Kim Richardson Life Coaching Stroud Gloucestershire

Mike is stressed. There are big changes in the air at the office, and he feels he has to work twice as hard to keep up. He is angry and impatient with his team, and that makes the office a less pleasant place to be.

He has a permanent knot of tension in his back. He brings his frustration home with him, and takes it out on his wife and children. He has images of losing control. 

Through coaching, Mike learns to take more control. He addresses his irrational fears about losing his job, and makes small but positive changes in his work pattern. He learns to be more assertive about his needs, and to communicate with his team in a more effective way. He improves his relaxation and health. He finds that his family benefits as much as he does.

To read more about stress and what you can do to manage it, check out my website.

   Louise is anxious. She thinks of herself as a born worrier. Even as a child she would worry about what her friends thought about her, and whether her homework was good enough.

As an adult, Louise is still worrying. She is preoccupied with negative thoughts. She finds it hard to enjoy being with her young children because she is so anxious that something bad will happen. She even worries about all the time she is spending worrying. Her relationship with her partner is suffering, and that is increasing her anxiety. 
 
Through coaching Louise learns how her worrying is a self-perpetuating cycle. She sees that it is linked to a basic lack of confidence. She works hard on challenging her negative beliefs, using techniques discussed with her coach. She finds a visualisation technique especially helpful. She makes practical changes to her daily life. Within two months she feels a new person, in charge of her life instead of in fear for her life.

To read more about anxiety and what you can do to reduce it, check out my website.

 Raj has low self-esteem. He doesn't recognise this until he has some coaching. What he does realise is that he is constantly procrastinating – putting off important tasks at work and at home.

He has to lie to get himself out of trouble. He feels bad about not tackling things, and loses himself in surfing the internet and drinking too much. 
  
Through coaching Raj learns that he is a perfectionist. Putting things off because they cannot be perfect is linked, in his case, to a poor self-image. Challenging his negative self-beliefs is key: Raj learns to accept himself as a fallible human being rather than condemn himself as always falling short. He also builds up strategies for breaking down tasks into manageable steps, and addresses his 'avoidance' behaviours – drink and the internet.

To read more about self-esteem and what you can do to boost it, check out my website.

Coaching showed me how I could stop repeating unhelpful patterns of behaviour and move myself out of my 'comfort zone' to achieve so much more fulfilment and success. There's no magic - just a commitment to change and to succeed.

My mission is to share the impact of this experience and make a difference to other people's lives. (That means you!)

I have been trained in a wide range of different coaching and counselling methods, including:

• Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). A hugely effective therapeutic method that addresses the negative thought patterns that usually underlie stress, anxiety and low self-esteem.
• Cognitive Behavioural Coaching (CBC). A development of CBT that lends itself more to coaching than counselling. The emphasis is on thought processes and actions that we can take to make our lives more effective.
• Stress management. A multi-modal cognitive-behavioural approach to the nature of stress, its management and prevention.
• Assertiveness and Communication Skills. Understanding how we can communicate to maximise our outcomes and maintain our self-respect.
• Solution Focused Therapy. How to create positive thinking strategies – focusing on the solution rather than the problem can often open the door to change.
• Psychodynamic Counselling. A way of understanding the powerful role of the unconscious in our lives, and how we develop defences that can hold us back from achieving our full potential.
• Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). A model for improving performance, becoming an excellent communicator and undergoing personal change.