Coaching Introduction for Donna Claire Read, MA, CCP, CCTP. Lives in USA
Fear! What is it good for? Well, keeping physically safe, for sure, which is why our brains are built as they are. However, when internalized and “languaged” inside your head, fear can prevent you from reaching your full potential and from moving forward in all aspects of life, including your business. It can cause you to freeze. I understand from my own and my many clients personal experience just how easy it is for fear and anxiety to get people stuck in their heads, freeze, and become unable to move forward with their goals and lives. “Trouble at the border” between conceptualization and realization are common problems. So, what can be done to alleviate this situation?
Learning and applying the principles of Acceptance and Commitment (ACT) Training/Coaching, can help you. As an ACT coach and trainer, I use ACT’s powerful psychological techniques to help you maximize your potential and achieve a meaningful, successful life. Partnering with me will mean overcoming your internal roadblocks, such as fear, and realizing your full potential. ACT’s powerful tools train you to accept what you cannot change in your current situation and to co-exist with unwanted, painful internal experiences, such as thoughts, emotions, memories, some bodily sensations, and still be able to take action towards success and a full, meaningful life.
ACT is based in mindful contact-with-the present moment (be here now) along with a full understanding of and a commitment to your chosen life values. As your coach, I apply ACT’s life-changing tools to help you identify and overcome your internal barriers, set fire to your passions, and establish the values that will guide your forward movement. Working with me will enable you to develop the emotional agility and the psychological flexibility required to be focused in the present moment without being overwhelmed by emotions and stuck in the games your mind plays with you. ACT’s methods allow me to help you to identify your emotional schema (mental patterns that keep you stuck), emotional triggers, and the coping behaviors you use to avoid emotional pain and the sense of “stuckness” that keeps you from moving toward success and fulfillment.
My work centers around two main processes: acknowledging and accepting unhelpful thoughts (i.e., I am such a failure; I will never succeed; no one will ever use my services/products; what was I thinking when I started this?) that are out of your personal control (your thoughts are there 24/7 and always will be and you can’t stop them) and counteract this state by committing to actions that will lead you towards the valued life and business you want. Together, we do not focus on whether what you are thinking or feeling is right or wrong, true or false but rather on whether or not these thoughts and emotions are helping you to get where you want, are working for you or against you. Giving up unworkable thoughts and emotions allows you the freedom to choose others that will work for you and will help you to achieve a meaningful, successful life. Your values, focusing on what is truly important to you, and creating commitment to achieve your values-based goals, is at the core of our work together.
So, if you truly want to “get out of your mind and into your life” (Hayes, 1999), schedule a coaching session with me.
“In this very moment, will you accept the sad and the sweet, hold lightly stories about what is possible, and be the author of a life that has meaning and purpose for you, turning in kindness back to that life when you find yourself moving away from it?” Kelly Wilson, ACT Co-Founder.
Biodata: Donna is an Elite Founding Coach, a certified coach practitioner trained in executive, leadership, business development, health and wellness, and life coaching with more than twenty years of experience in these areas. She has over 300 hours of ACT training, uses a neuropsychological approach to her coaching (i.e., keeping “the brain in mind” (Rock 2009) and applies the GROW (Goal, Reality, Options, Will) coaching model. Donna holds a Master’s degree in Clinical Psychology and is a Doctoral Candidate in Organizational Psychology. She is certified in Social and Emotional Intelligence Coaching and works with many different types of assessments and evaluations. She is currently in private practice providing services in coaching, counseling, and workplace consulting. She has lived and worked in Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and Afghanistan, is completely bi-lingual in French and English, and is conversant in Arabic.
