What actually changes when you get out of your own way, my journey to coaching.

I want to tell you something I don't often lead with. For a long time, I thought coaching was pseudo-science.

My first experience of it was being coached by my own manager during a career transition. I could see through the structure of what he was doing, predict the next question, pre-cringe at the formula. I wasn't able to be fully honest with him because of the power dynamic. And when it didn't land, I wrote the whole thing off for years. Coaching, I decided, was for people who needed someone to validate what they already knew.

The first day of lockdown

Fast forward several years. I had spent the better part of a year identifying exactly the right next move: the right type of company, the right level of role. The interview process had been extensive. I'd worked hard for it and I'd got it, I was incredibly excited. Then, my first day in that role was the first day of the first Covid lockdown.

The services the company provided were exactly the kind nobody was buying. Overnight. No amount of hard work, new features or creative marketing was going to fix that. And my family's income depended on me figuring out the right next move.

I was also simultaneously home educating my autistic seven year old, cut off from friends and family, and carrying a private story I'd been telling myself for years: that moving on from jobs when thing either weren't right or were so stable that it bored me, was a character flaw. That staying put and making it work was what capable people did. That the fact I'd never stayed anywhere more than three years meant something was wrong with me.

I didn't recognise any of this at the time. I just knew that I had taken everything on as a personal failure, and the shame of that was weighing me down so heavily I couldn't see a way forward, the added pressure of lockdown became a tipping point. Slowly, my brain felt like it was self-combusting.

Why I tried therapy first, and why it didn't help

I tried therapy before I tried coaching. It went too far back. It was concerned with healing things from my past, which matters, but it wasn't helping me get out of the hole I was in right now. If anything it made things worse, because now I had more problems to sit with and no immediate way forward.

So I tried coaching again. I didn't know much about it. I didn't know there were different specialisms, or what kind of coach I actually needed. I got lucky. I was matched with a coach whose approach was rooted in somatics: working with the body's response to anxiety rather than trying to think your way out of it.

What somatic coaching actually did

My coach helped me locate my triggers. To identify feelings, find them in my body, and define them. Not as things that are me, but as things that are happening to me. That distinction sounds small. It isn't.

The neuroscience behind somatic approaches is well established. When the body is in a threat state, the prefrontal cortex goes partially offline. We lose access to rational thought, perspective and creativity. Somatic techniques work by regulating the nervous system first, creating the physiological conditions in which clear thinking becomes possible again.

My coach also challenged me to examine the voices in my head. Whose voice was actually telling me I had to stick it out? Where had that story come from? And was it actually mine?

Six sessions. That's all it took to get me out of the red zone and massively shift the way I was able to see things.

What actually shifted

For the first time, I could see things from a perspective of abundance rather than scarcity. Opportunity was everywhere. I just hadn't been able to see it because I was so locked onto where I was failing, so far into the red zone that I couldn't think straight.

After a few months, I went back for a second block of sessions. Not because I'd slipped back. Because I had identified so many possible next steps that I needed help prioritising where to invest. That's a very different problem to have.

The shift wasn't just about surviving that period. It changed how I see myself, how I handle pressure, and what I believe is possible. It had an impact on my career and my life far beyond helping me through a difficult time.

That pattern I'd always been told was a flaw, moving on when things stabilise, turning out to be a strength. I thrive in complex, ambiguous situations. I'm built for the hard bit. That's not a character flaw. It's what I'm good at. And I'd spent years feeling ashamed of it.

Why I do this work

I became a coach because I want other people to have access to what that experience gave me. Not the difficult circumstances, but the shift. The moment when the lens widens and you can suddenly see options you couldn't see before. When something you've been carrying as a failure turns out to be a feature.

The people I work with are not broken. They are capable, motivated people who have got stuck in a story that's too small for them. They need space to think, someone to ask the right questions, and permission to see themselves more clearly.

That's what coaching did for me. It's what I'm here to do for you.

If any part of this resonated, the discovery call is free and there's no neat problem required. Just come as you are.