What is a Mental Health Coach?

Mental health coaching is a form of strengths-based support for those struggling with anxiety, depression, and other mental health disorders. Mental health coaches support clients in making positive changes, overcoming obstacles, and establishing a clear recovery plan to guide them toward healing. As a certified Christian mental health coach, Jen can help you obtain stability, manage difficult symptoms, renew your mind with God’s Word, and find hope and purpose in what you are walking through. She can also help you find resources for professional care and treatment, family support, and education.

How is a Mental Health Coach Different Than a Counselor?

Mental health coaches have gone through 42+ hours of biblically-based, clinically-excellent training in being effective people helpers, bringing them into God’s presence, crisis intervention (e.g. trauma, abuse, suicide), active listening, mental and behavioral health disorders (e.g. depression, anxiety, bipolar and spectrum mood disorders), addiction, and and leading others to healing; however, unlike licensed mental health care providers coaches do not diagnose or offer professional treatment for mental health disorders. Rather than helping clients process past events, coaches support positive change to help the client move forward by better managing their symptoms, building support for recovery, and working on life goals such as relationships, work, and education. Mental health coaching is action-oriented with an emphasis on improving one’s present life and reaching goals for the future.

Mental health coaches use a partnership model wherein the client is considered to be the expert on his or her life—the one who decides what is worth doing—while the coach provides expertise in supporting successful change. Mental health coaching focuses on achieving any goals important to the client, creating a clear plan of action, and using current strengths to move forward. The coach also provides accountability to help the client stay on track.

Mental Health Coaching for Chronic Pain

As someone who lives with chronic pain herself, Jen understands the unique challenges and difficulties that those with chronic pain and illness face. For this reason, her practice focuses on helping these individuals find healing through a whole-person perspective that addresses mind, body, and spirit. Some of the areas Jen is qualified to provide support are listed below:

Physical Well-Being: 

Mental Well-Being: 

  • Identifying unhelpful thoughts/cognitive distortions
  • Restructuring unhelpful thoughts using biblical truth to promote healing (CBT-CP)
  • Managing stress
  • Practicing gratitude

Emotional Well-Being: 

  • Self-monitoring our emotions
  • Discover safe & effective ways to add positive activities to our daily schedule
  • Building/rebuilding positive relationships
  • Dealing with loss as a result of chronic illness
  • Repentance and forgiveness

Spiritual Well-Being: 

  • Benefits of contemplative prayer and meditation
  • Finding hope that isn’t tethered to our circumstances
  • Understanding the role of pain & suffering in spiritual formation
  • Sharing our story for the ministry of others and God’s glory

If interested in working with Jen, please reach out via her contact page. She will respond within 48-hours to set up a complimentary call.