Annie Kaszina

There are plenty of coaches for you to choose from. So, you need to find someone you feel

• you like and feel comfortable with who
• understands,
• can cope with your pain,
• is trustworthy,
• is safe to open up to,
• has the skills and expertise to help you move forward
• will support, listen and have your back and
• you can challenge, if necessary.

You are important. You will get the best results from working with the right person for you.

What I offer all my clients is what I wish my own therapists and coaches would have given me, but not all of them did for various reasons.

I learn best in a safe, empathic, accepting environment where I feel the person that I am working with really gets the problem and does NOT tell me how I should think, feel and behave. I’m guessing that you do, too.

So, you get a safe, empathic, accepting environment with a coach who has survived her own experience of parental and partner abuse and has 17 years’ experience working with other survivors. That experience has taught me that unconditional acceptance creates a space for the client to grow. And when the client is allowed to grow in their own way, at their own pace, that growth becomes deep-rooted, transformational – and often very much faster than you might think.

Here’s how I do it.

#1 We have a no cost Breakthrough Session. That enables us to establish whether we both think we are a good fit to work together.

#2 In that session, I will learn enough about some of the wounds that are standing in the way of your growth to know the kind of areas that we will need to cover for you to feel happy, whole and worthwhile.

#3 There is no program that I march you through. You bring to the session whatever feels most important or uncomfortable at the time. This may sound a tad haphazard. Sessions do sometimes start with what seems like a random issue. However, all wounds and distress have deep roots. So, wherever a session starts offers a valid point for deep healing. My focus is always on what is most useful and healing for you in the moment and how that relates to your core issues.

You simply have to show up to the session and engage during it. I have had clients who turn up with notebooks who feel that they should go away and work on specific issues – like this is some kind of emotional work-out class. It isn’t.

The whole point of our working together is for you to unlearn the unhelpful beliefs and narrative that you learned from negative people. How that translates in practice is that you will experience a number of realizations also known as “Lightbulb Moment”. Those moments effect lasting change in the way that you understand yourself and your world. They happen simply and spontaneously. Forcing it or working hard to make that happen, actually reduces the space for that to happen.

That is why I say that all you need to do is show up and allow. When you work with me, you will see the changes that you want, play out in your life.

We have 3 x 90 minute sessions per month via Skype. That amount of time enables us to work through an issue rather than having to leave something important midway until the next session. Plus, you have access to me via email and Skype if something important comes up that can’t wait until the next session.

Healing from emotional abuse requires quite a lot of crisis management, so I understand that there may be times when you could use swift support to deal with a crisis that has suddenly blown up.

As your coach, I believe it is my role to have your back.

I always want to answer that question with another question, “How much difference do you think coaching will make to your life?”

Clients generally think that coaching should make things less bad, more bearable. Coaching, they reckon, should give them enough strength to soldier on more successfully with the wounds that they have. That is not how I see it.

My view is that the point of coaching is to offer you a portfolio of skills to make the rest of your life happier and more fulfilled.

The differences that clients routinely notice in their lives include:

• Feeling a lot happier.
• Enjoying better relationships with family and others.
• Feeling more confident.
• Healing the wounds of partner and family abuse.
• Finding a new energy and motivation for life.
• Stress and anxiety levels dropping massively.
• Discovering gifts and talents that they didn’t believe that they had.
• Becoming more successful in their professional life.
• Better problem-solving skills.
• Increased emotional resilience. They become much better at bouncing back from negative feelings.

We meet on Skype. When an issue comes up that needs healing, I will use the most appropriate tools and techniques to tackle it effectively. You may shed a few tears in sessions as you look back on past hurts. There will surely be a fair bit of laughter as you heal those hurts and step into your power.

I truly believe that human beings learn most easily when they are laughing and light-hearted. Plus, I will always do everything I can to ensure that, by the end of a session, you go away feeling relaxed and at peace.

I quite understand. I felt that way too, as did about 95% of my clients. My belief is that most survivors think that they are hopeless cases – and it causes them a great deal of distress. However, only a tiny number really are.

The fact that you are here now, reading this, strongly suggests that you are NOT a hopeless case.

The work that we do together shouldn’t be a slow process. I work on the basis that something valuable is learned and you will experience some positive emotional shift in every session. Overall, the work that we do together is likely to last 6 months. That will be long enough for you to feel very differently about yourself, your future and your world.

My guess is that there are three different questions here,

1) Am I actually worth it? Or should I hold onto my limited resources in case something bad happens?

That kind of argument makes sense except for one thing – it overlooks the fact that you are in a difficult place and need to find your way to being on top of things ASAP. If you could have done your healing on your own, you would already have done it by now. Instead you are left with all the after-effects of emotional abuse, like

• lack of motivation,
• anxiety,
• depression,
• feelings of worthlessness and
• despair.

Those feelings don’t go away by themselves. Coaching enables you to work through them and get back on track as quickly as possible.
People always want to wait to feel better until after they are back on track. But the truth is, it is much, much easier to get back on track if you feel good about yourself.

2) But will it work?

We have looked at that issue above. You may be an anxious case but you are most unlikely to be a hopeless case. Coaching is a VERY effective tool for healing from abuse.

3) How much is it going to cost me and will it be worth it?

Cost should not be an issue. I am not the cheapest coach you could find, if cost is the only thing that matters. My fees are a reflection of my expertise.

Plus, the work we do together will bring you priceless, lifelong benefits. Besides, our work together is not open-ended. Most likely, you will work with me for a maximum of 6 months, possibly less. At the end of that time you will have all the skills you need to.

• deal with difficult people,
• deal with your own difficult feelings,
• enjoy enduring peace of mind and
• move through your life confidently.

Based on my monthly fee, you can work out what it will cost you. What you cannot begin to imagine is how much happier and more confident you will feel at the end of our coaching work. The reason for that is that, right now, you are struggling to imagine what happiness and peace of mind will feel like and all the differences that they will make to your life. For a more detailed description see the answer under, What difference is coaching likely to make?

Counselling and therapy tend to make you very well informed about the issues that you face. However, they often fail to provide you with the tools to feel better about yourself and resolve the problems.

Coaching is solution oriented. Obviously, we will work through to emotional closure on old wounds. But that is not enough. Beyond that, my coaching style is committed to helping you develop your emotional resources, increase your happiness, gain mastery over your emotions and become the best - that is, most fulfilled and rewarding - version of yourself.

That is something that I hear from a lot of clients. Counselling and therapy help you to understand the issues and understand a lot about yourself. What they don’t tell you is how best to work with yourself.

Since you have to live with yourself, you absolutely need to know how to manage yourself so you can get the best out of yourself - and other people,- and find the peace and fulfilment that you seek.

That, I believe, is a hugely important part of what you need now and what my work focuses on. After all that you have been through, you rightly have a hunger for meaning and happiness. Coaching will enable you to satisfy that hunger in a way that counselling and therapy do not.

This would be different because, at bottom, what we are working on is you building a healthy, loving, relationship with yourself. That is what you lacked, quite possibly even before you met your abusive partner, and that is fundamental to you enjoying your life as you deserve to.

Through our focus on understanding how you work and what brings you down, you will discover how you can feel joyful most of the time – even when times are tough.