A Day In The Life of Conny Weyrich: Embracing the Gifts of a Midlife Awakening
Association for Coaching (AC)
Advancing coaching in business and society, world-wide.
Welcome to the latest edition of the Association for Coaching’s (AC) Newsletter. This week:
After years in the corporate world, Conny Weyrich experienced a midlife awakening that inspired her to pursue a new path as an Art Therapist. Today, she is an art-based, trauma-informed coach, helping others navigate their journeys with creativity and compassion. Discover how Conny's bold choices led her to a more authentic and fulfilling life.
Hello Conny, I'm really interested to hear what type of coach you are so could you give our readers an overview of your coaching practice?
I'm an art-based and trauma informed coach. I am based in Australia, Melbourne, Australia, or specifically an hour outside of Australia, and I work and live on the unceded lands of the Dja Dja Wurrung people and at this point I want to pay my respects to their elders, past, present and emerging.
My coaching in my private practice Sense-making space is arts-based and trauma informed, they are two key pillars of my work. But like so many people, I've not come straight into coaching after university. I've also got 20 years of working in the corporate sector in different marketing and strategic roles in consultancy, and I hold a master's in therapeutic arts practice, which really informs that arts based and trauma informed way of how I approach my coaching.
I initially started out as a more conventional art therapist and then the pandemic hit, of course, and forced me to quite quickly reinvent and reconsider. And I have shifted from art therapy into this arts-based coaching space which I now deliver online, working with people in one-on-one settings, but also with groups, online programs, workshops with people from all over the world, which is really rewarding, fascinating and full of variety.?
What made you move from corporate and marketing, firstly to art therapy and then into coaching?
I've always dabbled with a more creative career, even when I finished school and before going to university. but because of circumstances and different influences and people who shaped me, I chose a more traditional career in business. It felt safer. Then when I hit about 45 years old, I was already here in Australia, but I started wondering whether work could be something else and the impact the work had on my body, my health, my relationships.
I've spent 20 years in open plan offices being probably incredibly unsuited to that environment and finding it really just challenging on my energy. There were a lot of aspects are really enjoyed about consultancy work, but there was this sort of simmering in me that made me go back to studying. So, I went back to university to do a master's in therapeutic arts practice, and that arrived in me just like a lightning bolt, where I literally thought, is there something like art therapy? I didn't even know that existed. I researched and I thought that would be working with people creatively and it just piqued my interest.
I enjoyed going back to, to learning and to studying and into an environment where I could express myself very differently. I never imagined running a business…it wasn't something that influenced me growing up. but it just opened up all these possibilities.
It must have been quite a shift from one world into another, but it sounds like a really good one for you. Does that mean you now feel that you work more authentically as yourself?
I would say so, yes. I've now created work for myself that feels more aligned with my values.?In my previous work, one big challenge in the corporate setting was I worked a lot for brands with a lot of products which, didn't align with my personal values around sustainability or how I want it to be in in the world.?I think working in a coaching space has allowed me to create something that feels aligned with my values, where I can bring my full self to the table.?
Why have you moved into coaching rather than stay as an art therapist?
During the pandemic, I felt as I switched to online, working in that sort of conventional therapeutic way. and I had worked with individuals with quite complex trauma backgrounds that felt to be delivered online for me at that point in my career, like a step too far. I started just experimenting as, as many of us did during the pandemic, in terms of how else can I use my skills and my experience, and as I started experimenting, I nudged towards that coaching space, and I realized that a lot of the clients I worked with found coaching as a concept more accessible.?
I know there are two key pillars of your coaching practice. Let's start with the art-based approach. Could you explain what it is and what you find so good about using an art-based approach with coaching?
Working creatively or art- based is about another way of self-expression. It allows us to is express something or explore something that we might not have words for. It is a real benefit when I work with clients who have a sense of maybe, a vagueness about what's not working or stuckness that's showing working through our thinking brain, the executive brain. Or we might drop back into very well-rehearsed, familiar narratives and stories that we've told ourselves time and time again. They're the stories we know, and we don't even realize that beneath the surface there is another story waiting for us.
Working creatively also taps more into our limbic system - the area of the brain where emotions live, and I think that's important. And simply the engaging with materials and the process of making something can be really insightful and gives us a different idea about something or a different insight into our experience.
Working in an arts-based way, whether that's therapeutically or in coaching can go very deep very quickly. So that means that the coach has to have the right skill set and experience and qualification to hold that deep process. And the client also needs to be at a point where they can hold that.?Sometimes clients are just really surprised by doing a fairly straightforward process that it stirs up something that's really emotional.
Yes, absolutely. It can be just a simple thing. Once I got asked to draw a certain shape in a group art therapy session and it triggered, something quite dramatic actually, much to my surprise. Here at the Association for Coaching we have really explored this topic both in a podcast series we hosted on Creative Coaching and earlier this year in our online Creative Coaching Festival. I will add links to those events and resources below. Would you like to add anything?
Yes, when we work with imagery, and it links into another quality that I bring to my coaching, working in a trauma-informed way. So, images and maybe in a way, as you said, that shape you were invited to draw brought up something quite deep and traumatic for you and when we work with images, we need to realize that people who've experienced trauma might see these images differently.
In coaching that can be challenging because people might come to coaching, not actually being fully aware of the trauma that's present or has happened in their life. So again, that's why the capacity to hold these processes is really, really important. And to get the right training and also experience under your belt too, to be comfortable and to trust yourself.
You're also a trauma informed coach.? Could define what trauma is and then explain what you mean by trauma informed coach?
So, in my own words, trauma is what is the imprint of what's left in the body after either a traumatic event or, or a longer period of traumatic experiences. These events chained together, have left an imprint in the body and imprint on that person and have shaped how they behave and show up in relationships how they form trust with other people, how they trust themselves, how they experience themselves, and how they see themselves in the world and their sense of safety.?
Then there are these helpful concepts around big T trauma and small T trauma. Sometimes we feel a very clear and open around what is a big T trauma, which might be a really significant event but we're really underestimating the impact it has on us when we're experiencing these smaller moments that are traumatic. We think, ‘that wasn’t so bad,’ but these micro traumas really add up and then suddenly the wheels come off and and things start to fall apart and crumble a bit. So for me, that's what I would capture as trauma, what really echoes in the person's body and life and relationships.
One of the things I do in my discovery call and contracting is that I speak quite specifically to the trauma informed aspect of my work, and I do that so that it's really clear to the client that something traumatic showing up in the coaching is okay, that that's actually a safe space.
My view is that everybody has some kind of trauma to different degrees depending on their life experience and I know when I interviewed Kate Brassington for the Mental Health series, I asked if she thought all coaches should be trauma informed, and she said yes. And I wondered what your view on was on that?
I agree with you view that everyone has trauma in their life. And then there is the question to what extent is their awareness of that trauma? To what extent has this been processed. Because a really difficult experience can lead to trauma in one person, but not in another person. We know from research that a lot is down to the fact whether you've had access to loved ones, to people who supported you unconditionally, who you could trust, and whether these people were available to you right in or shortly after the experience, or whether you felt left alone, isolated, or possibly silenced during or after that traumatic experience.
Going back to Kate Brassington, it would be very good if everyone was trauma informed and really curious and open around educating themselves and also looking into their own lives with curiosity and not shame. What are the areas in my life where I've experienced something that was really tricky? How did I cope? How did I not cope? What still hanging around from that? And how does that show up and sometimes get in the way?
Yes, compassion and curiosity. So, what does your typical day or week look like?
As much as there is a typical day or week, it's always a mix. I work, as I said, one on one, run workshops and run group programmes. So, a typical day or week is a mix of those. which then also means there is an element of creating these workshops or group programs…always involves an element of preparation and an element of reflection afterwards.
So a big cornerstone of my coaching is that I provide quite detailed coaching notes to clients who are really take down and document a lot of their own language that they have used in, in sessions. I do that because when we work on deep stuff, we also know that our memory isn't always working optimally, and it's really good to have an account of how we spoke about experience, how we described our experience, how we spoke about artwork, if we if that's part of the session.
I also believe in, helping clients to build a reflective practice. And the coaching notes are sort of a starting point of that to really build their own reflective practice in terms of what's happening in my life, how am I responding? What alternatives possibilities can I see? Because that reflective practices then something that they can take forward into, into life once the coaching ends.
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Then there is a lot of just the business side of things…the administration, the finances, the marketing, the platforms, the website, the social media but I experience the greatest meaning of my work connecting with people.
What are your biggest challenges, either as a coach or as a business owner or both or both?
There are always challenges in both areas. So as a business owner, I think what I love about the work is also what's a challenge. It's incredibly self-directed. I'm working largely on my own. and whilst I love that and the freedom of that and the flexibility, that's also the challenge because I need to show up for myself every single day. I need to come up with new ideas all the time.
In coaching, I think one of the hardest things to work with, and it just came up in, in my supervision yesterday, funny enough. But it's always stuckness. That's the topic that shows up for so many people, including for myself, and that's a really tricky topic to work with and to work with in a way that it's that we can achieve some lasting change and not just temporary shifts.
It's based in fear, any stuckness we have? It's not always easy to unravel the reason: it can be complex, or it can be something from way back?
I think so, yes and it’s about not just approaching that stuckness intellectually. As a concept, it's quite easy to talk about it. ‘just do that and you'll move forward.’ But there might be parts of us that are still stuck in something that we fearful of and it's about getting those parts on board so that the whole system can move forward decisively and, and feeling, complete and whole and, and acknowledged.
That's where good coaching questions come in and sometimes it can take time and can’t be sorted out in one session.
It's important for you as the coach, in supervision, to look at your own stuckness because if I look at my own stuckness and I acknowledge the parts of me that are stuck and why they might be stuck, it always just opens up the curiosity when I work with the client - which parts are stuck for them? And I think that's a curiosity and an openness to just really embrace that.
How do you take care of yourself?
I'm like a big believer in good sleep hygiene and sort of going to bed at the same time and feeding my body with the things that feel good and moving my body. I'm incredibly lucky living near a wonderful forest so can be out in nature frequently and easily.
Then there's also my own creative practice. I've learned quite early on that if I'm creative day to day, I'm also more creative in my work.
My supervision is a cornerstone of my self-care, and I've got two strands of supervision. One is coaching supervision, and one is, that I still work with my clinical supervisor, who's an art psychotherapist. Also, I'm wired in a way that's through learning and through reading I can switch off, but I can also absorb new knowledge and new concepts that really help me in my work.
It all really flows, if I've got a real good connection between what feeds my soul and what inspires me, and I can then bring that into my coaching work. But self-care isn't work or something I need to do. It's just becoming such an automatic and generative process for me.
Are there any tips or pearls of wisdom you’d like to share for coaches reading this?
From my experience, I would say the skills around, being in relationship, being present, being attuned to the client and to the process are probably always more important than any skills around a particular coaching framework or coaching tools. So, I would really encourage coaching coaches to spend time to, to hone those relational skills. And part of that is also to really know themselves well in relationships or how they show up in relationships.?What does being regulated in a relationship mean for me? And also establish that really outright with the client: ?what does what does it look and feel like for you to be well regulated? Because that looks different for each person.?
Also, I've found a real profound shift for me was letting go of my own agenda.?I'm always trying to show up from a point of creating a space in which the client can get to know themselves differently or better, and where they can get a better understanding of their inner world.
Thirdly, I'd probably say to get real clear on one's scope of practice. And by that I don't mean so much niching, which is sort of another popular conversation in the coaching space, whether you found your niche, but more your scope of practice, because I do believe that coaching and therapy lives somewhere on a continuum. And sometimes the transitions can be quite gradual and fleeting in some ways. So really knowing for yourself what is your scope??
Some great tips, Conny, thank you.
It's really been quite a shift in my practice to just let go and trust the client, trust the process and focus just on understanding in a world - that's my beacon.
Wonderful. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge and experiences.
Resources:
Connect with Conny here
Conny’s website here
If you would like to hear more about Conny watch out for our full conversation to be published in 2025 on the AC podcast.
Listen to our conversation with Kate Brassington on Trauma-Informed Coaching here
Listen to the podcast series Let’s Make Coaching Creative here
Learn from our 2024 event The Creative Coaching Festival: Day One Sessions and Day Two Sessions
We host regular webinar series, member benefits, signature programmes and online events. Start 2025 off with a bang by registering for our latest offerings!?
Here are our first 5 events:
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