Recovery coaching pans out differently for everyone, and my coaching methods are flexible enough to respect the nonlinear nature of recovery. My approach insists on the non-negotiable changes that need making to your eating and your other activities now, today, while also acknowledging that those changes won‘t happen unless we keep the bigger picture in view. What we do is resolutely focused on ensuring that concrete short-term goal-setting furthers your (perhaps grander and less tangible) medium- and long-term aspirations.
Coaching with me is organized in four-week blocks, with a range of intensities and ingredients that we can tailor to your needs. All variants are geared towards helping you make and sustain the practical changes that will collectively dismantle your eating disorder. To achieve this, have regular Zoom sessions in which we reflect on how things have been going and agree on a plan for practical changes to make or consolidate in the next phase. In preparation for each conversation, you‘ll complete a set of reflection and feedback questions to help us both understand what went well, what less so, and what should come next to help sustain your progress as efficiently as possible.
I may also suggest exploratory tasks for you to tackle alongside the central everyday changes you‘ll be making each week, to help you understand and challenge some ingrained aspect of your illness more comprehensively—whether distorted thought patterns or unhelpful behaviours or ways of interacting with other people, or just how you look at yourself in the mirror. I‘m always expanding my library of tasks, and what I suggest or create especially for you to work on will depend on which problems are holding you back and which seem ripe for demolishing at any given point in your recovery process.
Here are a few examples of how past clients‘ coaching pathways have turned out. I tend to recommend a relatively high frequency of sessions (e.g. weekly) and interim contact (e.g. twice-weekly to daily) in the first instance. You may then feel ready to reduce the intensity immediately, or you may need several months of relatively high-level support before you feel confident in making progress more independently.
I take very seriously the importance of how coaching ends, as well as how it begins. My priority is always your success not my income. (It would be absolutely miserable doing this if I weren’t doing everything I could do help my clients get what they want, as quickly as possible.) We’ll talk openly towards the end of each four-week block about what might make sense next, and my recommendations, if I offer them, will always reflect what I think gives you the best chance of lasting success. One useful method I employ is the time-limited break. This can serve as a remarkably effective test of how much and precisely what you’re now able to sustain independently; what, if anything, is still difficult for you; and what will be our best next step.
In the graphics below, based on actual clients‘ coaching trajectories, the white boxes show the additional exploratory tasks undertaken in each block.
Pathway 1
Pathway 2
Pathway 3
