THERAPEUTIC COACHING · BRISTOL & ONLINE
Being human. It’s a lot, isn’t it?
From the outside, life might look like it's ticking along quite nicely. On the inside, however, it's a rather different story.
Perhaps you're overthinking everything, doubting yourself, worrying about what other people think, or wondering how you and your partner have managed to have that argument yet again.
I'm Vivien, a therapeutic coach working with individuals and couples who'd like to understand themselves a little better, get out of familiar old patterns, and make life feel a bit 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.
We can be remarkably good at understanding our own behaviour and surprisingly hopeless at changing it.
That's one of the things I love about therapeutic coaching.
We can explore where those familiar patterns come from, what purpose they might have served, and why they still turn up when we'd really rather they didn't.
But we can also get practical. Find things that help. Try a different response. Have the conversation. Experiment a little. See what happens.
Because while understanding yourself is a wonderful thing, it's even better when that understanding begins to make a difference to how you actually live.
A little understanding. A bit of practice. Quite a lot can change.
So what does therapeutic coaching actually look like?
Well, there's talking, obviously. But not just talking for the sake of it.
My approach brings together the reflective, exploratory side of psychological work with the more practical side 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
We'll get curious about what's happening beneath the surface, make connections, question old assumptions and perhaps discover that something you've always believed about yourself isn't quite the whole story.
Sometimes we'll look back to understand where a pattern began. Sometimes we'll focus on something that happened yesterday. And sometimes we'll realise that the thing you thought was the problem isn't quite the whole story.
And we'll do something with what we discover.
That might involve learning a technique to manage anxious thoughts, practising a more helpful way of responding, finding the words for a difficult conversation, or experimenting with a small change between sessions.
Some sessions will be more reflective. Others more practical. Often we'll move between the two, depending on what you need.
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 better and have more choice about how you respond to the things life throws at you.
How can I help?
Individual therapeutic coaching
For when your own head is making life unnecessarily complicated.
Maybe you're an accomplished overthinker. Perhaps you're constantly doubting yourself, trying to keep everyone happy, feeling anxious or exhausted, or wondering quite how you ended up living a life that doesn't feel entirely like yours.
Or perhaps you're facing a change and haven't the faintest idea what you want to do next.
We'll explore what's going on, what matters to you and what might be getting in the way. And we'll find ways to approach those things differently, not just in our sessions, but in the middle of real life when they're actually happening.
Not just in theory, on a worksheet, on a particularly optimistic Monday morning.
Couples coaching
For when you love each other, but occasionally drive each other up the wall.
Relationships can be wonderful. They can also be surprisingly difficult, especially when you keep having the same disagreements, struggle to communicate what you need, or find yourselves feeling more like colleagues in the business of running a household.
Sometimes it's the big things. Sometimes it's the dishwasher. Although, of course, it's rarely just about the dishwasher.
We'll explore what happens between you, what each of you might be feeling or needing beneath the arguments, and how you can begin to hear each other a little differently. There'll be practical things to try, too, so those conversations have a better chance of going somewhere useful.
Sometimes the difference is in the little things.
Being able to say no without spending the rest of the day feeling guilty.
Noticing that you're getting anxious and knowing what helps, rather than disappearing down a rabbit hole of increasingly alarming possibilities.
Making a decision and trusting yourself enough not to spend the following week picking it apart.
Recognising the beginning of a familiar argument and managing, just this once, to have a different conversation.
Or finding that you're not quite so hard on yourself when things don't go to plan.
These might not sound like enormous changes. But when they start happening in ordinary, everyday situations, they can make quite a difference to how life feels.
That's what interests me most about this work.
Not creating a perfectly calm, confident, endlessly productive version of you. That sounds like rather a lot of pressure, frankly.
I'd much rather help you feel more at ease with yourself, get on better with the people who matter to you, and feel a little more able to handle whatever life decides to throw your way.
Hello, I’m Vivien.
I'm endlessly curious about people.
Why we do what we do. Why we get stuck in familiar patterns. Why we can give someone else perfectly sensible advice and then completely ignore it when it comes to our own lives.
And, most importantly, what helps us change.
That curiosity took me from a career in marketing and leadership into coaching, hypnotherapy, counselling studies and ongoing psychotherapy training.
It's also taught me that people are rarely as straightforward as we'd like to think. Myself included.
I bring psychological understanding, practical experience, warmth and a healthy sense of humour to my work.
I'll listen, ask questions, offer observations, introduce useful ideas and occasionally challenge your thinking. Always with care, and with genuine interest in what makes you, well, you.
I take the work seriously. Myself, a little less so.
What Clients Say
Shall we have a conversation?
You don't need to arrive knowing exactly what's wrong, why it's happening or what you'd like to do about it.
That's rather a lot to have figured out before you've even met me.
I offer a free 20-minute consultation so we can talk about what's brought you here, what you're hoping for and whether working together feels right.
It's a chance to ask questions, get a feel for how I work and decide what you'd like to do next.
No pressure, no grand promises, and absolutely no need to have your life story prepared in advance.