The Blurb
Carey, founder of Careybelle, has been working as a life coach for 5 years. With a wealth of life experience and various work avenues that have allowed her to home in on personal development, she describes herself as ‘a coach, parent, and full-hearted human’ whose work is about ‘helping you come back to yourself: to what matters, to what’s true, underneath the noise, the pressure, and the never-ending list of things to do.’
Carey says, “If you’re full-hearted, a little worn out, and quietly craving change — welcome,” and my goodness, does that resonate!
There’s so much noise in the world, so much uncertainty, and so many new ideas surfacing daily, and we’re expected to navigate it all entirely on our own. As a woman in her mid-thirties, I am constantly feeling the push and pull of pressures (from endless sources) as to what and how I should live my life. My days are spent passively Googling things like ‘Should I freeze my eggs/leave my job/move to a different continent/become a Tradwife/start an OnlyFans?’
I spent a lot of time in therapy throughout my late twenties, so I didn’t really see the point in coaching. Surely, I’d done the necessary work, and the rest was up to me? Enter Carey…
The Process
To start, Carey sends me a detailed questionnaire to fill out. I spill my guts and hit send. I’ve taken the ‘full-hearted’ part to heart, because if I’m going to do this, I’m doing it properly. Afterwards, I ask Carey about the questionnaire because (not to give away any of her secrets) it seemed to present some similar questions scattered throughout, “If you want to ask yourself something important, you should always do it 3 times,” she says, “The first is your head answering, then your heart, then you’re forced to dig even deeper.”
She gives me the low-down: it’s my session, so I can stop her and ask questions at any point, and she’ll send me any resources I need to continue the work further after we’re done, so all I need to do is be present. We will work for two and a half hours, and every time we come up against something new, it will be like “turning over a little stone”. Hopefully, by the end of it, all the scattered pieces will be presenting a little clearer, and we can take some positive, clear steps forward.
We do some practical exercises that involve a bit of self-reflection and a bit of word play. Usually, I’d meet these with a slight eye roll, sabotaging the system by attempting to figure out how the method works before it’s used on me. However, Carey presents these ideas clearly and unpretentiously, so instead of trying to crack her code, I end up immersed in it and (this sounds a bit clichéd) learning a lot about myself.
Throughout the session, I’m trying to stay present, but the writer in me also wants to jot down everything Carey says. She’s a very grounded presence and is able to take my rambles and turn them back at me in a way that makes far more sense than I could make of them. The session is full of little nuggets that I want to write down and stick on my fridge.
We cover a lot in the two and a half hours we spend on Zoom, leaving (as promised) no stone unturned. Carey says that one of the differences between being a therapist and a coach is that coaches can push a little more. We do some light visualisations, and by simply externalising some of my demons (my inner critic, especially), I have a little breakthrough. Sometimes, all you need is a mirror to ask the right questions and steer you towards a better perspective.
Carey also stresses that you need to find the right coach for you, someone you gel well with. It’s also important to say that, for me personally, I wouldn’t have been able to have these deep conversations with Carey if I hadn’t done the work in the therapy chair years before. Carey says that, though on occasion, she does do deeper work (we’re talking childhood trauma), she isn’t a therapist – what she does is provide a more proactive approach than talk therapy. Coaching and therapy are two completely different approaches to self-development that complement each other.
The Results
Carey’s sessions aren’t rigorously structured the same way every time; they’re based on the person and their needs, so the exercises we use in my session are based on a snapshot of where I am in my life right now. We decide on setting some small daily goals, based on what we’ve discovered my core values are (peace, creativity and joy, if you were wondering.)
Normally, at the end of a session with any sort of life-improvement professional, they’ll say something like ‘The rest is up to you’, which often has the opposite effect on me, as the pressure instantly ripples upwards. Carey, on the other hand, offers a more palatable approach, “If you’re trying to get into the habit of doing yoga every day [for instance] there’s no point in telling yourself you’ll do an hour every day, because it’s not achievable”, she says, “I’d much rather you got into the right habit first by rolling your mat out every morning and sitting on it for 5 minutes.”
I left the session feeling, if I’m honest, a little frazzled, as there was a lot to process. There were moments in our session that I’m sure will end up etched into my long-term memory. I’d recommend not scheduling anything too heavy for the hours after your first session with Carey, to give yourself time to digest it all.
In the following weeks, I feel the ripples of the work softly impacting my day-to-day, reminding me to focus on the things that matter.
The Details
A one-off deep dive starts at £200, and a 12-week course is £1080
