Traditional therapy isn’t for everyone. Explore holistic life coaching, where you’ll find a supportive guide to navigate grief, rebuild your life, and reach your full potential. In this enlightening episode, holistic life coach Britany Patsfield shares her profound insights into holistic life coaching and emphasizes the importance of addressing the entirety of an individual’s mind, body, emotions, social interactions, and spirituality. Britany talks about navigating grief, trauma, and the societal pressures surrounding healing, debunking myths, and providing guidance on finding the right therapist or coach. Be inspired and empowered to embark on a journey of healing, growth, and self-discovery.

The discount code is Tina2024: Buy 3 sessions, get 1 FREE.

I am sharing my experience of loving the same man for 32 years, a mother to two adult children, a retired military officer, a breast cancer survivor, and my connections with others.

Anyone experiencing suicidal thoughts should reach out to a suicide hotline or local emergency number in their country: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/suicide/suicide-prevention-hotlines-resources-worldwide

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Watch the episode here

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Mind, Body, Spirit: The Holistic Approach To Life Coaching With Britany Patsfield

Holistic Coaching Approach

Our guest is Coach Brit. Her holistic coaching is a cornerstone of her approach to addressing the entirety of the individual’s mind, body, emotions, social interactions, and spirituality. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Human Resource Management and is presently pursuing her Master’s Degree at Capella University to become a licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor.

Her specialization in life coaching and business consulting aligns seamlessly with her academic background and personal journey while advancing her education to extend support to individuals who have sought therapy without finding it suitable or who require a different approach to meet their healing needs.

Having triumphed over experiences of sexual assault and domestic violence, she advocates embracing healing and reclaiming personal narratives, recognizing that connection and effort are key components of the healing process. Her dedication lies in empowering survivors and fostering hope in their journey to recovery. If you reach out to Coach Brit, she has a special discount code for our audience, code Tina2024. You’ll get one free with that code when you buy three sessions. Let’s get into the discussion now.

Coach Brit, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me.

You bring such a dynamic perspective to this conversation because someone sees the word coach, but that’s not the whole story. I love that the word holistic is in there because I’m doing life coaching in there. Tell me what they don’t see when they see the word Coach Brit there.

Many people don’t see my education because life coaches are a dime a dozen at this point. Most of them don’t have legitimate education to back it up. They have much life experience, but being a life coach is not regulated like being a mental health counselor. Any old person can do it or you can pay $20 and become a certified life coach.

That’s not what I did but go ahead.

I get a lot of negative like, “You’re a life coach. You don’t know anything.” It’s okay. That’s fine. You’re welcome to your opinion. Until you get to an educated background of me, think about what you want. I’m not here. It doesn’t make me lose sleep at night. That’s the biggest part. I am in school. I’ll graduate with my Master’s in Clinical Mental Health Counseling.

The important thing when working with me is there is a lot of education and life experience to back it up. The biggest difference between what I can do now as a life coach versus when I become a licensed therapist is that it’s a little bit more heart-to-heart. It’s one-on-one because once I become licensed and if I’m working in a therapeutic setting, there’s a little bit more red tape.

I like the life coaching aspect because I get to be a human sitting across from another human. If I want to disclose a little bit, I can because it’s pertinent. This is the arena I’m in and also consulting. That’s the other side of what I do. I have an HR degree. For 23 years, I ran businesses. I do consulting, team training, team leadership, staff retreats, leadership training, and public speaking events. There’s a rounded side to me. It’s not just the coaching side.

Thank you for explaining that. It is important to people who are tuning in to this conversation. The reason why I talk to different therapists or different coaches is because people may have that education and background, but oftentimes, it’s who someone feels like they connect with. All those documents and everything else are going to be there.

When I hear that conversation and I feel like that person can understand my journey, they can resonate with the struggles, what I have endured, and where I am now. When someone comes to speak with you, as far as a life coach, and you talk about personal experience, what type of personal experience are you bringing to that coaching session?

I do various aspects of coaching. There are two distinct sides. There’s the mental health side and the business side. Some of the clients come to me and they say, “Can we review my resume? I have a big job interview coming up. Can you help me prepare for this? Can we do some mock interviews?” That might be 2 to 4 appointments, and they’re done.

On the mental health side, I work a lot with domestic violence, sexual assault survivors, anxiety, depression, and generalized mental health. I don’t do diagnosis as a life coach because that’s illegal. It’s outside of my scope. If somebody has severe trauma work that they need to do, I can work with them. I will only with the caveat that they are also in therapy because I have ethics, and there’s a scope of practice that I won’t touch until I’m licensed.

Anybody can tell you they’re trauma-informed. Your dentist is trauma-informed because they have to be. That simply means they understand people sitting in front of you have all experienced trauma. Here are some signs. It doesn’t mean they’re qualified to work with your trauma. I’m passionate about that. I work a lot with clients in conjunction with a therapist.

If that’s the case, I say, “Let me know what you guys are doing. Let me in on your homework. How can I support you with the trauma dumping? I’m here to help process when you need a little extra in between the therapist. I’m here to help with the coping skills, understanding triggers, and giving additional psychoeducation.” All of that is within the realm that I can do. It is backed up with education. You’re going to hear me say that a lot because there are a lot of bunked life coaches out there that you shouldn’t be working with.

Say it for the people in the back.

There are a lot of crappy coaches claiming to help you, and you should not be working with most of them. I will say it bluntly, and I don’t care if it brings hate.

I agree with that because, circling back to something that you mentioned, I don’t think people have the breadth of understanding when you talk about the scope and ethics in which you will work with someone and needing particularly a therapist versus a coach and thinking they are blended the same. I had a discovery discussion with someone. I can easily see in that conversation that they are not in a coaching space and that they need a therapist. They need a mental health professional to work with them versus what I would be able to give them. People are driven by different things that make them show up in the lives of people, but the people that you’re supporting are vulnerable. They should be protected instead of taken advantage of.

To that end, a lot of life coaches are motivated by money. There is no legal regulation around life coaching. They can charge you whatever they want. On my website, I’m blunt about it. If they are charging you more than somebody with a PhD would, why would you be going to them? Everybody has different values.

The glitter, the presentation, the advertisement, and the hype, and it gets down to I could go down that road. I’m going to reel myself back in.

There are two things that I want to say about this topic. One is that I work in mental health during the day. I run psychosocial rehabilitation groups. I work in the field of mental health, even though I’m not licensed. For three years now, I have been active in the mental health world. I co-work with therapists. The groups that I run right now are primarily mental health, but it’s secondary to high co-occurring substance use disorder. That’s what I do now. I work with the Medicaid population. I work a lot with non-White populations, partially because I’m in Florida.

The other component is that if you do want to work with a coach, you need to do your research. That’s all I recommend. What is their background? A lot of these people don’t even have legitimate websites. You can’t even verify if they have a legitimate business. You don’t know what their training is. When I come across these coaches on TikTok and other apps, I see what their Linktree says. When I click on them, I can’t tell you how many say, “Buy me a coffee.” Why are my potential clients going to buy me a coffee? It’s gross.

I am interacting with like-minded people. I haven’t debunked the rest that’s out there to have that perspective. Now, you have me intrigued.

I click on it when it pops up on my feed. I want to see if you’re legit or not. That’s the thing. Do your research and ask some important questions. If you have somebody that’s in a life coach field telling you a diagnosis, run.

That’s not their lane.

That’s their ethical and legal realm, but there are no laws backing this up. The other important thing is even though I have this mental health education, I have a Bachelor’s Degree in Human Resources Management. That’s where all of that experience comes from. The coaching certifications that I went through, the courses that I take, and I continue to take to add to my knowledge are presented by a PhD psychologist who understands the difference between coaching and therapy. That is inside of the informed consent.

If a coach hears this and they’re pissed at me for out in them, I don’t care because I care about human beings, mental health, and your healing correctly. It’s not about the coolest person on TikTok, who has 400,000 followers and no legitimate website or background. There are people on there whose business names include the word counseling. You have to find the tiny little paragraph at the darkest part of their page. If they happen to have a website that says, “I am not a licensed mental health counselor.” It’s slimy.

There’s a lot of cool showing people, but are they the best suited to help you? Not always. It doesn’t mean that some of them aren’t. I know some wonderful life coaches who are legit with ethics who do some amazing work, and have done tons of training. That’s the research you have to do when you’re looking to work with a coach. I don’t knock it on principle, but there are a lot of ones out there. There’s a lot of crappy therapists. Let me also say that.

Practical Support Services

I was going to say that you could go down that line. I want to circle back to something that you mentioned about two different sides in which you support people. My audience sometimes consists of people who have to reenter the workforce because of the change in their life structure. Their partner is transitioning from this world. Their economic status is different. Some people are making a resume and having to prepare for a job interview. People are sick to their stomachs because that’s something that they now need to do during the most stressful moments of their lives. What would that look like? How would they benefit from working with you for that particular service?

First of all, it’s holding space for the grief while you’re trying to continue with your life. That would always be addressed, especially in these circumstances. Let’s say you referred somebody to me. There would be some additional work with that. There’s a tremendous amount of confidence boosting. That’s where the prep work would come in handy, especially if these people have been out of the workforce for several years, and they’re like, “No one is going to hire me. That’s not true, but let’s do some prep.

It’s making a resume. It’s learning how to speak to the absence that you’ve been living in from the career field. You don’t want to say too much, but you want to say enough so that they understand the picture. It talks about creating. We teach how to verbalize the value I can bring to your company. These are my skills. Putting it on a resume, but giving them that confidence to not cower at an interview because they feel insecure about it. That would be the shortest answer.

You can’t give them everything, but I want them to get a grasp of how they would benefit because there’s one thing from going online and obtaining a template on how to write a resume and doing a practice drive-run with your cousin who doesn’t know much and working with someone that has an HR background. I want to dive in. That stands for human resources.

I’m assuming that anyone understands acronyms. The human resource person is part of the company that deals with hiring and recruiting. Having somebody such as yourself to work with you to help build your resume, you’re getting the inside scoop on what someone would ideally be looking for and help empower you to be successful.

Now that I’m thinking about this, another huge component of that would be the laws and what they’re not allowed to ask you. You are reviewing that because it’s going to look different from somebody who hasn’t been in the workforce for years. That’s important. It’s learning how to speak to it. They can’t ask you specific questions. It’s familiarizing them with that.

That’s what I did for 23 years before I shifted to mental health. It was hiring, firing, building teams, creating HR manuals, and teaching business owners the laws because many of them don’t know that. You can’t ask that question in an interview. You have to hire that person now. It’s confidence building, but it also involves understanding healthy boundaries and what is allowed legally because that is a massive component.

As I’m speaking about people working with you for that component of your services, do people have to be local? Is there a particular region that’s limited to how they can engage you from any place per se?

I don’t have an office setting, and I don’t intend on getting one until I am a licensed counselor. I continue to do coaching because they have different goals and qualities. If I work with somebody, it’s more about putting them in the right informed consent bracket. If I’m working with you as a coach, you have to understand I’m not going to diagnose and do these things. We can do different things.

That’s why I have a discovery call myself. Do I have what you need? Do I want to work with you? Do you want to work with me? I don’t want to work with everybody, and I have no problem saying that. I don’t want to be for everybody because I feel like if I appease everybody and appeal to everybody, I’m not being my authentic self. I have no problem with boundaries. I teach those all day, every day. It’s important to have a discovery call, even when you’re looking for a therapist.

Sometimes, people will get referred to me because they need help finding those resources. It’s one appointment because you don’t know what you don’t know. Working in the mental health field, it doesn’t matter if I live in Florida and you live in Colorado. I have resources to figure out how to get you help. Give me your insurance. We can find this and take off some of that stress and burden because sometimes people are in freeze and they’re in flight. They’ve got trauma, and their depression takes hold. Asking them to do a simple task like looking something up online can sometimes be overwhelming, so that helps too.

Navigating Grief And Trauma

I can relate to that. One of the other things that you mentioned becomes difficult for people who are grieving their spouse if they were in a domestic violence situation. They have to come to terms with the reality of the relationship they were in with their partner, the relief, and the idea that they are no longer in that particular space. If someone came to you with that particular scenario, and I know you can’t give everybody an answer, but someone who’s looking to come to terms with that, how would you guide them in reconciling that?

I’m going to be a person sitting across from you. People underestimate the value of being heard and listened to. It’s important in those situations to help them understand what’s going on and what happened to their brain from suffering that type of abuse. Psychoeducation is tremendous. A lot of women will say to me, “I need to be tested for ADHD.” I’m like, “Maybe, but talk to me about your trauma history. You don’t have resolved trauma. You have this and this. Let me tell you what happens to your brain during trauma. It’s like that old commercial. This is your brain on drugs.”

People don’t get enough education. You will experience brain fog. You will disassociate more often than you think you do if you don’t even know that word. You are going to have a hard time remembering things. You could read a paragraph fourteen times and not know what the hell you read. Normalizing what their experience is tremendous. It’s important to share the message that you don’t know who you are and you’d have to recreate yourself because the old version of you is lost. That person is gone. That is also normal. Normalizing expectations of healing is a huge component of what I do.

There are a lot of people who are like, “I want my trauma to go away.” That’s an unrealistic expectation. You will always be stuck from healing if that’s a requirement for you. There are levels that you have to build upon with that. The psychoeducation is a huge component of it. I also believe in normalizing. For example, a lot of people are like, “I feel numb. I want to stare at my TikTok all day. I can’t brush my teeth.”

There are a lot of therapists and even people who their opinions will say, “You need to push on. You need to do this. You need to get up and do that.” No, you don’t. You sometimes need to check out. You can’t always live in your feelings. It’s overwhelming. That’s what happens. That’s why we disassociate because our brain says, “I can’t take it anymore.” That’s the beginning stages. Everybody’s story is different. Their goals are going to be different. That’s where it starts to become personalized care.

It’s important to share as far as what I bring to those situations is I am a two-time survivor of sexual assault. One was date rape and the other was inner partner violence in a highly abusive relationship for four years. I have experienced that and done 27 grueling months of therapy to heal from it. Sometimes, my therapist gets a call because something happened, and I’m in a new land again emotionally. I need to process it with her.

Because I have these skills and the education, I have to take that hat off when I’m experiencing it myself. I know my coping skills, but there are times I have to break them down and get her input. I need to talk to her. Every therapist has a therapist. At least they should, in my opinion, but a lot of us do. The draw to people is it is not about my story. I’m sitting across from somebody who understands it and has survived it themselves. That is a big draw for a lot of my clients because they know enough of my story to know that it’s my history.

Thank you for the transparency in sharing that. It does matter for people when they’re trying to understand the person that they’re speaking with to understand this is their theoretical that they’re sharing from what perspective. Yes, wanting to have that professional training and knowledge, but there’s a way to hold that space for someone when you understand what that space looks like.

There are sessions where people cry. They don’t talk a lot, but it’s therapeutic for them because it’s somebody who is holding that space. That’s not a waste of a session. That’s not being alone in your grief and despair. It’s in a safe space with somebody that you can talk it through. Should you decide to find some words? That happens.

We’ve mentioned back and forth between a coach and someone who is a therapist. I want to give a space to clearly define what a therapist is going to do versus what a coach is going to do. We talked about it, but I want to give them a space to hear what it spelled out.

The biggest difference that people need to understand is that when I’m working with somebody, giving all of the coping skills and working through learning how to understand and identify your triggers. I can do all of the things that a therapist does except diagnose. I can’t do EMDR because I’m not licensed. There are certain modalities I cannot provide, but I am not legally allowed to diagnose. To be quite honest, I’m not mad about it.

Have you ever heard how people use the language of, “I’m depressed. I’m schizophrenic.” No, you have it. You don’t say, “I’m cancer.” Why do you say, “I’m depressed?” When you internalize it and make it part of your identity, not always, but in a lot of instances, people allow it to define themselves. It becomes an excuse for my life, for what’s not working, why I’m failing, and why I can’t heal.

I am intentional with you have depression, you have schizophrenia, or you say, “I live with it.” I live with severe anxiety. That’s going to be in my bucket for the rest of my life because of trauma and grief, and life is going to life us. I’m learning resiliency. To answer your question, I don’t diagnose. That’s the biggest differentiation. After you have a diagnosis with a mental health counselor, you’re going in each week. You’re talking. You are learning your triggers and coping skills. You’re being asked to do homework. All of those things I can do with you. I just don’t provide a diagnosis.

You mentioned that people have requirements for their healing. What is possibly a list of unrealistic requirements people place on themselves to obtain their healing?

The two most popular ones are assuming that once you do therapy, it’s like wanting to erase their past. That’s a simpler way to put it. You can’t change your past. A lot of people find that they want to know how they can get rid of it. It’s not about getting rid of it. It’s about understanding that this happened to you. I do function a lot. My first go-to is always person-centered, humanistic approaches. When it comes to working through things, I’m aligned with acceptance and commitment therapy. That doesn’t mean you have to be okay with what happened to you. You just have to get to that place like it happened. A lot of people fight that.

The second most common one is I need an apology from this person for the things they did to me. When you have an abusive situation, it’s not going to happen. When you have a deceased parent, relative, or whoever it is that hurt you who is dead and you can’t even physically have a conversation, but you demand that you need this apology and this person to admit what they did to you, you are keeping yourself in a victim mentality. That’s a hard truth for a lot of people to swallow. You do not require an apology to heal. You do have to accept the fact that it’s happened and now learn how to move through it.

The third is that people think they will learn how not to have triggers. You’re always going to have triggers. The important component of that is learning how to move through them and not rip the face of the world apart when you’re triggered. We don’t walk around with warning signs like, “I have PTSD. Don’t make these jokes around me. Don’t make a loud noise around me.” That’s not realistic. A lot of people get angry at the world because they get triggered as if it’s somebody else’s problem. It’s not. It’s a you-problem. That’s another hard part to handle. Those are the three biggest unrealistic expectations.

The fourth is when I hear, “My therapists suck. They didn’t do anything for me.” Your therapist can’t fix you because if they were magical, they could bop you on the head like a fairy godmother and say you’re healed and be done. I only know of one person who is capable of healing like that and doesn’t live on this planet. I’ve been told if you’re a faithful person.

There’s a lot of anger involved in healing. It’s also being allowed to have your anger. I don’t believe in cognitive reframing everything. There are a lot of therapists who I’ve worked with. I’m only going to speak about my experience. Please know that when I speak, it’s from my experience. It’s not a generalization.

I’ve worked with several therapists who if you are feeling negative, they’re like, “How can you change that to a positive thought?” That is completely invalidating and dehumanizing. Do you have to learn skills like gratitude journaling to be intentional with your day to find positivity? Yes. Sometimes, you got to be pissed. You need to be angry. You need to baw your face off. I’m not uncomfortable with those big emotions. The other thing I don’t let people do is apologize to me. Never apologize to me for what happens inside of a session. You don’t have to apologize for your anger, sadness, or silence. That’s not what you’re here for. You’re here to let those out. Let it out.

Our society has not learned to be comfortable with all the emotions that we’re issued with when we come into this world. Anger has its place. It’s not to be shown up all the time, unhinged, and attacking the world. It has a place in your life to be able to express it.

Anger is the secondary emotion. It’s not the true emotion. Sometimes, I need to be angry because I can’t cry today.

When you were talking about cognitive reframing, the toxic positivity, everything is not going to be right and it’s okay. Another thing that you mentioned is that people struggle with it and how to respond to bad advice when they are grieving.

You have to be careful who you talk to when you’re grieving. I’ve always been the mediator in my family since I was a teenager. I’m the one who can look at things objectively, not take sides, and give that advice. I’m the 100-year-old 16-year-old in my family. When my niece passed away, it was complicated dynamics-wise.

I said to my therapist, “I don’t know what to say to my family, but I cannot shoulder anybody else’s grief. I cannot be the one people call because this was like losing a daughter to me. I can’t do it.” She recommended getting a grief buddy. She said, “Get a grief buddy. You find somebody that’s not your family, and you tell everybody in your family to find a grief buddy because I’m not it.” It was the best advice that she gave me. I had never even thought of that concept. At the funeral, I had a friend with me. I said, “If I give you that look, or if I say that word or squeeze your hand, it’s time for me to go.” It was supportive, and it happened.

People mean well. A lot of toxic positivity comes from well-intentioned people not realizing it. A lot of people don’t know how to have empathy. Empathy is different from sympathy. Sympathy is, “I’m sorry you’re hurting. That sucks.” You acknowledge that they’re going through it, but you don’t know how to sit with it. A lot of people who lack empathy are not because they’re psychopaths. It’s because they don’t know how to sit with their own pain. How the hell am I supposed to sit with yours? It confronts their pain.

I caution who you speak to in grief. I caution you about whom you speak to for advice. That’s on a non-professional level. Do your homework naturally. When people give bad advice, which we’ve all gotten, I say, “Thank you.” I keep it simple. I’m not taking that to heart. I now know that I’m not going to talk to you ever again because you’re not able to show up in the way that I need.

The other thing that I want to stress is that I learned during my own grief and horrible suffering because my abuse ended horribly before I got away. It was two weeks of hell. I got away from that. Several months later, my niece passed away. It was trauma on top of trauma. I learned that when we are grieving and when we have a trauma that we’re processing, we can become selfish. It’s all about us. It’s our pain, and it’s a big pain.

What I recommend to people, and this is with family and friends, even if you’re not in trauma and you have a bad day, and you need to vent, ask permission. Part of getting bad advice is that maybe they’re having a bad day, and you didn’t bother to say, “Hey.” What I encourage people to say is, “I’m having a tough day. I need to talk this out. Do you have the space for that? Are you in a place where you can hear me?”

We have to be willing to let them say no because that’s true love and respect for somebody to say, “I don’t have it for you now, but I will make that for you tomorrow.” We have to respect that because I had a friend who I told everything to. I always called and talked about myself, my trauma, my abuse, and my abuser. One day, she said to me, “I’m sick of this. I love you, but you’re selfish. You always talk about you. You never ask how I’m doing.”

That was a hard pill to swallow because I wanted to feel indignant and righteous about the situation that I had. You’re the person I talk to, and I’m allowed to feel these ways. That’s true, but I don’t. I’m not allowed and entitled to dump it on somebody all the time. That’s hard when you’re in those big grieving trauma crisis moments to realize it’s not all about me. Everyone else still has to live their life. It’s big for us to assume we can drop that on somebody, family or not. I encourage people to ask permission to talk about big and heavy stuff. We’re not asking what they went through. Ask for it. It builds trust and respect.

You’ve used the word grief and trauma. Sometimes together and sometimes separate. What should someone take away when they hear you use those words?

There’s a lot of grief wrapped up in trauma. When I think about grief, I think of death and loss. That’s tied in with trauma because somebody could have died in a traumatic way. Somebody could have died instantly. There’s a big difference between somebody dying from a sickness, and you get to wrap your head around it, you get to have some closure and say, “I love you and goodbye. This sucks.” You cry with that person and get a phone call that this person is gone, this person’s kidnapped, or we can’t find them. They’re closely related. When you hear people speak about grief, it usually has to do with death and loss of some sort.

The thing with trauma is what I define as trauma is going to be different from what somebody else might define. I use this example when I try to explain. It is a car accident. There are five of us in there in this car accident. We all break out of it alive. The first person might be like, “ I’m glad I’m alive. Life is good. God is great.” There’s no trauma whatsoever. They’re cool. To the last person, that might be like, “I can’t get in a car. This was horrifying and traumatizing to me. I can’t even think about leaving my house.” We don’t know. Trauma is a compilation for some people.

If you’ve never worked through your previous things, you don’t have the coping skills, you haven’t learned the resiliency, and you can’t go, “I’ve been through some hard times. I know I got this.” It gets more complicated. I have no right. Nobody gets to tell you something wasn’t traumatic. Just because it wouldn’t be traumatic for me does not mean that you perceived it as trauma. That’s important to understand. A lot of people want to tell you, “This is not trauma. That’s crap.” It’s the same thing with somebody who has schizophrenia. The voices in their head are not real to me, but I can’t tell them it’s not real because they live with voices in their head. It is real to them. It’s the same type of thing.

Thank you because people sell short their grief experience and try to understand the idea of the grief fog and the grief brain, knowing that it’s traumatic, what those things do to the brain, and how that impacts it. It is more that this person is no longer here. There are many different layers to it. It’s unique for each person because they are unique individuals who have remained living and transitioned from this world. Being able to process all that is extremely difficult. Do you find people struggle with regret or guilt in their grief? What are some things people do with that?

There’s guilt wrapped up in grief. It’s going to depend on the relationship dynamic of that person. When my niece passed, there was a lot of guilt that her mother experienced for the tumultuous relationship they had. She didn’t have a lot of time to write certain things. Her experience with grief was different from mine because mine wasn’t wrapped up in guilt. It does happen a lot, and that’s going to be case by case.

Some people are like, “I didn’t say I love you.” It turns into a huge thing for them. I should have said I loved you. Those are the things that you have to help them through and understand the belief that grief brings twisted gifts. One of the gifts that you give yourself is healing. From my own experience, when my niece passed away, we had a vivid conversation towards the end, a few days before she passed. She said, “I know you’re going to be sad, and that’s fine, but I don’t want you to be sad forever. You get to live, and I don’t. I don’t get to raise my son. He gets to exist in this world with you.”

Even on the crappiest day that I’m having, I don’t push away my feelings because that’s invalidating myself, and that’s not acceptable. I do feel my crap, and the gift that she gave me with that is don’t unpack your suitcase and live in your crap. It gave me the perspective to go, “Allura would give anything to have my crappy day right now because she’d be breathing.”

We give ourselves these gifts. I use the phrase twisted gift a lot. Trauma, grief, crisis, loss, and all of the big, heavy things, when we choose healing, we give ourselves a gift. When we’re dealing with grief, I firmly believe that the people that we lost would not want us to sit on this earth miserable, alone, and not living anymore because they’re gone. Is that part of the process? Absolutely, in the beginning. I believe in honoring life because they didn’t get to. They got taken.

Finding The Right Support

That is some good advice. Thank you for sharing that. You talked about research and trying to find the right person. What does a good education and a solid background look like? What does good look like versus what does not good look like when I’m searching for a therapist or a coach?

Anybody on paper can look great, but what’s the vibe? If you go to Psychology.com, you can filter through. You can put in, “I want a female or a male therapist. This is where I live. This is my insurance company.” It’ll sort it out for you. You can see pictures and read a bio. Some therapists are going to hate that I’m going to say this, but if somebody says, “I’m a CBT therapist,” keep it moving.

Everybody is CBT. It’s Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Every aspect of therapy has to do cognitively with our brains. That’s always going to be at the root. That’s the lazy theory. I do CBT. No, you’re a therapist. You’re working with the brain. You’re healing and teaching the brain new things. That would be a red flag.

Most of them are going to be like, “I’m only a CBT therapist.” They will tell you the modalities and the theories that they work behind. They may do acceptance and commitment. They may be EMDR certified, which is a somatic trauma therapy. If you’ve got significant trauma and you, at some point, want to do EMDR, you’ll be able to see that that person has that extended certification.

If you have sexual abuse or domestic violence, you might want somebody who is certified in sexual addictions and trauma or something like that. It’s a CSAT. That’s a specific certification and one that I will be getting when I can, once I have my master’s, to work with people with sexual assault and domestic violence. A lot of times, that is human addiction. That trauma bond creates an addiction in a person. You can form addictive behaviors because of that.

You will get to see their certifications. Sometimes they’ll say, “I work with ages 5 to 17.” Other people will say, “I work with 18 and up.” They will tell you the specific demographic because some people are like, “I work with anxiety, depression, and personality disorders.” You want to keep moving if that’s where they’ve segmented off. That’s cool, but it’s great that they tell you that.

It’s not that I don’t believe something is good or bad. Do you have what I need? A lot of people are knowledgeable about the different modalities out there to help with trauma or domestic violence. If you have somebody who works with anxiety and depression, they may not be the one you want to talk to about domestic violence because that’s a whole segmented thing.

There are grief therapists out there in the same way that there are gender-affirming therapists. You need to know what it is that you need help with, and then you can read the bios. Now I need to talk to you. If a therapist isn’t willing to have a discovery call, have a conversation with you, or have some places in there, I’m like, “How do you know? How do I know I want to invest my time with you?”

Sometimes people come highly recommended. I had never spoken to my therapist before I met her, but she was CSAT-certified. Betrayal trauma was one of her areas, addiction, porn addiction, and things like that. She came highly recommended. I can see why, after working with her all these times. I wish she could be my mentor, but she can’t because we already have this relationship. Maybe not good or bad, but do they have what I need?

You mentioned the word modality. What does that mean?

Modality is how they work. There’s talk therapy. That’s one modality. There’s dialectical behavioral therapy. If you live with borderline personality disorder, you’re going to use DBT skills, which are going to be different from somebody who needs grief and loss. That might be more of the Acceptance and Commitment Theory.

You have all these theories, like Adler and Gestalt. I don’t know if you ever saw Clint Eastwood, but he did this whole thing on a stage one time with an empty chair. That’s a modality, especially with women or men who are raped, and they have a hard time saying those words. If you can’t say I was raped, and a lot of them can’t, you’d be surprised. I need you to practice saying that out loud. I want you to talk to this chair.

Let’s say you have a deceased parent that you have a lot of anger with. You might use that modality and be like, “Your mom is sitting in this chair. I want you to say everything you need to say to her.” That’s one modality. I might say, “I need you to write a letter to your abuser, bring it, and read it to me.” The modalities are different types of ways that the theoretical approaches are going to be put into action.

Trauma bond, what does that mean?

It’s like Stockholm Syndrome. Beauty and the Beast, I had this huge epiphany. I was like, “How fascinating that that’s my favorite Disney movie when somebody captures the father and trades for the daughter. She’s held captive, and all of a sudden, we’re going to have a love story based on it.” You take that into the girls that are kidnapped when they’re 7, 8, or 9. They have three babies by their captor. They don’t want to be out in the real world because suddenly they believe that they’re in love with this person. You’ve aged out and you’re too old for his preference. Now, what? That’s a trauma bond.

When you are in a highly abusive relationship, it creates a trauma bond. When you’re dealing with narcissistic people, it creates a trauma bond. What happens is Prince Charming comes in. They’re everything you want and need. You get the love bombing. You’ve told them all of your traumas and the things that have been bad because they’re trusting. I’ve never met anybody like this in my life.

What you did was you gave them all the clues on how to be Captain Savaho. They have got what they want. It’s great and amazing. It’s like being high on a drug. All of a sudden, it starts to shift. You get punched, beaten, starved, and hit. They rob your bank account, whatever the abuse is. This cycle goes from high to low, high to low. It’s like drug addiction. It creates a trauma bond.

That’s why it’s hard to get out of it. As soon as you say, “I’m done,” Prince Charming shows up or Princess Charming. There are a lot of narcissistic females. That’s not talked about a lot. All of a sudden, they’re that person and love. That euphoria comes, and that creates a trauma bond. It’s like a needle to a vein. It’s hard to break.

If I find you on TikTok hanging out, what can I expect to see there?

A little bit of everything. I try to be a person. I will tell anybody that before I’m a coach, a licensed therapist, and a consultant, I’m Britany, and I’m a human. If you come to my TikTok, you might see a goofy video. You might see me duet something that’s completely dirty, inappropriate, and hilarious. I want people to get a vibe for me. The number one way between that and my Instagram is how people mostly find me. They’re like, “You are such a person. I get a feel for you. I can tell that you’re authentic. You’ve shared enough of your story to understand that I think I’m safe to work with you.”

You’re going to see me in a towel with no fake eyelashes on, and my eyebrows aren’t drawn on. I’m talking to you because I wanted to say something, and you might see me looking fabulous on a different day. You’re going to get some mental health tips, and you’re going to get some, “What the f*** did I read and see today?” I’m a swearer. You’re going to get the authentic me. You’re going to get a little mix of it all because I’m a human being. First and foremost, I’m always that.

I appreciate this conversation and I thank you for the widowhood. When we talked about having this discussion, you were thinking about it. Were there other things that you wanted to cover that we haven’t crossed already?

If people have more questions, you have all the info on how to reach me. I don’t necessarily feel like I need to share my grief story, but even that was tremendous. I know that that’s your forte. Information, networking, and connections are great. I want people to understand. Even if you’re like, “I need more than what you can offer, but I don’t know how to start,” it’s not offensive to me to say, “I’m not here to work with you, but can you help me figure something out? Can you help me find this or that?” You got it. That’s not offensive to me. Sometimes, you need that support.

I will let you close out this conversation. Talk to the audience and wrap this up however you feel free.

Thank you for having me on here. It’s a great opportunity to meet and reach new audiences. I’m a huge advocate of self-compassion. When I sit and think about even talking about this, I’m getting teary in my eyes. We don’t hold enough compassion for ourselves. We can talk kindly to our friends and family. It’s hard to do that for ourselves.

I constantly remind people of the quote that I came up with. It’s like, “You can’t win if you’re not on your own team.” What I mean by that is self-compassion. Some days, it’s hard to love ourselves. I don’t believe that we have to love ourselves before anyone else can love us because through grief and trauma, we don’t know how to love ourselves, and we have to rely on other people’s love.

What I would recommend to anybody who’s going through it, which is pretty much all of us, is to be compassionate, to hold space for your healing and pain, and to be choosy with who you share that. Brené Brown, a lot of people know who she is. PhD psychologist talks about shame. She says, “Everyone has a story. If you’re listening carefully, it’ll bring it to your knees, but not everybody earns the right to hear that story.” That’s important, especially when we’re seeking to heal. People can create more stress for us. It’s understanding who is safe to speak to.

She also talks about her acronym, BRAVING, and that V in there is Vault. We should normalize the saying, “It’s not my story to tell.” I hope and pray that if people have questions, feel free to reach out. If not and you learn something from it, or if this is the only piece, hold compassion for yourself. Speak to yourself kindly because you have to. Not everyone else will do it for us.

Thank you so much.

Thanks again for having me.

This is value added to the community.

Thank you so much.

Important Links

• Coach Brit – LinkedIn
• Psychology.com
• TikTok – Britany Patsfield
• Instagram – Britany Patsfield
• www.anchoredcc.com
• Linktr.ee/CoachBrit
• https://www.TikTok.com/@CoachBrit?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc

About Britany Patsfield

Britany Patsfield is a holistic coach, which is the cornerstone of my approach, addressing the entirety of an individual—mind, body, emotions, social interactions, and spirituality.

I hold a bachelor’s degree in Human Resources Management and am presently pursuing my master’s degree at Capella University to become a Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor. My specialization in Life Coaching and Business Consulting aligns seamlessly with both my academic background and personal journey. While advancing my education, I extend support to individuals who have sought therapy without finding it suitable or who require a different approach to meet their healing needs. Having triumphed over experiences of sexual assault and domestic violence, I advocate for embracing healing and reclaiming personal narratives, recognizing that connection and effort are key components of the healing process. My dedication lies in empowering survivors and fostering hope in their journey to recovery.

In my practice, I offer a personalized touch through life coaching, which differs from traditional counseling by focusing on individual growth without diagnostic procedures while incorporating the benefits of talk therapy, coping mechanisms, support, and psychoeducation. I am committed to delivering an inclusive experience that respects and acknowledges your cultural, spiritual, and religious beliefs.

Here are some interesting tidbits about me: I spent my childhood as a military nomad until settling in Washington State at the age of eight. My professional journey has led me across different states and even to Germany. I come from a large blended family of eleven siblings and proudly embrace the role of being the best auntie-mommy to over twenty nieces and nephews. When I’m not immersed in work or studies, you’ll likely find me by the ocean, engrossed in a book, singing, indulging in music, or cherishing moments with my partner.

Regarding my volunteer work, I’ve served as a youth mentor with the YMCA in Seattle, WA, and as a Crisis and Rape Advocate with SARC and Lutheran Community Services in Tri-Cities, WA.