Professional Coaching

As an endorsed organisational psychologist, Tanya also provides professional coaching and leadership development programs. Tanya is particularly passionate about empowering professional women to thrive in their careers while maintaining mental well-being.

Perinatal wellbeing support coaching

Professional women are less likely to proactively engage in psychological therapy, ask for help from loved ones and often minimise their experiences of distress. Instead, psychologists often see the tendency for these women to ‘try harder’, putting more pressure on themselves to ‘succeed’ as a mother. This is where we also see perfectionistic tendencies coming out and overly rigid behaviour and attempts to control their out-of-control environment with a newborn.  This ultimately has an impact on their experience of early parenting and their overall adjustment to parenthood in the first year.  

Participation in perinatal wellbeing support coaching helps to ensure women are prepared for the adjustment to parenthood and reintegration to the workplace, reducing the likelihood of stress about managing a career and a family, reducing the impact and pressure on the individual and their family unit, and ultimately reducing the risk of perinatal mental health issues.

Professional women who engage with psychology services during the perinatal period generally share some of the following concerns, all of these things impacting their ability to perform at their best:

  • Guilt associated with and perceived judgement about maintaining a career whilst having young children

  • Relationship changes with partner and negotiating responsibilities / support systems

  • Feelings of inadequacy - “I should be able to do it all”

  • Navigating unexpected heightened emotional sensitivity before and after birth

  • Fear of setting boundaries with workplace and self around expectations on return to work

  • Navigating conversations around meaningful work when returning on a part-time basis

  • Self-care whilst managing career and family demands (often this goes out the window due to guilt and has an overall impact on mental health and performance at work)

  • Reduced confidence being out of the work environment

  • Parenting confidence

  • Expectations vs reality, before and after having a child

Approach to intervention and coaching

My approach to wellbeing support coaching integrates a number of frameworks from coaching and therapeutic psychology backgrounds, depending on a client’s needs, and includes:

  • Psychoeducation – including assertiveness and communication skills, boundary settings, and needs based conversations

  • Values based exercises – mothering values, life and career values and aspirations and integration of these major life areas

  • Mindfulness – developing a relationship with yourself to ensure you are meeting your needs as well as the needs of your family and the organisation you are working for

  • Psychodynamic coaching – where necessary supporting women to identify unconscious beliefs and patterns that may impact self-care, feelings of guilt and shame (e.g. what triggers your guilt, feelings of failure, stops you from asserting your needs etc)