FAQ
What is giftedness?
A gifted individual is someone who demonstrates abilities or development potential significantly above average in one or more areas. While the term “gifted” is often associated with and detected during childhood, giftedness does not disappear during adulthood (barring exceptional circumstances).
A more holistic model of giftedness is that gifted brains are developed in highly uneven ways compared to non-gifted brains. Many people assume gifted individuals and geniuses are universally smarter, but that’s not the case. Gifted people often struggle in areas that others find simple, and their exceptional abilities often don’t translate into tangible benefits that positively impact their quality of life. Without adequate support, navigating life with giftedness can seem like more of a burden than an advantage.
How do I know if I’m gifted?
Although there are no universal standards for defining giftedness, the most common way to identify it is through an official IQ test administered by a psychologist. Achieving a sufficiently high score is generally considered strong evidence of giftedness. A top 2% result is somewhat indisputable, though some sources will consider thresholds such as 5% or 10% to also be sufficient. Besides cognitive tests, there are many forms of giftedness that do not necessarily show up as high IQ, and thus may be harder to identify and impossible to confirm other than holistically.
Another approach is to reflect on whether you resonate with the challenges often associated with gifted individuals. Labels are less about categorizing ourselves and more about using language and concepts to better understand our experiences. If you face similar challenges and find value in the same solutions as those identified as gifted, that insight can be meaningful, regardless of whether you meet some arbitrary threshold of giftedness.
Do I have to be gifted for us to work together?
You don’t have to be gifted to work with me. While I specialize in neurodivergence and giftedness due to my background and expertise, my primary focus is ensuring that I can support you effectively and that you are able to benefit from my support. This is something we can explore together in a complimentary discovery call.
What is coaching?
Coaching is a collaborative process that helps you identify goals, overcome obstacles, and develop strategies to achieve meaningful change in your life. Coaching is more action-driven and future-oriented than therapy, which often focuses on the past. As a coach, I provide guidance, accountability, and support tailored to your unique needs and aspirations.
What will I get out of coaching?
As a coach, my role is to help you explore and understand yourself better, uncovering the conditions under which you thrive. You’ll gain a more holistic view of who you are and feel empowered to take action, build confidence, overcome obstacles, and make informed decisions—without relying on strict discipline or willpower. You’ll also have the accountability of my support as I cheer for your progress and successes. Ultimately, my goal is to teach you the tools you need so that you can apply them independently, without needing to continue working with me.
My coaching focuses on unlocking greater happiness, satisfaction, and fulfillment in your life. While I also offer support around productivity and success, I primarily approach it through a soft productivity lens. This means I avoid strategies that conflict with your mental well-being, which many traditional productivity methods based on discipline or willpower inadvertently do, often leading to long-term burnout.
Do I need therapy or coaching?
When my coaching is suitable
If increasing your overall happiness is a priority, my coaching can likely deliver quicker results than traditional talk therapies. This is because many therapies: 1) aren’t trauma-informed; 2) focus on integrating the past or creating behavioral change, neither of which directly boosts life satisfaction; and 3) require you to find your own answers, even for objective knowledge that can be taught more directly.
When other things are suitable alongside or instead of coaching
While my knowledge is fairly broad, there are certainly some areas where I would encourage you to seek help from other practitioners who are better placed to meet your needs. Examples of professionals in partially overlapping spheres include: therapists, counsellors, psychologists, psychiatrists, nutritionists, accountability coaches, success coaches, and various types of somatic practitioners. I’m always happy to discuss how you can better meet your needs by recruiting the right help, even if that means an end to our sessions.
When my coaching is NOT suitable
I facilitate faster change than traditional therapy, but this can come with downsides. Progress often requires unlearning old beliefs and stepping out of familiar territory, which can involve temporary setbacks. If you’re experiencing suicidal thoughts/ideation or do not have the capacity and space for vulnerable new learning (e.g. you have no margin for error in your career performance), a slower and gentler approach like therapy may be a better fit. If you’ve never had a therapist before, I recommend reviewing these two guides to help you find a practitioner who’s the right fit for you.
https://www.healthline.com/health/how-to-find-a-therapist
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/07/02/1185661348/start-therapy-find-therapist-how-to
Advice for neurodivergent folks
If you’re neurodivergent, I strongly recommend that you choose a practitioner who specializes in working with neurodivergent clients. When neurodivergent people work with regular therapists, common outcomes include: receiving harmful input; receiving input that helps briefly but plateaus in value quickly or requires unlearning longer-term; receiving ableist advice that leads to burnout. In some cases, practitioners simply mistreat and take advantage of neurodivergent individuals, who may not know enough of what to expect to be able to prevent this from happening over a prolonged period.
What happens in a discovery call?
A discovery call is a complimentary 15-30 minute call where we both gauge whether we’d be a good fit to work together. During this call, we’ll discuss the areas or challenges you’d like to address, and I’ll assess whether I can help and if you’re in a position to benefit from what I offer. I don’t take on every client, and I’ll be up front if I believe your needs would be better served by another practitioner.
Some people who benefit the most from coaching initially feel uncertain about reaching out, so I encourage you to lean towards booking a call to find out. If you fall under this category, I believe you’ll gain insight and get a clear sense of value even from a brief conversation.
How are sessions structured? What do sessions look like?
I offer 60-minute and 90-minute online coaching sessions over Google Meet or Zoom. These calls can be video or audio-only according to your preference. I accept clients anywhere in the world. I’m based in NZ
and have a wide schedule available for booking, including the weekend. I have a moderate overlap with the afternoon in US and Oceanic time zones, and limited overlap (early morning/ late evening) with European time zones.
Coaching is highly tailored to the individual, so it is difficult to generalize how sessions are structured in terms of flow. However, the impact of good coaching is more clear cut. You will walk away with:
• A clearer understanding of yourself—your behaviors, experiences, and how to care for yourself;
• Important concepts about self-care that are applicable without relying on willpower or discipline;
• Encouragement, support, validation, and accountability for you taking ownership of your journey;
• Overall motivation and excitement from having clear, achievable, and actionable steps ahead of you, and the feeling that they resonate with your authentic values.
What’s your current availability?
I currently have a few spots available and am offering free coaching packages that include 4-5 hour-long sessions, depending on the outcome of the discovery call.
What’s your cancellation policy?
If you can’t make a scheduled appointment, please let me know at least 24 hours in advance so we can reschedule.
How does the coaching dynamic work?
In coaching, we work as a team to explore how to cultivate more of what you want in your life. You supply the expertise on the context of your life, I supply the expertise on how to get to where you want to be and the challenges involved. Your body/brain is unique, so discovering how to meet your needs in life is going to be an explorative process.
What kind of coaching and therapy techniques do you use?
Rather than focusing on specific modalities or coaching frameworks, I emphasize fundamental principles and facilitating your self-learning. My goal is to help you internalize, apply, and integrate key self-care concepts in practical ways that you can take ownership of, ensuring you continue to benefit from this self-knowledge long after our work together ends.
Some key concepts I draw from neurodivergent-aware practices include understanding intersectional trauma, prioritizing nervous system regulation, accommodating both the needs of your neurotype and your nervous system responses, addressing overstimulation and understimulation, and managing executive function based on an interest-driven lifestyle.
In general, I lean towards a soft productivity lens, meaning that I favor change that comes from meeting your internal needs and making your life easier, as opposed to relying on willpower or discipline. If a popular approach doesn’t work for you, there are countless alternatives we can explore. This is about finding what works for YOUR specific body/brain, not what fits conveniently within an existing framework. Nervous systems are unique and diverse, so it is often the case that creative solutions work for reasons that can’t always be explained (and don’t need to be).
In terms of “mainstream” modalities, I use CBT and IFS infrequently. I tend to avoid CBT because some of its techniques conflict with neurodivergence-aware models of trauma and may lead to long-term harm. As for IFS, I am happy to refer to parts work or facilitate IFS meditation, though I find that parts work often achieves less direct progress than what I prefer.
Can you help with anxiety and/or depression?
If we’re a good fit in general for coaching, then the answer is likely yes.
What about productivity or success coaching?
I offer executive coaching focused on goal-setting, results, and success for individuals who are already reasonably satisfied with their lives. This is a key requirement because, while I can help people pursue highly ambitious goals, the methods that drive maximum success can sometimes conflict with self-care for those who don’t yet have a stable mental health foundation, especially as they work towards higher-level objectives that are more abstract relative to their core internal needs. This is something we would explore in a discovery call.
What’s your theory of change?
Extremely oversimplified version:
Most people who are moderately/significantly suffering or otherwise dissatisfied with life have unmet needs and are at various stages such as unhealed trauma, denying their needs, not understanding them due to lack of certain fundamentals skills in mental health, being stuck due to a toxic environment that prevents them from exploring those needs. Some dissatisfaction stems from specific unmet needs (like financial struggles or an unfulfilling relationship), but in many cases, the primary component of dissatisfaction comes from neglecting the needs altogether, as in failing to acknowledge their critical importance and thus not taking any actions towards addressing them. This is a form of values misalignment, where living authentically is impossible while denying your fundamental needs.
The flip side, though, is the potential for rapid progress. Once you understand and accept your internal needs, simply being in the imperfect process of trying to meet them can bring significant satisfaction and meaning. There’s no final destination where all your needs are fully met (and even if there were, it would be fleeting); it’s about the journey of authentically learning to care for yourself. The absolute gap between where you are and what it might look like to have more of those needs met matters less than the fact that you’re working to close it. Most people can find happiness simply by taking part on a courageous journey that is truly aligned with what they want in life. Authentic values are key, because succeeding at what society values or the values of our protective coping mechanisms doesn’t lead to fulfillment, which is why it can be helpful to seek professional support in navigating this process.