When you work with me as your coach, we meet remotely via phone or video conference to help you on your journey to long-term recovery from your emotional problems. Anxiety, depression, stagnation, burnout, and existential dread are feelings that everyone experiences at various times in life. When we try too hard to get rid of those feelings, though, we can find ourselves in a vicious cycle where the harder we try to feel better, the worse we feel.

In our culture, we are often told we must “face our fears” and then told at the same time that feeling anxiety and stress is unhealthy. Well, which one is it? When we internalize these opposing messages, we can become caught in a vicious cycle of self-correction where we scold ourselves both for avoiding fearful situations AND for not avoiding fearful situations. That’s called a double-bind, and it makes life miserable.

All types of emotional problems have a double-bind at their core, where you are damned if you do, and damned if you don’t. The harder you try, the worse it gets.

I’ve suffered from emotional problems myself and recovered. I know what it’s like to want help but feel like asking for help means admitting there is something deeply wrong with you. The good news is: no feeling in itself is an indication that you are flawed. In fact, all emotions, both negative and positive, are adaptive messages from ourselves, telling us what is meaningful. What’s tricky is re-learning how to make simple sense of these feelings instead of trying to get rid of them.

Recovery from emotional problems doesn’t entail changing yourself, labeling yourself, or getting rid of anything. It does entail identifying the ways in which you have been trained to be perfectionistic with yourself on multiple opposing fronts (in other words, expecting yourself to do the impossible). Once you start to hear how you are demanding the impossible of yourself, then you can learn a new way of talking to yourself that promotes courage, compassion and efficacy — while at the same time taking the pressure off.

We can meet on a regular basis or per your particular needs. Weekly 50-minute sessions are a good starting place for most clients. The key to recovery is regular practice of the techniques I have compiled over 22 years of study on the subject of emotional health. Contact me for a free 50-minute introductory consult to see if what I offer is a good fit for your needs.