My Favorite Trauma-Informed Coaches
Recommendations to Assist You in Finding a Quality Trauma-Informed Coach Who’s a Good Fit for Your Specific Healing Needs
If you’re looking for the perfect trauma-informed coach to assist with your healing process and/or life goals, I’d love for you to have options so you can find the best fit for your support system, whether that’s me or one of my capable and caring colleagues.
Related: How to Find a Life Coach Who’s the Best Fit
If we meet in a free consultation and we decide we’re not quite the right fit for your specific needs, this list of coaches (below) is typically who I’ll refer you to first, if you’re looking for trauma-informed coaching.
(I also have a preferred list of life, business, and other types of coaches who aren’t trauma-informed that I can refer you to as well if you don’t need trauma healing support. It’s coming soon to the blog.)
It’s worth mentioning: I would feel safe and confident recommending each person in this list to my friends and family as well. Know that every coach listed here is not a paid promotion, but a carefully considered choice based on what I think could be helpful for you, dear one.
One thing that most trauma-informed coaches have in common is that they came into this calling because of their own trauma healing journey. We are survivors ourselves. We know what it’s like to experience the various manifestations of trauma responses in our minds, bodies, and spirits. So, not only do I value these coaches as professionals and admire their journeys, but I value them as brave, beautiful people who exemplify the strength and beauty available to all of us.
While this blog post is meant to help kickstart your research into selecting the right coach for you, before we dive in, here’s why it’s important that you do your research before you choose a coach to work with.
You want to ensure the coach you select has a style and approach that meshes well with how you’re motivated and what makes you feel safe so you will actually want to make progress.
A coaching relationship is long-term if you want the best results. For a relationship of any kind to be long-term, it must feel right and work, whatever that means for you.
Many coaches have different specialities, even if they’re trauma-informed. It’s important that a coach’s specialty aligns with your goals.
At times, one coach might work for you and you complete the relationship. Then, at another time in your life, you might have different needs and resonate with a different approach. So it’s good to know your options.
My list of coaches here isn’t exhaustive. There are definitely other quality trauma-informed coaches out there. As I get to know them, I’ll be sure to add more to the list. (Maybe in a separate blog post, we’ll see).
Now, here’s the list (in alphabetical order). Happy researching!
Amy Pagett — Aim True Coaching
Amy is a certified trauma-informed self sabotage coach, certified breath work coach, and is trained in somatic embodiment. She has a background in psychology and education. She also has experience healing her own childhood traumas, which she recently spoke out about in the Trauma Survivorhood podcast.
Amy’s specialty is helping women with childhood trauma locked within their bodies. She also helps you understand how trauma and self sabotage are connected and then overcome that to find the success you deserve.
Amy and I coached each other when we were becoming certified as trauma-informed coaches. She is such a calming and gentle presence. Co-regulation is a strength of hers, even if you’re being coached over Zoom! Her coaching presence and straight-forward questions honestly made topics that I had previously thought were complicated become more straight forward and simple to deal with. I didn’t feel pressured to talk about anything faster than my own (somewhat slow) pace and she gave me the space to verbally process and think without pushing me one way or another. I was able to find my own truth in session with Amy. I think this is, at least in part, because Amy and I have a similar go-to trauma response as trauma survivors — fawning. Not only did she have the education and training to understand me professionally, but she understood me on a personal level.
Amy is based in Peterborough, ON, Canada. She offers one-on-one virtual or phone sessions.
Website | Interview on Trauma Survivorhood Podcast | The app formerly known as Twitter
Ashley B. Jones
Ashley is so exciting and energetic. Boisterous even. Not only is she a trauma-informed certified coach, but she’s also a tarot reader, intuitive, energy healer, Reiki practitioner, and meditation guide.
We met while we were both becoming certified as trauma-informed coaches. I loved being coached by Ashley because she kept getting intuitive hits in session. So, not only was she intuitively asking the questions that I really needed to answer based on what I was saying, but she was able to dig deeper in areas that may have taken me longer to get to if she had not intuitively picked up on what was beneath the surface before I did!
So I highly recommend going to Ashley for her intuitive-based services and the fact that she’s a certified trauma-informed coach is a bonus! It was also fun being in the certification program with Ashley because she has formal education in neuroscience, which really added a lot to our cohort discussions about how the brain works. I also appreciate her background in women’s studies, because that means she’s my kind of people! This combination of experience that forms her foundation makes for a uniquely creative approach to supporting others in healing.
Ashley is based in Denver, CO, offering in-person and virtual healing sessions. She has one-on-one and group offerings.
Deanna (Dee) Beaumont — Deanna Beaumont Coaching & Consulting
Dee is a trauma-informed certified coach who focuses on individuals and teams. She provides wellbeing and resilience coaching, career transition coaching, and life transition coaching to individuals. She also provides coaching, consulting, and workshops to corporate teams in need of building resilience and thriving.
She brings an interesting history of managing emergency humanitarian operations as well as helping governments plan for natural disasters. This experience combined with her coaching credential and love for the human brain make for an in-depth understanding of helping groups of people work together to thrive, even when there has been stress and suffering. She’s an inclusive and creative type who knows wellbeing leads to resilience.
Like many of the coaches on this list, Dee and I met getting certified to be trauma-informed coaches. We coached each other quite a few times and I was able to watch her coach others. And when Dee coaches, it feels like she really sees you. She get’s really creative with her questions and the ways she chooses to help you go within and pull out new information.
Dee is based in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. She does virtual and in-person coaching and consulting.
Doug Smith — D-Degree Coaching and Training
Doug Smith (MSSW, ACC, TICC) is a really cool guy — like many of the other coaches in this list, I met Doug while we were both getting certified as trauma-informed coaches. I learned that he loves Wilco (the band!) and really cares about social justice. He does a lot of work with the prison system and seems to have a calling helping develop the leadership potential in people with histories of mental illness, past trauma, and incarceration.
Doug is a solution-focused coach (who is trauma-informed certified), leadership development trainer, and facilitates a 5-week transformational leadership cohort that opens from time to time. He has a background in mental health and justice policy with the Texas House of Representatives and the Texas Center on Justice and Equity. He’s also been a professor of social policy. He also helped launch the Austin/Travis County Sobering Center and serves on the Board of Directors for the Pretrial Justice Institute. Before all that, he was formally educated in social work. What a great experiential and (what I’d call) human-centered foundation for coaching!
Doug and I didn’t coach one another in class, as Doug was in really high demand with the other coaches! But, I did get to hear others talk about what they experienced in session with him and watched Doug participate in a demo with the instructor, so know he’s a real team player who thinks critically, creatively, and is open to learning.
Even though I can’t personally recommend his coaching, he’s in this list because he’s highly inquisitive, has a great vibe that I believe can create a safe space for his clients, and cares about many things that I care about. If you’re here on my website, you probably value similar things too. That means that if you need a male coach or leadership training, checking with D-Degree Coaching is a great place to look into.
Doug is based in Austin, TX. He offers customizable one-on-one coaching programs and customizable leadership training for individuals and groups.
Emmy Marie — Blooming with Emmy
Emmy Marie is a trauma recovery coach and NARM practitioner. She offers 1:1 coaching, courses, and community to her clients.
She’s awesome. She was one of the first coaches to go through the Moving the Human Spirit certification program to become trauma-informed. While I was researching programs I might want to take, I found her on their coaching directory, watched a podcast she’d done with MTHS, and then reached out to her. She answered by inviting me to a call so we could chat. When I got on the call, I said, “Thanks for meeting a random person from the internet!” And she replied with, “Aren’t we all just random people on the internet?” Truth. She’s so compassionate and embodies love for people.
On our calll, she told me all about her program, her business model, and her approach to coaching. She was so nice and generous with information. She had great things to say about the MTHS program too, so I became all in. While I’ve not personally been coached by her, I have followed her on Instagram ever since that first meeting, and I know she’s the real deal. She has a lot of wisdom to share about domestic partner violence and healing from abusive relationships. If you’re fresh out of a situation like that and need some guidance and support, Emmy is your woman.
Emmy is based in Oregon. She does virtual coaching and online education.
Website | Instagram | TikTok | Pinterest | Facebook
Gabby Gast — Co-Blending
Gabby is a trauma-informed certified coach and consultant who shares her story about blending her own family while navigating Cystic Fibrosis and a double lung transplant!
Gabby’s specialty is co-parenting and successfully blending families. She coaches and consults through her Co-Blending program where she focuses on the four stages of co-parenting communication, recognizing where you are, and deciding where you want to be and how to get there within the stages.
She highly values confidence, compassion, and communication as she’s guiding you through blending your family.
Her coaching style is direct, to the point, and can get into the nitty gritty of tactics around how to achieve your goals while her consulting is highly experience based. That’s because she has a unique and helpful ability to not only help you process emotions and deal in metaphors, but she’s able to get really tangible about what a solution to your problem could look like and entail. So if you need to get more organized, start a chore chart, and at the same time, process becoming a step parent and your own emotions that come with that, but also who’s dealing with balancing relationships with not only your kids but also the kids’ biological parent(s), Gabby is your coach. When Gabby coached me, she balanced the emotional with the practical in an understanding way that helped me improve my own blended family dynamics. I was able to set boundaries where I needed to and empathize more with my children to find the balance we needed.
Gabby is based in Pewaukee, WI. She does virtual and in-person one-on-one coaching.
Monica Moody — Owning Change
Monica is a certified trauma informed career coach who focuses on healing first and how you can align with your true self and soul wisdom. Then she can work with you to land the job you love too. She works with you through group coaching, training and education, resume assistance, and a supportive community. She also hosts retreats and does speaking engagements about workplace toxicity, trauma, love, grace, and heart-based leadership. She’s author of the book, Be Yourself to Free Yourself.
Monica’s specialty is providing career acceleration and sanctuary for ambitious women of color.
And while practical and goal-oriented, there’s something highly spiritual about the work you’ll do with Monica.
Her coaching style is direct and action-oriented. She knows how to drill down into what the core of the matter is quickly and prioritizes finding ways to meet your immediate goal. I know from experience, as she helped me see the many options available to me during a difficult confrontation I was working through where I had laughed off an abusive interaction rather than standing up for myself and telling the person to stop talking to me in the way they were. Not only did she help me see my options, which I hadn’t fully realized, but she also guided me through verbally processing how each one felt and if each one could work for me. Complete with a little homework assignment, I was able to confidently move in the direction that worked for me at that time, which was a stepping stone in learning how to confidently use my voice and manage conflict.
Monica is based in Atlanta, GA. She has online and in person offerings.
Website | LinkedIn | Facebook | Instagram
Sandra Jarvis — Sandra Jarvis Coaching
Sandra is a certified trauma recovery coach who focuses on helping women rewrite their stories and change their self talk after religious trauma. Specifically, Sandra has a lot of experience with survivors of childhood sexual abuse.
She supports you through virtual workshops from time to time, community through her Facebook group: Faithful to Free After Leaving a High Demand Religion, one-on-one coaching, a group coaching program, and her podcast, Sisterhood on Tap. She co-hosts it with her daughter, Angela Arnold. They bill themselves as ex-mormon coaches sharing life after religion.
Sandra is also author of the book, Severed: A Memoir of Hope and Healing, where she details what she went through when her right hand was severed in an accident. You can grab a free digital copy right here.
Sandra and I coached each other while we were training to be trauma-informed coaches. We worked on grief and bringing strengths from our past into the present together. I enjoyed her openness and ability to tap into my heart energy and follow it with all the right questions that I needed in that moment for healing.
Sandra is based in Washington state.
Website | Facebook | Spotify | Apple Podcasts
P.S. If none of these coaches end up being the right fit for you, here is a directory of trauma-informed coaches that you can browse as part of your research.
Questions or Comments?
Feel free to let me know if you have any questions in the comments, or you can schedule a free consultation.
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I’m Brandi Fleck, TICC. I’m a private practice, certified trauma-informed life coach and trauma recovery coach. All genders, sexualities, and races are welcome here. I primarily serve clients via one-on-one coaching and self-paced trauma education.
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