If you found this page because you believe you’re having a Mental Health Emergency, you can:
Call or text 988to reach the USA nationwide Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.
Dial 9881 if you are a US Veterans, Service Members, National Guard & Reserves, or some who support them to connect to the Veteran's Crisis Lifeline. Veterans should text 838255 to text the Veteran's Crisis Lifeline.
Go to Suicide Stopif you’re not in the United States and need to find your country’s crisis hotline
Call an emergency number like 911 and ask the operator to send someone trained in mental health to assist you.
Mental Fitness Coaching is one part of myHealth & Performance Coaching program. This though program I coach people, not diagnosis.
Mental Fitness Coaching offersproactive coping skills and brain training techniques that can help you:
Improve your focus and attention.
Maintain a positive mindset during times of stress, illness, injury, or significant life changes.
Break unhealthy habits and build healthy habits.
Clarify your vision, values, goals and actions that will help you achieve optimal well-being.
Unlock your creativity and improve innovative thinking.
Increase your awareness about the psychological barriers and bias that hold most people back from achieving goals.
Achieve a healthier work-life balance.
Develop realistic actionable ways to improve your quality of life.
Create the actual time and space through our sessions together so you can finally focus on what you need to live your best life.
Mental Fitness Coaching is not clinical treatment and is not designed to assist those in a mental health emergency.
If you believe you are in a crisis, please contact one of the resources listed at the top of this page.
Mental Fitness Coaching uses a
positive psychology,
cognitive-behavioral,
solution-focused,
strength-based,
Skills-building
coaching approach
to support and guide you while you navigate through emotionally challenging situations, events, experiences, and/or decisions that do not require professional therapy or counseling.
Mental Fitness Coaching provides confidential, empathic, compassionate support while you create the space necessary to achieve your optimal outcome. Together, we aim to take actions to help you manage and/or resolve distress.
Through a structured series of sessions, we will use
to help you identify what you want to change, what is in your control, and what you can do to reduce your stress, to increase your resilience, to manage your emotions, and to develop the psychological skills that can help you endure as you navigate through the challenges of life.
How does Mental Fitness Coaching work?
All clients must be a least 18 years of age of older.
Schedule one Whole-Person Health & Performance Assessment Session to gain greater insight into what you can do (with or without coaching) to personally improve your mental fitness.
Once you decided to move forward you will schedule brief solution-focused coaching sessions.
All sessions are take place through Zoom.
All forms and session notes will be maintained and shared with you though a privacy protected Client Portal.
Expect to co-create an actionable plan that gets you moving towards your short-term goals.
Expect to put these plans into action between sessions.
Expect to meet 1 x week or every other week to review your experience and revise your plan.
Expect a 48-hour response time only Mon-Fri to messages sent between sessions.
Rates:
49.00 for your Whole Person Health & PerformanceAssessment Sessionvia Zoom (30-40 minutes)
49.00 per each additional single follow up coaching session.
176.40 (10 % discount) for a 4-session package
8 weeks to use all sessions.
Unused sessions are non-refundable.
IfMental Fitness Coaching is part of your wellness vision, please Contact Me so we can get started!
Why consider my Mental Fitness Coaching program?
Because there is a Mind-Body Connection that impacts how we feel and function on a daily basis.
To navigate through the trap that fall between illness and wellness (more on that below).
Psychological wellness is a necessary part of our whole-person wellness.
Coaching can complement and reinforce therapy goals, not replace therapy
Mental fitness, just like physical fitness, can be improved with training, practice, and quality coaching.
Understanding common unconscious psychological barriers and biases is empowering and improves our sense of control.
Coping skills training and practiceshould not be reserved only for those in mental health treatment.
Not every emotional struggle is damaging to the point of requiring therapeutic repair or a personalized diagnosis. Sometime they are. But sometimes we only need to learn skills with support while we navigate through a challenging situational stressor.
People who are interested in living their best life prioritize the continued learning and practice of coping skills to tolerate the stressors of daily life in a healthy way.
Proactive coping and brain training does not come naturally or easily. Mental Fitness does require education and practice.
By proactively attending to mental wellness needs as part of a regular healthy lifestyle, the chance of avoiding a full-blown disruptive distressful mental health emergency can be reduced.
Why wait for a crisis to ask for help?
What Mental Fitness Coaching is NOT:
Does NOT intend to and cannot replace professional mental health treatment. Coaching is not therapy.
Not appropriate for anyone having an acute mental health emergency (see resources at top of page).
Not appropriate for any type of issue that if not resolved can lean to harm to self or others.
Not intended to function as long-term psychoanalysis.
Not accessible for on-call, as needed, daily support.
Not trauma-treatment. If you have experienced a traumatic event and you need help with mental health pleaseseek out a trauma-informed professional therapist to get you the specialized help you need.
My Credentials: I am a professional state-licensed creative arts psychotherapist (LPAT) and a nationally board certified health and wellness coach (NBC-HWC) with a MS degree in Sports Psychology and Performance.
I have earned a law degree (JD) with an emphasis on therapeutic jurisprudence (psychological impact of legal system on wellbeing), an educational specialist (EDS post-masters degree) in marriage, family therapy, and systems therapy, a master of science degree (MS) in kinesiology with a dual concentration in sport psychology and sports performance, and a master of arts degree (MA) in creative arts psychotherapy. I hold many professional certifications including an ISSA certification as a Transformation Specialist (behavior change coach).
When not working as a health & wellness or endurance coach, I currently work on an acute inpatient behavioral health unit providing art psychotherapy and health & wellness coaching.
BONUS: Educational Content For Your Consideration:
Why am I offering Mental Fitness Coaching instead of Therapy?
In addition to being a coach, I am a trained, practicing, clinical psychotherapist. I do provide psychotherapy on an acute inpatient behavioral health unit. There my role is to help adults in crisis stabilize. It is through my work at the crisis level that I see the obvious gap in care and how Mental Fitness Coaching can help. Through my coaching practice, I am offering proactive preventative care that aims to help people avoid a mental health crisis.
Healthy people need to practice coping strategies to stay healthy.. I want to help keep people out of the mental health treatment system whenever it is possible to do so.
What is the difference between Illness and Wellness?
Our health status, including our mental health status, falls on a continuum. When we find ourselves having a health crisis, we need professional treatment. But not all health-related challenges, physical or psychology, rise to the level of needing treatment. For many, coaching can be enough.
However, if our emotional struggles become so intense that we experience signs of dysfunction, symptoms of illness, or disability, we are indeed on the illness side of the continuum. This is when we do need mental health treatment to get us back to neutral.
Neutral is not wellness. Completing Treatment does not mean you are well. To move towards high-level wellness we need to become aware that we are not yet flourishing, we need to learn what we need to do to thrive, and we need to then practice the skills that will help us grow.
Most people don't prioritize the pursuit of optimal level wellness. Often the need to ask for help only become obvious when we are "ill" and dysfunctional. No one should have to become ill to get help optimizing wellness. Mental Fitness Coaching can help you:
Get out of being stuck in neutral and avoid illness.
There is a very little talked about trap that exists between Illness and Wellness (called the neutral point) that is simply awful. Nothing good happens when stuck in neutral. Being in neutral is functional but nothing about being in neutral feels good. Neutral is the last stop on the way towards needing treatment. Health & Performance Coaching which includes Mental Fitness Coaching can provide the tools and support needed to you get out the neutral trap and move towards optimal well-being.
Transition out of treatment/therapy with the aim to proactively prevent relapses or set backs.
For those seeking support as your focus shifts towards your Wellness Plan not your Treatment Plan.
Treatment ends when you no longer have any discernible signs of illness, but that does not mean you are suddenly well. Relapses and set back are most likely to happen when someone is discharged from a treatment program and left to find their own way towards wellness. Health & Performance Coaching which includes Mental Fitness Coaching can provide the tools and support needed to help you thrive.
Who drives your Treatment Plan? Who drives your Wellness Plan?
When in treatmenttreatment plans are primarily designed by your treatment providers with your feedback guiding your care. Once you have returned to being functional, the treatment paradigm ends. You get discharged at the neutral point. Once in neutral you get to drive your Wellness Vision. Hopefully you have a wellness plan in mind because sitting in neutral means you are going nowhere fast. When we stop moving forward, we risk sliding back. In neutral, we may think we are functioning "just fine" and if we change nothing at all, life would carry on despite us not thriving. However, you deserve better that neutral.
Unlike treatment, in coaching wellness plans are designed by you. Your coach provides feedback and reflections that help you achieve your vision. Health & Performance Coaching which includes Mental Fitness Coaching can help get you out of neutral and on your way to high-level wellness by motivating you to contemplate change, address ambivalence, and build an actionable realistic plan. With dependable support and feedback, you can grow towards high-level wellness.
How do you know if you need Mental Fitness Coaching or Therapy (or maybe both)?
Where you fall on the Illness vs Wellness Continuum determines whether you need therapy or coaching. Mental Fitness Coaching is guided by the same theories and approaches used in therapy, but participants able to solely focus on designing a wellness plan (not a treatment plan). See the diagram below to help you determine of you think you need coaching or therapy.
Mental Fitness Coaching can occur in conjunction with therapy, but it should not be used in place of therapy.
Therapy is needed to help anyone who is suffering, vulnerable, and at risk of harm due to sign and symptoms of Illness or disability.
To help explain the difference between Coaching and Therapy, I created this diagram. I am a clinical Licensed Creative Arts Psychotherapist with a Post-Masters Educational Specialist Degree (EDS) in Marriage and Family Therapy. I am a nationally board certified health and wellness coach.
I have seen coaches and therapist struggle to describe the difference between coaching and therapy. Often this is because the professional service provider is too focused on what they are doing rather than focused on identifying the client actually needs.
As you can see, not everyone who seeks high-level wellness will need therapy but they still may need the chance to process emotions and manage stress. Most people seeking high-level wellness will thrive with Health & Performance Coaching.