hospice and in hospital settings, I have always been humbled by the opportunity to walk with people in their grief. Only you can decide who is the best grief coach for you, so make some calls and start conversations looking for the best coach to help you grieve. The best grief and bereavement coaches recognize that it’s a great privilege to journey with anyone through the darkness and traumas of life, toward new life and light.

Note regarding grief and bereavement pain: When people struggle to understand the length of the journey through loss and bereavement, I liken the healing from relational loss, to the healing of physical wounds. Years ago I shattered my ankle. It took days for the swelling to go down so the surgeon could do his work. I then spent months in a cast. Months later, having gone through painful physical therapy to rebuild my muscles, I was able to have the plates and screws removed, only to need to recover again. Even though my bones healed and my muscles recovered, my left calf muscle remains smaller than my right, and the nerves have never been the same. Today, I can at times take a step, and have pain shoot through my ankle so severe I am unable to walk. Thus, there are still scars and reminders of my loss. Bereavement is similar, the pain can be unbearable at first, work is required to regain stability in life. Life will never be the same with its consequences and scars. At times the pain may suddenly make us feel like the loss has just happened even if we have found new joy. We hopefully recover more quickly, we are not as undone by the pain, but there is never closure to a traumatic loss, there is simply a new path.

On learning to be the ground of peace

In our best moments, we hopefully all long for peace in our relationships and world. A question we should ask ourselves is: Has my journey resulted in me being someone who increases or depletes peace in my immediate surroundings? If I am in relationship with another, am I a partner who when things go sideways my actions, and/or words escalate the tension or help reduce the storm? If I am a parent, do I escalate my child’s growing dysregulation, or do I help them re-regulate? At work, do I relate in such a way that I increase relational discord, or do I help others regulate themselves and engage with others in a similar manner?

If we want to be someone who disperses peace, we need to be at peace ourselves. Thich Nhat Hanh used the image of a boat full of people in a storm. He asks us to consider what happens if even one person panics in the boat, “our quality of being is the ground of all appropriate action.” Don’t picture a large ship, picture a canoe, or better yet a paddle board. What happens if one or more persons (or dogs — ours are often liable to tip our paddleboards) stands up in a panic? If you’re the calm one you’re trying to talk the other(s) down because you know with certainty that you’re all in trouble if you lose your calm too. Yet how often when we’re relating to a partner, child, coworker, friend do we really not care if we capsize the boat at any given moment? This is how we should view each relational opportunity in our world. It is so much easier to keep the boat afloat than to try to repair the damage after we honestly just ‘don’t give a shit.’

If we are at peace and are able to think clearly (i.e. we’re not dysregulated ourselves in neuroscience terms, i.e. we still ‘give a shit’) then we are likely to move our world from dysregulation to regulation, but it all begins with our own regulation.

As a psychologist, I heard over and over again the term ‘bipolar disorder,’ and other diagnosis that essentially boil down to a human being who has not learned to regulate themselves well. Now I’m not trying to imply the person is bad, in fact in neuroscience terms what’s likely occurred is that they never had someone ‘in the boat’ with them, from infancy onward, who was able to help them learn to regulate themselves when they became dysregulated. As a result, the neural pathways to regulate are not strong. There are varying degrees of dysregulation, but the question remains have we learned to regulate ourselves? Do we care to regulate ourselves?

What happens when you close your eyes right now? Can you sense your breathing and heart rate? Are they deep and calm, or shallow and pounding? If you are around others and close your eyes, is there activity? What does the activity do to you? How is this different from when you’re out in nature, sitting on a rock and listening to birds? Mindfulness is all about helping us as individuals learn to regulate our own person, no matter what our environment. It doesn’t matter if we were never taught this, we get to ‘reparent’ ourselves — now. We can all rewire our brains. We can all learn to have a ‘quality of being’ which promotes peace in ourselves and others instead of dsyregulation. Acquiring this quality of being is so much better than needing cigarettes, alcohol, drugs, shopping, work, exercise, etc. to re-regulate. It’s all about our brains and how we’ve been wired.

The other possibility, i.e. chaos and dysregulation comes from when we honestly just ‘don’t give a shit,’ we ‘flip our lid’ or ‘blow our top’ just like the person / situation we’re engaging with that is threatening to dysregulate us. How often have you made this choice with a partner, child, coworker, friend, etc. and then realized it just wasn’t worth it. If you’re a mindful person, then most likely you feel regret every time you let yourself go. Peace starts with our own quality of being. Close your eyes and breathe deep. Try again. Is your spouse, child, friend, etc. still escalating and you’re starting to lose it yourself, again? Close your eyes and start, again. This is what mindfulness is — starting again. Attend to your breath. Calm your own heart rate. Start over.

Just like it’s so much easier to break trust than to rebuild it, it is so much easier in the long run to listen, and dialogue, than to flip your lid and then clean up the aftermath. Keep the boat afloat. It’s so much easier than trying to recover everything after you’ve tossed it all, including yourself, into the water.

Each of us can be a source and ground of peace. It’s our choice. It’s never a choice others make for us. We can’t ever blame others for our choice. We can blame others for our start in life (i.e. how we’re originally wired as children), but not for right now, and not for tomorrow. We may not have had much help so far in life learning to regulate, but now we can learn. If we struggle to make good choices we can learn to know ourselves, understand why, and then learn to be calm in the middle of all storms. Children flip their lids all the time and need help learning to regulate. Sometimes our world seems to be more full of children than mature, calm, regulated humans. In every moment, of every day, we can be someone who helps bring more peace or more chaos. It’s our choice.