Focusing on Mindset With a Trauma-Informed Approach
When I decided to move into the life coaching space a few years ago, I was bombarded by all the advice out there, specifically on “niche-ing” down. The idea is to focus on one area such as career, relationships, personal development, stress reduction, etc. The thought is that by becoming more specific, you can create more specific marketing and sell your services to your target audience. I understand the concept but have struggled with it at the same time.
For example, if we are working together and the goal is to make changes within your career, but you also have to negotiate this change within the confines of your day-to-day life (being a working parent, having elderly parents to care for, financial burdens, communication difficulties with your partner), then there will be other areas to address before working towards the career change goals.
We all live multifaceted lives, with many layers to how we think about things and respond to our environment. Our mindset is the foundation – the way we are thinking about a particular situation, the perspectives we bring to the different areas of our lives, the values we possess – are all pieces of a larger picture of our lives. The mindset we have at this very moment did not develop overnight. It stems from years of experiences going all the way back to childhood and how we learned to process events or situations, how we developed a coping response to these events and how we developed a pattern of thinking and behaving to help negotiate the many spaces in which we live. When I say the many spaces, I am referring not just to our physical environment (our home, our neighborhood, and our community), but the mental spaces as well – the relationships we have with ourselves, our partners, our parents, our children, our friends, our employers and so on. And let’s not forget the cultural and societal impacts on mindset. The thinking approach we have towards these various spaces also differs - for instance, we may not react toward our boss the way we would react towards a friend.
Our mindset is the foundation of the change process. If we want to make changes in any area of our life, we must first become aware of our mindset which means awareness of our thinking and behavior responses. This is where the trauma-informed approach comes in and becomes a pivotal part of the change process. My approach is to consider the adversities and challenges that every single one of us has faced at some point in our lives and how that has impacted our mindset, meaning how it has impacted our thinking and behavior responses. We develop certain thought and behavior approaches to help us manage through certain situations however over time, those approaches may become detrimental, holding us back from moving forward and making some meaningful changes in our lives.
Therefore, I have decided to focus my coaching services on helping individuals change their mindset using a trauma-informed approach. I guess you could say my niche will be trauma-sensitive mindset coaching, but my intention is to help you make those meaningful changes you want in any area of your life in a safe and supportive way.
