What is coaching, and when is it a good fit?
Coaching is a collaborative and action-oriented process. It is supportively informational, instructional, skill-building and problem-solving.
Coaching is sought by individuals who are eager to cultivate change and transformation in their lives. Coaching is helpful for clients who desire a clear path forward. They want practical solutions, concrete directions, candid input, and supportive encouragement. Coaching provides structure, accountability and clarity for those pursuing a better quality of life – within the context of their neurodiverse marriage.
Do you offer counseling, therapy, or mental health services?
No, I do not offer any mental health treatment, nor psychological evaluation, clinical assessment, therapy, or clinical counseling service.
My practice is exclusively devoted to coaching. It cannot be a replacement for mental health treatment, but coaching serves a different and worthwhile purpose. Clients are welcome and encouraged to seek or maintain their therapy relationship with a clinician, alongside coaching work.
Why might coaching be helpful, even when counseling hasn’t worked?
Counseling is often insight-oriented. To develop insight into ourselves, we must have a measure of self-awareness, an ability to take perspective of how others experience us, the capacity for flexible thinking, and the ability to infer how various social-emotional experiences fit together.
Autistic individuals often have deficits in the above areas, which can be overlooked or misunderstood by therapists who are unfamiliar with neurodivergence. For neurotypical partners who are naturally insightful, counseling can be demoralizing with a therapist who is unfamiliar with adult autism, and dismisses the NT wife’s intuition about her husband.
In coaching, I don’t wait for the client to develop insight over months or years. I offer insight directly. Autistic partners do not learn through implied suggestion; they need concrete explanation and instruction. Neurotypical wives need solid confirmation of their reality, practical solutions for application with their spouse, and a path forward to reclaim their sense of self in life.
Coaching is action-oriented and straightforward. It’s not a mystifying, or abstract journey. I think of therapy as the pursuit of self-discovery and healing; while I consider coaching to be the pursuit of clarity, and structure for transformation.
What is the benefit of a coach with lived experience as a neurotypical wife?
Very few resources exist to educate the average practitioner in regard to neurodiverse marriages. A neurotypical wife has usually exhausted herself in trying to convince a helping professional of what feels nearly impossible to convey – the reality of daily emotional deprivation inside her marriage.
Clients report a sense of relief that their coach has lived experience in regard to a neurodiverse marriage. It side-steps any necessity of a NT wife trying to explain how her autistic husband’s behaviors feel so challenging, and even destructive, within the marriage.
What kind of issues for the neurotypical wife are addressed through coaching?
Examples of topics worked on include:
- autism education – what is autism, and what is not?
- coping skills
- effective communication
- setting boundaries (vs. rules)
- problem-solving
- sense-making of his behavior
- managing expectations
- relationship discernment
- the decision to stay or go
- parenting challenges
- separation, divorce and co-parenting
- grieving the dream
- self-compassion
- rediscovering self
- over-functioning
- healthy detachment
- division of responsibility
Do you work with ASD husbands?
I do, when it is initiated by the ASD partner and he is willing, curious and interested in improving his marriage – especially alongside his wife – then I am happy to help him achieve his goals.
What kind of topics do you work on with an ASD husband?
Examples of topics worked on include:
- executive functioning
- expanding theory of mind
- insight and perspective
- coping skills
- problem-solving
- effective communication
- conflict management
- intimacy challenges
- cultivating romance
- alexithymia
- relationship schedule
- marital agreements
- social-emotional skills
- withholding & stonewalling
- meltdown management
- betrayal repair
- division of responsibility
- parenting challenges
- coping with separation and divorce
Do you work with neurodiverse couples together, at the same time?
I work with neurodiverse partners both separately and together, depending on their unique needs.
How do our sessions take place?
Sessions are held through video conferencing.