Disability LIfe Coaching

What is Disability Life Coaching? What qualities does a Disability Life Coach need?

A person’s disability or physical challenge is often the defining aspect of their life. In fact, their life can revolve around that reality permanently. For that reason a Disability Life Coach is a crucial partner assisting an individual to face the challenges in life. A disabled person with the right coach can virtually count on reaching their potential.

An authentic Disability Life Coach should not only have survived their own personal trauma but also thrived in spite of their challenge. In other words, the coach must have walked the walk. With that genuine experience there is no doubt that the Disability Life Coach understands difficulty and knows what it takes to overcome obstacles.

The four crucial mindsets you need to believe in are:

  1. To make changes you must have goals. Those goals must be realistic and attainable.
  2. To make genuine changes takes sustained effort. It also takes determination, time, and hard work to modify behavior.
  3. To have an ultimate goal, wish or dream. You need to recognize your difficulties as they are now. You must understand that there will not be a “quick-fix” for long-standing problems.
  4. To be committed to making the gradual changes that will lead you toward your goals.

Recovery does not mean that you wake up one day and are fine. It does not mean your memory suddenly becomes intact. It does not mean that you don’t get confused, and it certainly does not mean you regain the life you had prior to your trauma.

To a person who has survived a trauma recovery is making progress. Making progress is accepting your deficits, learning success strategies to help you with those deficits and learning to love and value yourself.

Type of Business: Disability Life Coaching

Marketing Area: Global – anywhere that can be accessed by the World Wide Web – My aim is to partner with clients in a thought provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential.

Major Product: Book- Acceptance Groups for Survivors, A Guide for Facilitators – Available on Amazon & from Jones Harvest Publishing

Education & Credentials: BS in Education from the University of Michigan in 1973
Masters in Science of Social Work from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1976
Academy of Certified Social Workers, ACSW since 1984
Association of Traumatic Stress Specialists since 2002
Board Certified Expert in Traumatic Stress, BCETS since 2004
Board Certification in Disability Trauma, BCDT since 2004

I would like to invite anyone who has lived through a trauma to participate in an on-line Acceptance Group. It will follow the format proposed in my book, Acceptance Groups for Survivors, A Guide for Facilitators.

I do not think that I have the right or the knowledge to dictate who has experienced trauma. Rather I believe that each individual decides that for themselves.

As I begin to bring this proposition to conclusion, I realize that I have not told you about my trauma. Over 37 years ago, I sustained a severe brain-stem injury in a motor vehicle accident while I was an undergraduate student at the University of Michigan. In 1971, I was plucked out of my mainstream existence as a college student and put on the sidelines of life.

There I had to watch other people do what I knew I should have been doing. The problem was that I found myself unable to do what I wanted to do. I HAD TO ACCEPT that my life had changed & I NEEDED TO LEARN HOW TO COPE with my new abilities and disabilities. So that is what I did.

Four A’s of Recovery

  1. Acknowledge
  2. Admit
  3. Adapt
  4. Accept

Recovery Is Making Progress!