Life sends us challenges.
The good news is that, challenges are the path to growth.
Sometimes we need a trusted voice to come alongside side us for that part of the journey.
I’m Ted Neill. I offer mental health and executive coaching. I’m eager to be that trusted partner for you. My goal is to join clients to help them better understand themselves, uncover their full potential, and live with purpose and joy.
I provide expert coaching guided by compassion, curiosity, and courage.
What is Coaching?
You’ve probably heard the terms, life coaching, executive coaching, and mental health coaching. What do they mean? Well, there are strong parallels with sports medicine.
If you have a serious injury on the playing field, you’ll need medical attention. That means doctors e.g. physicians or surgeons.
When you’re out of the acute phase of injury and recovering, you will work with physical therapists. You will rebuild strength and practice new skills and new techniques to repair injury and prevent further injury. We learn to play the game in a safer manner.
At a certain point in your recovery process, you’ll want to get back out on the field.
Now it’s no longer about repairing an injury but challenging yourself to unlock and fulfill your potential once again.
When we want to return to the field of play, to push ourselves to be better than before, to be more competitive, we seek a coach.
Coaching is more than sports. It’s life.
Life coaching, mental health coaching, and executive coaching are similar.
Some of us might experience a severe mental health crisis that requires a diagnosis, even medication. This can be from a period of stressful, even traumatic events. In this case, as with a physical injury, we need doctors, such as psychiatrists.
When we transition out of the acute phase and are working on healing what we’ve been through, we may seek out a psychotherapist.
Similar to a physical therapist, with a psychotherapist we will build resilience, practice new skills and new techniques—in this case of communication, self-care, self-awareness etc. . . We learn to live life in a safer manner.
Eventually as we stabilize, our focus may become less on repair and more on challenging ourselves once again to unlock and fulfill our potential.
Just like on the athletic field, when we want to push ourselves mentally, emotionally to be better than before, to break through our limitations, we seek a coach.
When our focus is primarily on changes in the work place, especially around leadership and management, we call this executive coaching. When it is focused on managing relationships, emotions, behaviors, we call it mental health coaching.
Broader coaching that cuts across all these areas and explores a range of our roles, as parents, as caregivers, as employees and employers can be categorized as life coaching.
What does a session look like?
Each session is 50 minutes. It can take a variety of paths. A session can unfold in a similar fashion to a psychotherapy session. It can be free flowing with minimal structure. A client may come in, discuss an issue, explore root causes and/or express emotions they otherwise do not have space to vent.
Over time, as the client’s history is unpacked, more of their formative experiences may be incorporated into the work.
But one distinction between psychotherapy and coaching is that coaching is future focused. The success of a session can only be measured when the client goes out and applies what they have learned in the real world, turning theory into action.
It is important to note that a mental health coach may lack the qualifications to dig deep into an individual’s past if that past includes severe trauma. For that work, a therapist is better equipped.
But not every issue we may be struggling with may qualify as big “T” trauma. Some of these everyday challenges are the right fit for a coach.
Athletic coaching leads to improvement to our play on the field. Life coaching, executive coaching, and mental health coaching lead to improvements in our life patterns, emotional regulation and other behaviors in our relationships with ourselves, family, friends, coworkers, even strangers.
All the “players” in our day to day life.
There are more options
Clients also have the option for more directive sessions, with the coach offering techniques and strategies for coping or growing, and providing an opportunity to practice them in a safe environment.
Some clients learn best through directed reading and reflection. In these cases, client and coach can go through articles or books together over a discrete number of sessions.
Ultimately all sessions are client centered and are facilitated to serve the client’s needs.