My coaching topics

Whether you are a new mother, or have been a mother for several years, motherhood changes our identity and life in so many ways, and sometimes motherhood can seem all consuming. It is both filled with joy and love, but it can also at times fill us with sadness, frustration or grief.

Topics around motherhood that clients bring to coaching center around themes such as:

• Navigating motherhood as a new mother
• How to not loose your own identity as a mother
• How to be “a good mother”
• What kind of mother do I want to be

For some of us, motherhood might be extra tricky to navigate, if we’ve not had a loving mother ourself, as we then don’t have that positive role model or support, that we so need when we become mothers.

This topic has two different scenarios.

It can either be that your mother passed away when you were young, and becoming a mother yourself can then bring up grief around the loss of your own mother.

It can also be that you grew up with a mother, who was emotionally unstable, or struggled with mental illness, or left you when you were little. Here there is a potential combination of abandonment trauma and grief mixed together, which can make motherhood extra challenging.

Many women go through phases of “midlife crisis” usually between their the late 30s to their 50s, where they deal with some very big thoughts and emotions often due to the phase of life that they are in at the current stage.

The crisis can be brought on by things such as the fact that your kids are growing up or soon will be moving from home. When your kids get older, they become more independent of you, and you slowly have to let go of the reigns, which can bring on thoughts and worries about what your future purpose is, if it is not being a mother so much anymore.

A midlife crisis can also be triggered by illness or death in your nearest family. For instance it can be triggering to witness a parent’s illness and death, as this for many might bring up thoughts and worries about ones own mortality.

Another big factor is of course also going through perimenopause or menopause, which can take a toll on you emotionally because of hormonal changes. Furthermore, signs of aging that starts showing up can also lead to anxiety for many women and a feeling of being less worthy or noticeable in our western culture where a woman’s worth if often measured by external appearance.

So many women struggle with perfectionism to a point where it is affecting them negatively in their day to day lives, causing them so much anxiety and frustration.

Perfectionism usually has its roots in a deep inner feeling of not being good enough or lack of self-worth. Women, who struggle with perfectionism, are worried on an subconscious level that people won’t love them, if they show the world their true self, as they believe that deep down inside they are not “good enough” nor lovable.

The perfectionism then acts as a shield, we put up around ourselves, so that the world won’t see our vulnerability or the inherent flaws, that we believe we have. Perfectionism is an unhealthy coping strategy that is hard to sustain without it leading to emotional burnout at some point.

To dare to take down our shield of perfectionism, we need to build up our self-love and strengthen our self-worth. This is deep inner work that involves practicing self-compassion to slowly start to quiet the critical voices in our heads and make space for a more balanced approach to yourself.

It is a big decision to move abroad as a family, and it can have a lot of impact on you personally but also to your family dynamics. In coaching topics on expatriation usually center around the following themes:

• How to cope emotionally with uprooting from your home country and settling down abroad as a family
• How to deal with culture shock and adapting to different cultures
• How to make the most of your expat life
• How to manage feeling home sick in your new country

As challenging as it can be to move abroad, it can be at least as daunting to repatriate back to your home country after many years abroad. Themes that come up around this topics are usually:

• How to manage the transition of repatriating back to your home country after many years abroad, when you might feel like you no longer belong there
• You have changed a lot abroad, but back home people haven’t changed as much in the years you have been away and how to deal with that

As a woman who have made a big career change myself in midlife (from lawyer to personal development coach), I am passionate about coaching other women on topics related to career changes.

Topics that come up around this theme are usually:

• Feeling stuck in the wrong line of work – I want a career changes in midlife, but I am dead-scared of making the changes
• Should I quit my job to become an entrepreneur
• Choosing to be a stay-at-home-mum and putting work-life on hold
• Returning to employment after many years at home with the kids