My Journey into Coaching Psychology

The Call to Coaching

I was 24 when I first stepped onto the coaching path.  Back then, I was still battling depression and searching desperately for purpose. I had studied art, design and fashion because it was the only thing at school that ever interested me, apart from one science class that touched on quantum physics. I went on to university, because this is what was expected. During that time, my teenage battle with depression worsened, and this is brought me to psychotherapy, which opened a whole new window of possibility – recognising the value of my therapist, I started to feel I wanted to offer this support to others too – somehow it helped to make sense of past trauma and suffering and channel it into something positive.

This was when I started to see something important that was missing in life – a safe, non-judgmental space where young people could feel truly seen and heard. A place to grow confidence, find a voice, and connect with core values and vision, not because anybody was “broken,” or needed “fixing” but because everyone deserves to thrive, to love and believe in themselves and to create lives that feel meaningful and joyful. I wanted this for me and I wanted to create this for others. It wasn’t counselling, it wasn’t session with a psychiatrist or psychologist, it was something I didn’t yet know.

“How can I help make life better for young people?”, I asked myself

 It was years later, when a friend introduced me to life coaching that I caught a glimpse of my answer. She was a personal trainer wanting to add some mind mastery and motivational strength to her repertoire, and I was a young woman with a dream.

A year later, I was on my ICF-accredited life coaching course, in a room full of people at least a decade older than me, the majority HR professionals and business leaders. I felt ‘inferior’, and I couldn’t possibly envision charging over £100/hr for a coaching session, when in my world, back then, counselling and therapy was £30/hr. I wasn’t driven by money; I was driven by meaningful purpose.

So, I set off to change the world, intending to help young people feel better and to thrive. But life had a few lessons for me first.

The Early Struggles

Passion alone wasn’t enough.

• I had no real business skills — my only marketing experience came from an A level business studies project about chocolate bars.
• I lacked the confidence I wanted to inspire in others.
• Public speaking terrified me, as did anything that looked like self-promotion.
• I was still wrestling with depression.

Still, I kept going. I joined a local business marketing and people management training course, I read about sales and marketing techniques and I watched others in similar fields to see how they were growing businesses.

I was fortunate to make friends who were in the new age music industry and at the dawn of building their own label, and they introduced me to a new age magazine columnist. I watched my new friends; just as they took their music to local healing centres, I took my personal growth workshops there. This gave me the confidence to then approach the five-star resort Champneys, where I braved my fear of public speaking by putting passion and purpose before fear offering free talks to guests, and this was always followed by seeing clients at Champneys’ and being paid over £100/hr. I couldn’t quite believe it.

Meanwhile, in my local community, I coached women starting new businesses or rediscovering themselves after raising children, focusing on fostering self-esteem, social confidence, meaningful vision, and a realistic action plan. I did this is a small annexe a friend so kindly allowed me to use so that I could launch myself.

Then I followed my columnist friend and I began writing for local papers, putting fear-managed effort before perfectionism and just trying, with her coaching support – curious to see what might happen. This gave me the confidence to approach national magazines, carving out a niche around “meaningful life purpose.” This was where I found my love of writing and a new income stream. People started to recognise my niche and my work.

Meanwhile, I followed my heart – I offered free coaching to young mothers in a halfway house — women rebuilding their lives after partners struggling with addiction. Those conversations reminded me that the work wasn’t just about change, growth and meaningful goals; it was about hope; theirs and mine.

To support my income, at this time, I also worked as a waitress in pizza hut in my local town, and I used my natural organisational and creative skills to create local lifestyle fairs, inspired by my passion for creating healing spaces, with candles, crystals and uplifting music, with inspired talks to empower people to heal and grow. It was fun! It took a lot of energy. I wasn’t very good at sales. I didn’t make much money. With hindsight I realised this was because my focus was not about money, it was about meaningful purpose and following a dream.

I began to review my path and my dream, exploring my whole life vision beyond my career – this was when I birthed a really big and exciting dream – a life in the sun, a holistic well-being business empowering people to thrive, good health, happiness, writing books, painting, dancing, living my dream.

A Leap Into the Unknown

Then came a turning point: an opportunity to move from the UK to Spain.  At 28, I packed my bags and stepped into the unknown because I knew one thing for sure, I wanted to live in the sunshine.

This was definitely not easy. I was alone in a new country, my Spanish extended to ‘una café con leche por favor’, I had very little money, and no network, and everything I had learnt about marketing didn’t apply in my new world. But I had a free place to stay, fresh hope and my dream. The sun lifted me and this gave me a new sense of vitality.  This move taught me to trust myself and be more courageous in embracing the unknown – I was on my way to living my dream.

 Just as funds were running dry, I was offered the role of managing a small expat medical centre. It was unexpected, I’d never imagined working in the medical field. It was love that propelled me to say yes – I was in love and I wanted to stay in Spain with him, and so I embraced discomfort and the unknown. It opened my eyes. I saw how care, compassion, and quick action could save lives and I loved this, but quietly I also felt like a failure to my dreams. 

So, in my very long Spanish lunch break, I studied Spanish and worked on my coaching business, starting to gain a few private clients. After two years, and with renewed savings, I resigned to return to my true calling with stronger courage, confidence and determination.

On reflection, the management role had lifted my confidence and eased social anxiety, while the more challenging aspects of working under great doctors but poor leadership created enough discomfort to make the leap. Sometimes, often, we have to get uncomfortable to take growth steps.

This act of bravery gave me the courage to make another really big one – I decided to leave my boyfriend of five years because I was not happy in that love. With a broken heart and time on my hands, I took a break, went on holiday and reviewed my life again.

I was 34, I wanted to be a mother and I wanted to empower young people to heal and thrive in life, and realised now that I needed more than a life coaching certificate to do the work I really wanted to do.  

Returning to My True Path

I took another great leap when I enrolled at the Open University, and four years later earned my BSc (Hons) in Psychology — all while providing well-being and performance coaching at a private international school and continuing to grow my private clients, mostly through word of mouth, or as a result of the public speaking engagements that forced me to keep getting uncomfortable, embracing fear and holding the focus – my meaningful purpose and my dream.

From there, opportunities multiplied:

• I delivered wellbeing workshops for students, parents, and teachers in many schools and colleges.
• I worked as an assistant psychologist in a mental health clinic.
• I led creative wellbeing programs in a drug and rehab clinic while completing my MSc in Mental Health at the University of Edinburgh.

Eventually, I launched my own practice and office space as a psychological wellbeing coach, working with teenagers and adults in Spain and Gibraltar, and delivering workshops in schools, universities, and communities in the town that became my home – Sotogrande, Cadiz.

I soon bought my Spanish home, settled into my community – a rather transient ex-pat community. As a single woman with growing social flair, I decided I wanted more life and so I created a community social network to bring my community together – wine and tapas nights, coffee mornings, and Christmas lunches. This widened my network, which supported further career growth, and I enjoyed the creative element.

Then the pandemic happened! My office was empty for two years while all of my clients moved online. Eventually I closed it, because on-line was the new office. Seeing so many clients online showed me new opportunity and I started to promote my coaching business through blogs that I shared on Facebook, LinkedIn, and eventually Instagram. Old friends, and past encounters connected in this space, it led to an expanded client base, from Spain and Gibraltar to the Uk and Ireland, the UAE and south Africa. I supported a diverse client base, adults and teenagers with varied life and career related themes, and always psychologically well-being.

A Bigger Realisation

Over time, I realised that if I truly wanted to honour my deeper truth and help teenagers, I had to start with the people shaping their world: parents, teachers, and leaders. Teenagers are mirrors of the world we’ve created, and to truly support them, we must first examine and transform ourselves, our lifestyles, and the cultural norms we embed. But I had a new dream -to become a mother, a single mother, and seeing 6 clients a day on my hourly rate would make life a financial challenge and leave little time to be with my children. I needed and wanted to scale up. Now money became a new priority – for the love of my family.

This led me into corporate coaching, bringing psychological wellbeing and human skills to managers and leaders — many of whom were also parents. It was a way to scale impact, increase income, and free up time to explore cultural change. It worked. And the way it worked was social networking, and conversations with people over coffee and dinners. This later led to word-of-mouth referrals between companies – life was taking off, my marketing was happening for me, it was becoming effortless. It looked so easy from the outside – people did not see the years of inner work and preparation that led up to this moment.

I was beginning to feel successful, I was making a very comfortable income, and enjoying my work. I had time to go salsa dancing on the beach at night, with morning yoga sessions in the summer and regular tapas with friends.  Some would say, this looked like success, but I was just getting started. I became fully booked, and took on associate coaches and therapists to collaborate as a team and I kept growing.

I was also working on a book at the time, asking questions that had guided my life: Who am I? Why am I here? How do I make life better? Writing had become a process of healing, growth, and revelation through which I realised the world doesn’t need us to “change it” — it needs us to equip people to navigate it: to meet fear with resilience, to choose to live intentionally from love, and to live in alignment with core heart values.

It was writing this that gave me the focus and the energy to act – I decided to embrace IVF and after a very difficult process, involving trauma triggers and heart-breaking loss, I am now a proud mother to two beautiful little boys.

I self-published, Grow Your Love, Grow Your Life: a coaching-based guide to empower people to find their power, purpose, and possibility. This became my new focus, with teenagers, parents, and anyone wishing to honour the path to love- a way to offer a framework to those who wanted some structure, with supported private coaching sessions for those who wanted to deep dive. This is where I started to feel aligned with my real dream – I was living the path to love and feeling myself swimming in the currents of a dream I had birthed over 20 years ago.

Where I Am Now

Today, my career focus has become cultural influence, because to really help teenagers, we need to create a world where they feel safe, empowered, confident, resilient and positive about themselves and their reality – this is a cultural issue, not a teen issue.

Now that I am a single mother by choice with two adorable little boys and my head, heart and hands are full, I had to let go of the community social project to better focus and create balance. Letting go again and again is the new focus, to keep focus where it matters most. I intend to write more books – it aligns with my new vision -to be a really good mother, present with my boys, enjoying my boys, to work more with families in the home, and continue with my existing corporate families and those I will join,  to help foster heart-centred ways of living – where empathy, compassion, true love and kindness to self and others is at the heart of daily living. When we have this in the adult world, we give this to the next generation, when young people have this – connection to self and others, acceptance of self and others, thoughtfulness for self and others, self-esteem, authentic presence, a positive living space – and we equip them with mind mastery, emotional resilience, support creative genius and curious learning – I think we can go a long way towards co-creating a new harmony and a culture that supports healthy and happy people.

What comes next – my passion for sharing my journey and experience through writing is an inner light growing her luminosity, while I feel a new call to learning and to listening – the world I grew up in has changed, young people today face very different landscapes and if I want to help them navigate with love, strength and courage, I need to understand the world through their eyes. I think now is a time for understanding more, so I can then serve better. What does this look like, and how do I navigate this myself, as a single mother with two little boys, carer to family members, and business owner? Honestly, I do not know yet, but as always, I am on my way, and all new paths begin with a question waiting to be answered.

What do young people need now, and how does this align with my most important heart values?

The Message I Want to Share

If my story proves anything, it’s this: life isn’t linear. The path they tell you to take — school, university, career — is not the only way. At 18, we can’t know who we’ll be at 30. At 15, we can’t predict the world we’ll inhabit.

But we can learn, grow, and gather tools to navigate life.

I offer a space to craft:

• Meaningful vision aligned with core heart values
• Self-esteem
• Social confidence and communication skills
• Empathy, compassion and kindness
• Focus and motivation skills
• Mind mastery and emotional resilience
• Solutions creation
• A realistic action plan into the dreams you see today

With AI reshaping the business and career landscape, it’s now more important than ever to prepare ourselves, and those starting out, to embrace uncertainty, adapt quickly, and tap into our creative genius. The future won’t follow a map, but we can chart new pathways and discover new vistas. I believe the very best way to do this is to follow your heart, and equip yourself with powerful mental and emotional resilience tools.

I invite you to gift yourself a moment to write down your dream, from the very core of your heart and your soul. Whether or not you choose to act is a free choice, but at least give yourself a chance to see it through your eyes – this is an act of self-love and it might just be the birth of something beautiful.