Trauma-informed coaching

A tiny rock in your shoe. A boulder fallen across the trail. Disorienting fog that disconnects you from your surroundings. The sound of a rushing stream that draws you toward it through dense forest.

Challenges and opportunities present themselves in many different guises. Sometimes they emerge out of nowhere; other times we see them coming from a distance. Coaching offers a supportive structure so that we can activate our inherent capacity to meet both challenges and opportunities and generate internal and external shifts that allow us to create the life we want.

Transformative relatedness

In coaching, our very relatedness creates the basis for safety, exploration, and change. My first priority as coach is to establish a calm container where you can let down your guard and allow your curiosity to unfold. Through presence, attention, and invitations for somatic participation, I provide the signals your nervous system needs in order to feel safe and be ready to explore.

As we establish what you’d like to create for yourself, I provide a structure that helps you identify your intention and direction. I pose questions that invite you to consider situations and themes from multiple angles. I check in with you regularly to see if we’re on track or if you want to fine tune the focus. This gives you the opportunity to test out your thoughts and, as I reflect them back, assess where you’re at and decide where to go next.

Throughout the process I invite you to connect with your body, your values, and your senses. We do gut checks and heart checks and brain checks. We envision the future you desire. We lovingly tend to what is currently preventing you from having what you want. We pause and breathe.

Through this combination of my attuned inquiry and your freeform exploration, you will gain a better understanding of obstacles and blockages and move into new ways of responding. You will likely feel the upswelling of your personal power. You might come away with a plan for external action or you might settle into a quiet inner peace. Whatever form your results take, the hope is that you will connect with a renewed sense of your own capabilities to engage with whatever life is bringing you.

Trauma-informed

Coaching with a trauma-informed lens embraces the reality of being human in a traumatizing world. We are all capable of creating what we want and we each have a unique life history that deserves acknowledgement and care.

Treating or processing trauma is not within the scope of trauma-informed coaching (that is reserved for therapy). Instead, our trauma-informed coaching relationship holds space for your trauma in a conscientious and loving way when it comes up. While therapy aids in understanding the past and healing from its wounds, coaching shines a light on your real capacity to create a desired outcome.

Relating to you through a trauma-informed framework, I as a coach am trained to notice and respond to the ways that trauma might present itself as you identify what’s not working. I adjust the pace, accompany you through silence, and gently invite regulation when your nervous system may be activated.

Your trauma does not need to be relived in order for you to create what you want. I prioritize your sense of safety. I affirm your personal agency. And I guide you in accessing your innate capacity to integrate your knowledge of yourself from past, present, and future into a unified and capable whole.

Coaching each person for the common good

So many of us envision a better world for ourselves and the collective. Even as we believe in our power to make it so, the realities of living in a capitalist, white supremacist, patriarchal society lay a heavy burden on our shoulders. Most of us face isolation, alienation, and despair in some form and they take a toll on our sense of personal agency. One antidote is affirming our relatedness and practicing responding to ourselves in ways that embrace rather than negate our humanness.

For people striving to create a more just and equitable collective reality, I am here to help nurture your connection to yourself so that you can keep going in a sustainable way. For people of all neurotypes, I am here to help you design structures for your life that make you feel empowered and on purpose in a world with an ever-narrowing definition of normal. For people in recovery, I am here to support your commitment to a life that weaves together self-responsibility and interconnectedness with the creative mark that is unique to you.

Coaching relationships truly have the power to change the world as they support us in settling into the fact that we’re each meant to be exactly who we are.

Topics you might explore in a coaching session

• Maintaining a sustainable effort and pace in work you care about without burning out

• Making the best of working for pay while enduring the harm of capitalism/white supremacy/patriarchy

• Developing adaptations and strategies unique to your neurotype in order to cope in a neuronormative society

• Creating routines and structures to support yourself on a daily basis

• Crafting and practicing new habits that affirm your commitment to self-responsibility

• Navigating relationship dynamics of all kinds while claiming your personal power

• Sensing into your authentic self, purpose, and direction and deciding what to do next

• Putting shape to projects, ideas, or yearnings in order to take action

• Connecting with your creativity, verve, and vivacity

• Tending to your needs during a period of slow progress, non-progress, or not knowing what’s next

• Opening up conversations between your soma and your psyche in order to support your nervous system’s needs

• Developing or enhancing your intuition and putting it into practice

What I offer as a coach

• A calm container that prioritizes your sense of safety

• Time to pause and think, sense and feel, in ways that suit your neurotype and your nervous system

• A structure that encourages your curiosity and guides you in exploring new territory in your thinking

• Questions that connect you to your values, your purpose, and your capacity to create what you want

• Gentle invitations to probe your assumptions and consider a wide array of options

What to bring to a coaching session

• Ideas about what you want more of 

• Ideas about what you want less of

• A question that’s been hovering at your periphery

• Words, images, or sensations that you’d like to explore in order to gain clarity, choose a direction, or feel a shift

• Water

• Fidget toys, art supplies, or craft projects that help you focus

• A notebook and pen

• Your presence and intentions

What is a trauma-informed coaching session like?

Details of my coaching practice

I completed my training as a trauma-informed coach through Moving the Human Spirit. I am a member of the International Coaching Federation (ICF) and am working toward my credential as an Associate Certified Coach.

I follow ICF’s code of ethics and practice the core competencies, which includes establishing clear agreements. When you schedule your session, you will be asked to review and sign a coaching agreement that outlines the parameters of our coaching relationship and what to expect. You can preview the agreement before scheduling an appointment. Please read the agreement carefully before signing and pay particular attention to sections 1-8, including the policies for attendance and rescheduling.

If you agree to allow me to record our coaching session, it will be available for you to view afterwards and I may share it with my mentor for evaluation purposes as I work toward certification. There is no pressure to have your session recorded; please make the choice that feels right to you. I will always ask before starting a recording and you may confirm or revoke your consent at that time. If you have any questions or concerns about the agreement, please get in touch.

When you schedule, you will be asked to select the modality for our session. Most folks will select Google Meet (cameras can be on or off). We can also conduct the session via phone if that is preferable. If you are local to the Bay Area, please get in touch if you would like to discuss meeting in person at a quiet outdoor location.

Plan to spend 45 to 55 minutes in our coaching session. Afterward, take time to integrate what you’ve discovered by resting, journaling, meditating, doing somatic practices, and connecting to nature.

I offer coaching sessions at sliding scale pricing as well as in exchange for services or at no-cost for those who need it. I also provide sessions as a benefit to students in the Moving the Human Spirit Trauma-Informed Coaching Certification course. If you would like to offer your services in exchange for coaching or have questions about which type of session to choose, please get in touch.

I offer single coaching sessions for folks who have already identified a specific topic they’d like to hone in on (more sessions can of course be scheduled as needed). Three-session and six-session packages provide more room to establish our connection and creatively explore the shift you desire. During the initial session, we will collaborate to design a structure for our time together with your desired outcome as the guide. When scheduling, pick a date for your first session and we will coordinate the dates to follow.

If you have questions and would like to talk before scheduling your coaching session or package, you are invited to book a 25-minute mini session at no cost.

In addition to coaching individuals, I also offer one-on-one coaching for members of teams and organizations. Programs of six sessions per person provide support and empowerment to keep your team thriving, prevent burnout, decrease turn over, and build solidarity and efficacy. Please get in touch to discuss options.

Read more about my personal and professional relationship to coaching. I look forward to collaborating with you in transformative relatedness.

— Blayd Grumstrup (they/them)

Testimonials

Blayd is an excellent coach, and has a very unique ability to hold space while gently guiding through complex thought. Blayd’s understanding of different sensory experiences alongside strong coaching is very impactful, calming and helpful. I highly recommend working with Blayd and plan to return for more sessions! – Robin G., April 2026