Testimonials, life coaching, executive coaching, profiling

I began coaching sessions with Cate to reduce my feeling of being overwhelmed at work and to regain a sense of direction for my career. I have gained so much from the sessions with Cate; I've increased my understanding of how self theories dramatically influence our lives and identified the beliefs I had that were hindering my ability to change and this has enabled me to develop constricted beliefs so that I am able to respond positively to more situations. I have been able to clarify a vision for my life, to define individual goals and to identify the first steps to achieving them. As a result of our work together I am clearer about my story of self and have been able to make effective decisions about managing my time and feel I now have a better life/work balance. Cate's extensive knowledge of psychology and her ability to explain complex theories in simple ways have enabled me to understand why some of my beliefs and feelings about my self were making aspects of my life so difficult. I feel that I am better equipped to understand the influence that my beliefs have on the options I consider possible and I have a range of skills for exploring possibilities for the rest of my life. I just wish I'd met Cate years ago and learned about self theories and their impact on my thinking as I would have been more focused in all areas of my life and would have enjoyed much more of my life.
C.H.

Working with Cate to complete a repertory grid was an unusual experience but a very valuable one. The grids highlighted my core beliefs about my self in relation to my ability to learn and change and I hadn't realised how these impacted on how I see the world, the options I consider possible and how I then feel about myself and others. The discussion we had about how my beliefs make me feel about my self was enlightening and made so much sense, I just wish I could have completed a grid years ago as I would have made different, more informed choices. The grids made obvious the connection between what I was thinking and my feelings and I realised that some of my beliefs originated in childhood and had never been reviewed and were in dire need of updating. Cate explained how these core beliefs had been colouring how I made sense of the world and impacting on what I considered possible.

With a couple of my beliefs it was obvious that I needed to update them to make them fit with my adult life and this was painless. However, another belief turned out to be quite precious to me and defined a standard that I thought was important but was causing me a lot of turmoil. With Cate's help and encouragement I was able to explore why the standard was so important and what the outcomes were in terms of how I felt about my self and how often I could feel successful. A lot of what we discussed required me to evaluate the outcome of what I believed and once I did this I realised I was sometimes paying a high emotional cost for attempting to maintain a childhood or family standard. I would certainly recommend having a profile created as it gives a unique opportunity to understand how your early beliefs and feelings about yourself influence your adult life.

From the coaching sessions I have gained so much understanding about how I think and the consequences certain beliefs have in my life. Learning to use the Possibilities Cycle is a skill I'll take into the rest of my life. Cate's approach is a clever combination of increasing your knowledge and giving you the skills to allow you to explore your thinking and to go on making changes for the rest of your life.
E.M.

The rep grid was an excellent tool that helped me to reflect on my two very different experiences of parenting. With Cate's coaching expertise this helped me realise that I had actually been coping well with a difficult situation. It also helped to confirm my beliefs and feelings about parenting and resulted in a positive shift in my perceptions.

Cate's work with our family has been invaluable and has given us hope for the future. Thank You.
P.N.

When you are faced with the special needs minefield and you are trying to work out how to get through it and to do your best for your child you need someone who can be clear headed and support you while you work out what your child needs and how you go about getting it. Cate has done this for us over and over again and without her help we'd still be lost. Cate helped us to identify the criteria that would help us to know which school would help our son to learn and to evaluate each school against the criteria and so we know why we made our decision and on a bad day we can look at our decision making process and be confident of the value of the overall decision.

Cate's knowledge of psychology and education, combined with her ability to explain jargon clearly, helped us to understand the school selection process, to identify our goals, to evaluate possibilities and to be compassionate with ourselves and our wildly fluctuating emotions at a difficult time, we couldn't have done this without her.
S.R.