Chances are if you’re reading this, you’re probably wondering what an emotional resiliency coach even does. Or maybe you’re wondering what emotional resiliency even is. Which I get, I don’t think this is a very common framework that many coaches are working from.
You might be wondering how psychedelics play into this coaching style and is this even legal?
Allow me to answer some of these questions as we go.
Deciding to work with a coach in general is not for everyone and I will not be the person who’s going to convince you to work with me in this article, instead I’ll allow you to see as much of the picture as possible so you can decide for you.
Consider Your Budget
Coaching is an investment in yourself, and some coaches charge a lot more than others. Surely there are books and courses aplenty for you to learn from on your own, which I highly recommend, but working with a coach is an entirely different and more intimate experience that you won’t find in books or courses.
First and foremost, before you even begin to assess if this is a good option for you, consider how much you’re willing to allocate to a coaching service. It may make sense for you to pre-address what you’re specific goals are and the value that these goals hold in your life and how this lines up with your budget.
It’s for this reason that I put all the basic information on my coaching service page for someone to make this decision wisely, which includes pricing, so that they know before they inquire as to not waste their time or my own. Nothing bothers me more than going through an entire email exchange and discovery call process only to find out I can’t afford something I’m now excited for, and I certainly don’t want to do that to anyone with my offers.
I’d recommend shopping around as much as you can to see what your options are and what the general price point is for the type of service you’re looking for, although, beware, that most coaches do not put their pricing on their websites as a way to get more sales calls. Case and point from above.
Pricing for coaching services can range anywhere from $500 to upwards of $5,000 a month. It’s usually based on experience, expertise, demand, process, and availability.
Only you can decide how much you’re willing to spend on this particular service for your wellbeing. You determine how worthy it is to you, and don’t let anyone try and convince you otherwise. As someone who’s former career was in marketing, I feel like the moment it feels like you’re being sold to is a good moment to question the person on the other side of the sales call or marketing advertisement. If they’re in the business of telling rather than showing, let yourself intuitively feel what the best choice for you is.
As an offer, a good rule of thumb when making this decision is to find someone you align with that is a few steps ahead of you on their life journey or in a particular area you want to improve upon.
In this case, someone who has experience with their own emotional resilience and psychedelic work in their personal life (psst here’s a little snapshot of my own psychedelic journey), and ideally has the education to back up their experience to help others. I personally don’t know of many emotional resiliency coaches out there, so maybe for you the real option is to decide if this path makes the most sense for you.
Remember that a good investment has ROI, and as biased as I may be on this topic, I believe the ROI on this particular investment is invaluable because of how much your emotions impact your quality of life. As someone who had nearly no emotional resiliency and felt like I was drowning in the water of my sensitivity only a few years ago, it’s pretty insane just how much my life has changed since, and how much I have expanded my capacity to feel more of life on both sides of the spectrum.
Consider Their Experience
You’ll want to find out what their true specialization is in. There are a lot of different labels coaches give themselves and a lot of them can be rather vague: transformational coach, life coach, and health and wellness coach to name a few. Which is why I highly, highly, HIGHLY recommend understanding what their real expertise is in so you can feel confident that they can help you with whatever you’re seeking.
Ask yourself what you’re looking for in a coach, because this is someone you’re going to work with very closely and intimately. Consider how you feel when engaging with their website or their content. The nature of your relationship will require safety (the most important piece in the puzzle of healing), trust, feedback, and deep conversation to get to the root of what you’re working through so they can help you.
Decide what matters to you.
How much experience do you want them to have? Is it okay if they’re new? Or do you want them to be seasoned? Or does it not matter so long as there’s alignment between what they have an what you want.
Is there a specific modality that you want to work with such as the intersection of emotions and psychedelics, which isn’t very random if you know how these two play into each other. Or do you want something more open and variable at this point in your life such as the work of a life coach (like my friend Mackenzie who works with people who aren’t sure what step to take next?)
What is their typical relationship with their clients? Is it intimate and close like 24/7 access to them, or is it more structured and boundaried, meant only for their times allotted together? Do you want someone to be integrated into your life that closely helping you navigate what you’re working through? Or would you rather know you have someone on the sidelines cheering you on from afar?
When stalking coaches websites and content, you should hopefully have a good idea of their skills, modalities, specialties, experience, story, and priorities in their practice and be able to assess if they would be a good fit to work with, at least in your preliminary search!
Do You Need A Coach?
Perhaps as you’re shopping around for a coach you realize that coaching isn’t the best fit for you right now.
Or maybe you decide that it’s not an investment you feel confident in just yet.
Or maybe you’re like, wow I needed this yesterday, when can I get started the moment you feel alignment with a coach, and they’re booked up for months.
Or maybe you find the alignment and they have an opening and it feels like an easy in, divine guidance from the universe.
All of these are viable conclusions and perfectly justifiable (not that you need justifying). And whether you decide to take the plunge or not into coaching, you have options!
My favorite thing about deciding (or not deciding) to work with a coach is the plethora of resources that exist out there.
Here are some ways that you can wade into the water of coaching without taking the full leap:
- Sign up for a self-development course that’s aligned with what you’re looking to work for. I can’t tell you what that is, but know that a little google searching never hurt nobody!
- Explore group coaching options either virtually or in-person. These are typically lower ticket items because you’re sharing space with many people at once. I’m in the process of opening a group coaching offer up, so if you want to be the first to know, then sign up for updates. 😃
- If you’re specifically looking explore microdosing, download my free microdosing guide to walk you through step-by-step how to make this a transformational process. A lot of coaches offer free resources as well, so take a look around if you’re looking for something different.
- Continue to self-educate with free content like what I have on my blog. I specifically pour time into this for my readers so that they feel like they have options and can digest and consume information at their own rate. And I truly love giving things away for free where I can!
I’ll speak for myself, but I’m sure other coaches would agree too, that if you’re not willing to flex on your budget, or your timeline, or you’re not ready to do the work that’s required with a coach, that the experience will not be worth your time or money.
I would much rather you get what you want with what you’re willing to spend than feel frustrated in the process, transformation of any kind doesn’t happen from that place, there’s a certain openness that is required to make change happen.
And it’s because of this that I’m so committed to providing as many options as possible for those who are curious about my services but don’t have the budget for it right now.
It’s why I spend a lot of my time writing content on my blog about mental health, psychedelic integration, and spirituality. It’s why I dedicate time to my newsletter every week to provide tangible and easily digestible tips relating to this exact topic. There’s always options if you’re open to them. ✨
Deciding Who To Choose
So you decide working with a coach is a good fit! And an emotional resiliency and psychedelic integration coach to boot, let’s go!
Now you get to decide who is the lucky person you’re going to work with. Remember, coaching is a collaborative process, not someone telling you what to do and when to do it, so making sure this person is someone you truly want to collaborate with is a pretty big deal. One I don’t want you to take lightly.
Coaching has become quite a popular online subset and career path. Making coaches available at astounding and pretty overwhelming rates. In my opinion, the word ‘coach’ has also become quite diluted because there are people popping up left and right claiming that they’re coaches even though they don’t have the experience or the chops to prove it (some people are reallllllly good at marketing and sales, remember that.)
So before I jump into any specifics, above all the other advice I’m about to give, choosing the coach you intuitively align with is my top recco!
Let me share a little story about a client I’ve been working with as of recently.
He and I have truly nothing in common. He is left brain dominant, extremely analytical, and someone who’s choices I almost can’t even wrap my own head around because if you haven’t guessed it, I’m a right brainer through and through. Creativity is in my bones and my blood.
We live at opposite ends of the spectrum. However, on the surface level I checked the boxes, I’m a microdosing and psychedelic integration coach, I’m a female (important for him), I was able to start when he wanted to, I provide the level of support he was looking for, and I was in his budget. All boxes checked, but something told me that wasn’t why he chose me.
I’ve been curious as to why he chose specifically me for months, someone who literally doesn’t think the same way as him at all.
When I finally asked him why he chose me he explained that he truly admired my vibe and my own personal work I’ve done.
Not my credentials, or my pricing, or the lack of results I’ve gotten other clients because I’m a pretty new coach to the game, but genuinely the way I hold myself and his gut feeling toward me.
All things considered, you can’t really fake being drawn to someone’s vibe. And in this case, that’s why the relationship me and this client has is so valuable, me thinking and being different than him is part of it.
What’s Made Other People Choose Me
Because the whole vibe check thing is hard to measure, let me give you some other examples of why people have chosen to work with me.
“You just get it.”
It feels hard to explain this one, but I’ll do my best. The client that said this was much different than the client I explained above, she in fact felt like our alignment was almost eerie.
She even said “You feel like a younger version of me that I was so cruel to, and I want to repair that relationship with her.”
There’s something about resonance when it comes to coaching that is important to pay attention to. Pay attention to their background, life experiences, qualities about them that feel resonant to qualities of you. All of this is important in the coaching relationship because you don’t want to spend all of your time explaining to your coach your perspective of the world. You want them (to some degree) to get it.
‘Getting it’ opens up the dialogue and allows more depth and safety. If you feel like I understand something you’ve gone through, and you feel seen in that, then we can accomplish a lot of beautiful work together because you’re not going to need to explain yourself to me.
“I feel like you’re living your life in ways I want to live mine”
Would you take relationship advice from someone who’s been in multiple failed relationships? No. So why would you choose a coach that’s not operating at the level you desire in your own life?
There’s this concept that I love dearly called ‘expanders,’ coined from the To Be Magnetic program (highly recommend!) This term essentially explains someone who is embodying qualities that you want to embody, and they can help expand your consciousness to believe that it’s possible for you as well.
A coach is a perfect exploration of an expander in your life, someone who has struggled with what you’ve struggled with, and closely resembles you in a way that you feel aligned with. This is important, because sometimes even gender can impact this.
Say there’s a male that I admire and has qualities I want to embody and help expand me, but when I go to do that, my brain automatically harps on the fact that he’s a male and I’m a female and perhaps that’s why he’s been able to find success in places I want to find success.
You can see how this would cause me to attribute a big difference we share to something I want in my life, thus not expanding me. The more you can eliminate these blocks, the more likely you are to expand into what they’re embodying for you.
“I don’t feel safe to feel my emotions and wanted someone who could hold my hand through them.”
Emotions specifically can be, and sorry for my language, fucking terrifying. I speak first-handedly, there were moments throughout my own life where I thought my emotions would actually kill me. No exaggeration.
Whether that resonates for you or not, emotions can feel like they’re the riptide that will take you out to sea and spit you out in treacherous waters you don’t feel safe to swim through. I love a good ocean analogy.
One of the biggest things I offer to my coaching clients is a safe space to feel. When emotions come up, I’m standing there with the fully lit welcome sign beckoning them in, while also holding the awareness that this is not a comfy process.
If you’re looking for a safe space for emotional expression, I could very well be your girl.
And it’s not just about feeling the emotions, it’s about the cycle that emotions beg to go through that we often stunt before they get the opportunity to finish. At the end of each emotional cycle is relief and likely some data and wisdom that wants to be felt and heard. I deeply desire to help you get to that point, which is why many people choose to work with me.
“I was curious about psychedelics but didn’t want to explore them on my own without guidance.”
Not everyone is a psychonaut at heart. In fact, I’d be willing to bet more people are psychedelic-curious but apprehensive and unsure where to begin.
Rightfully so! The world of psychedelics is a leap into the unknown and for many who start to explore, a big paradigm shift.
I take a very conservative psychedelic approach because I don’t want anyone to journey and lose themselves in the process (ahem, what happened to me.)
Which is why I typically begin all my clients with microdosing coaching who are curious to begin the exploration. Microdosing allows for the relationship with plant medicine to begin gently, giving you an opportunity to again, wade into the water without fully catapulting yourself out of the universe’s bounds.
My approach to microdosing coaching, specifically microdosing psilocybin, is actually using this as a tool to deepen your exploration with your emotions as your guide. Once you can create this relationship with both the medicine and your own emotions, you’ll have the option to keep exploring or not, both are totally viable and welcomed.
This particular client never has had any desire to venture past low-doses of psychedelics and I have honored that whole-heartedly (and we have moved mountains together as far as developing a deeper level of emotional awareness and resilience).
“You are warm, welcoming, and so down to earth.”
Honestly, I’m so grateful that others have felt this energy from me, because it’s something I have cultivated over the years of entering the spiritual space, being repulsed by how elusive it felt, and creating my own interpretation and experience within it.
At the end of the day, when doing deep spiritual and emotional work, I’m not blind to the fact that we all still have social security numbers, and live a life with two feet on the ground.
My goal always is to help others build the bridge between the spiritual and the physical in a way that feels good for them, allowing them to tap into their soul and authenticity without being lost in the sauce.
In Conclusion….
You don’t need a coach to do this work, especially because free or other affordable options exist aplenty for you to tap into. But we’re definitely nice to have if you want to catalyze change and explore intentionally, and especially when exploring the world of emotions.😉
(Or if you’re looking for a deep connection with someone who gets you, that you don’t have to explain yourself to over and over again while feeling like a broken record.)
If we haven’t meet yet, hi! I’m Alexa Joyal—emotional resilience and psychedelic integration coach for people want to live a more full life. If you like my content and you want more of Feel Trip in your life, here are a few ways you can connect with me:
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Enlist me as your coach. One-on-one microdosing and emotional resiliency coaching for the highly- sensitive or highly-avoidant, if you’re interested in having a mentor to help you build your toolbox to make emotions your superpower and live the most authentic version of you, then book your free intro call.
To get in touch with me directly email alexarayjoyal@gmail.com. Have a lovely day!
