THERAPEUTIC COACHING FOR INDIVIDUALS & COUPLES · BRISTOL & ONLINE
Being human. It’s a lot, isn’t it?
Sometimes it's the anxiety, the overthinking, the constant self-doubt. The pressure to get everything right. You know what you want to do, but somehow keep putting it off. Or you do it, then spend ages wondering if you've done it well enough.
Sometimes it's your relationship. You both know how that argument tends to go, and neither of you wants to have it again. Yet somehow, here you are.
I'm Vivien, a therapeutic coach working with individuals and couples to understand what's keeping them stuck, create real change, and make life feel a little less like hard work.
Funny how we can know what needs to change, yet find it so difficult to actually do it.
You can spend years understanding why you're a people-pleaser and still find yourself agreeing to something you desperately don't want to do.
You can know perfectly well that worrying won't help, while your brain merrily carries on imagining seventeen different ways things might go wrong.
And you can be absolutely determined not to have that argument with your partner again. Until they say that thing, in that tone, and suddenly all your good intentions have left the building.
Human beings are funny like that.
That's one of the things I love about therapeutic coaching. We can get curious about these familiar patterns: where they might have come from, what keeps them going, and why they're so difficult to shift even when we understand them.
But we don't have to stop at understanding. We can work on changing the patterns themselves, so that what once felt automatic starts to feel like something you have a choice about.
Because the real value of understanding yourself isn't simply knowing why you do what you do. It's being able to do something different when it matters.
So what does therapeutic coaching actually involve?
Therapeutic coaching brings together the reflective, exploratory side of psychological work with the more practical, forward-looking nature of coaching. So we can spend time understanding what's going on, but we can also roll up our sleeves and do something about it.
That means we can take time to understand what's going on beneath the surface. The beliefs you've picked up along the way. The expectations you place on yourself. The ways you've learned to cope when things feel difficult, uncertain or uncomfortable.
Some of these ways of coping may have made perfect sense at one point in your life. Some may still be genuinely useful. Others might be getting in the way of how you'd like to live now.
And sometimes, what seems to be the problem at first turns out to be only part of the story.
We'll explore all of this with curiosity, rather than rushing to a conclusion about what needs fixing.
But we'll also work with what we discover.
That might mean developing a different relationship with anxious thoughts, finding ways to approach something you've been avoiding, practising how to express a need, or noticing what happens in the moments before a conversation goes off course.
There may be things to experiment with between sessions, too. Not homework for the sake of homework, but opportunities to put what we're learning into practice in your actual life.
Some sessions will be more reflective. Others more practical. Often, we'll move between the two.
The point isn't to spend forever analysing your life, or to leave every session armed with a new to-do list.
It's to understand yourself more fully and develop the confidence, skills and flexibility to live differently.
There are different ways we can work together.
For Individuals
When your own thoughts and expectations are exhausting.
Perhaps your mind rarely switches off. You worry, overthink and question yourself. You put enormous pressure on getting things right, then feel frustrated when you can't get started or follow through.
Or perhaps you're simply tired of being so hard on yourself. Of feeling responsible for everyone else's happiness, worrying what people think, or letting the fear of getting something wrong make your decisions for you.
Whatever has brought you here, we'll take time to understand your particular experience, rather than assume there's one explanation for it all.
And we'll work towards the things you'd like to be different. Trusting your judgement. Feeling less at the mercy of your thoughts. Being kinder to yourself when things don't go perfectly. Having more freedom to make choices and get on with the things that matter to you.
For Couples
When you seem to keep finding yourselves back in the same place.
Perhaps small disagreements have a habit of becoming rather large ones. You both feel misunderstood, conversations turn defensive, or things get left unsaid because it's easier than risking another argument.
Or perhaps there hasn't been a big argument at all. Just a gradual sense of distance, of functioning quite well together on the practicalities of life while feeling less connected than you'd like.
Couples coaching gives you space to slow things down and understand what's happening between you.
We'll look at how you communicate, what each of you might be experiencing beneath the surface, and what happens when your different needs, feelings or expectations collide.
The aim isn't to decide who's right, or to turn either of you into a completely different person.
It's to help you understand one another better, communicate more openly, and develop ways of relating that work better for both of you.
Sometimes the biggest changes show up in surprisingly ordinary moments.
You notice yourself getting anxious, but don't automatically follow every worrying thought to its worst possible conclusion.
You make a decision and, rather than spending the next three days picking it apart, you trust yourself to deal with whatever comes next.
You begin something you've been putting off, without needing to feel completely ready or certain you'll do it perfectly.
You disagree with someone you care about and discover that disagreement doesn't have to mean disconnection.
Or something goes wrong and, for once, you don't spend the rest of the day giving yourself a thoroughly miserable time about it.
None of this means you'll never worry again, never doubt yourself or never have another argument.
That's not really how being human works.
But it is possible to develop a different relationship with the things that used to have such a hold over you.
And those changes can give you more room for the things that matter: your relationships, your choices, your ambitions, your rest. Even the simple pleasure of getting through a day without quite so much going on in your head.
Hello, I’m Vivien.
I've always been fascinated by people. Why we do what we do, why we react the way we do, and why we can be so wonderfully sensible about someone else's problems while being rather less helpful with our own.
That curiosity has shaped my work for more than ten years, supporting people through anxiety, uncertainty, change and the complexities of their relationships.
My background includes professional coaching, hypnotherapy, counselling studies, mindfulness and ongoing psychotherapy training. Each has given me a different way of understanding people, and different ways of helping when insight alone isn't enough.
I don't believe there's a single technique or theory that can neatly explain every human difficulty. People are more interesting than that.
In our sessions, I'll listen carefully, ask questions, offer observations and sometimes challenge an assumption that might deserve another look.
There'll be room for difficult feelings, uncertainty and things you haven't quite found the words for yet. And there'll be room for warmth, humour and the occasional moment when we realise just how peculiar human beings can be.
I take the work seriously. Myself, a little less so.
What does working together look like?
We start with a free, 20-minute conversation.
It's a chance for you to tell me a little about what's bringing you here, ask questions and get a feel for whether working together seems right.
If we decide to go ahead, we'll begin by exploring what's happening, what you'd like to change and how we might approach the work.
I usually work with people over a series of sessions, meeting weekly or fortnightly. That gives us time to get beyond the initial conversation, understand the difficulties more fully and begin putting new approaches into practice.
There's a clear purpose to the work, but not a rigid formula that everyone has to follow.
Sessions are available in person at my Bristol practice in Bedminster (BS3), or online if that's easier.
What Clients Say
Shall we have a conversation?
You don't need to arrive with a perfectly formed explanation of what's wrong, or a detailed plan for how you'd like things to change.
You might have a very clear idea of what's troubling you. Or you might simply know that things have been harder than you'd like for longer than you'd like.
Either is a perfectly reasonable place to begin.
We can have a chat about what's happening, what you're hoping for and whether therapeutic coaching feels like the right kind of support.
No pressure to commit. Just a chance to see whether working together makes sense.