Reviews
Confidentiality is important to us so all comments are anonymised
Comments from workshop attendees
' When i heard we were going to be standing in a field with horses I thought this must be a joke, but how wrong i was. Ive never experienced any thing like this. We all felt like that at the end like Id learnt more about how i work inside when im stressed and how i can calm it doen because i understand now how it feels when you are calming down and that i can stay calm and still function. Its amazing i slept like a log that night'
'I have learnt what calm actually means and its a nice feeling that i am now keen to find again. How to be assertive without aggression was a take home for me'
'I liked the breathing exercises and mindfulness body scan work that really helped me find my own sense of calm and then the horses in the herd just accept you walking around as one of them'
'Ive been able to put things into practise to take 5 mins and ground myself in stressful situations using the breathing exercises and anchors i learnt on the course . During the day we had lots of time to ask questions and there was some really beneficial time spent on thinking about how to look at all the stress in our life and how to be more resilient and not let it control us'
'I thought i understood about stress the fight flight stuff but i didn't really understand in myself and the damage it has been doing all this time'
Comments from 121 sessions
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'I was nervous about meeting Lizz has shes a psychologist and I wasn't sure what to expect, but she was really easy to talk to and i only needed a few sessions to help me get a clearer plan of where i want to go and what to focus on' Su 2021
'I was not sure is this life coaching would actually work for me as i seemed to be so confused as to what to do and stuck not making important decisions in case i got it wrong. I was also allowing others to drag me down with their negative thinking that meant we launched from one crisis to the next it was exhausting. I'm a changed being now, I've changed jobs i'm re training and i don't let anyone derail my plans now. I feel confident to make decisions because I've had time to think things through. Its exciting now to live my life' Jim 2019
'Ive had a few tries with coaches in the past and I've never found the process to be that good at really sorting out the main issues that i should have faced up to. Lizz helped me to unpack all of that in the first few sessions we did Walk & Talk. Ive not heard of this before and it was a very liberating approach to just feel okay to talk about things as they came to mind. We had a couple of face to face sessions as well to get some things down on paper that i wanted to be able to use to help me stay on track. Id recommend this approach to anyone who feels confused with years of stuff they want to work through.' Mary 2019
'Working with Lizz was amazing, using CBT Coaching to help me decide on new direction for my life and career was a very thought provoking experience i wasn't expecting to feel so restricted in my thinking and how i was holding my self back from really thinking about all options and not just the safest one' AS summer 2018
'I was quite skeptical about starting the coaching process as i didn't believe it could make any difference as my problems seemed so entrenched. I had lived with things for so long that i thought nothing could be done. my Anxiety and fear of certain situations had grown out of hand and i was avoiding doing things and my life was getting smaller. We had about 4 sessions where we just discussed all the different issues i had and it become clear that they all stemmed from the same things that i had not wanted to face up to. Once i did this it was really clear how id been holding myself back, telling myself i can't do it. Lizz was right beside me all the way as i faced my fear head on and I realised how my imagination had been building things up out of all proportion in my mind so that the idea was terrifying. She had a lovely way of putting things that make so much sense. We had about 8 sessions in total and i really saw it as a wise investment in myself' JO summer 2018
'my son took part in the Confident Kids Coaching sessions over the summer with Lizz and Steph and they really helped with his confidence at school, talking to the other kids and teachers. Watching him with the horses was amazing to see.' LB Summer 2018
'I've never believed working with the horses could have such a profound effect on me. I left each session with a sense of real calm id never felt before and could create on my own' NL Oct 2017
'this EFL work is brilliant and has helped me change how i think about my self, i used to describe myself as anxious all the time but now i know whats is causing it and more importantly how to head it off before it gets very overwhelming' MD Summer 2017
Case Studies
Client SB (Equine Facilitated Learning EFL Coaching) Summer 2017
"I was directed to Lizz via facebook. At the time, I had been trying, with varying degrees of success to deal with an ongoing problem with stress and anxiety. Having tried ‘traditional’ counselling and medication without much sustained improvement, I was keen to try a different approach. I will confess to not really knowing what the sessions were going to be like, and whether they would make any difference, however, I really did have nothing to lose, so I decided to give it my best shot!
On the day of the first session I was really quite anxious – I liked horses, but I had practically no experience of them, save for an occasional donkey ride at Blackpool as a youngster!! So, to try and deal with my anxiety, I was going to meet someone completely new, in a place I’d never been to, to work with animals I had no experience of – sounds great doesn’t it!! Straight away Lizz put me at ease – she explained the process and a bit about her own background, as we simply walked around the edge of fields with horses in – nothing too scary to begin with. We talked through a kind of ‘mindfulness’ technique, steadying my breathing, becoming aware of my body, my surroundings - all of which I could feel start to make me feel calmer. I have since learnt to use this technique (albeit sometimes in shortened form) to help me deal with stressful situations, or when I can feel that I might start to feel overwhelmed. It helps give me breathing space, a pause, before just reacting to whatever is happening - this has been very valuable in helping me to control the effects of anxiety. Now, there is an interesting thought... in the past I have tried to deal with the problem by removing the anxiety - which is almost always not possible. Instead, I have learnt that anxiety itself is not the problem, it is the way in which we (I) react to it which is problematic. Anxiety is a manifestation of a number of symptoms, physical reactions and responses in the body, designed to help us run away from a serious threat to our life. What I now understand is that for various reasons, our bodies now react to all sorts of situations in this way - leaving us in an almost permanent state of readiness to flee.
In my own case, for many years, personal circumstances meant I lived in this constant hyper-anxious state - always waiting for the next thing to go wrong, the next problem I was going to have to solve. By talking about some of the horses, the way they react, the effects of living in this hyper-anxious state really became clear to me. What also became clear was that umpteen years of living like this was not going to be undone in a couple of hours in a field with a horse - this was going to take time. Through working with Lizz and the horses I have gained a much deeper understanding of how mind and body work together ( and sometimes against each other) and how the physical can affect the emotional and vice versa.
I am not 'cured' of anxiety - I still get anxious, the difference is that most of the time now I can moderate the physical effects, and buy my brain the breathing space it needs to find a sensible solution to whatever is causing the stress. It's not perfect, I am still learning, but I do feel much calmer, and less controlled by the anxiety." SB 2017