VALUES BASED® COUNSELING
with Kelly Patrick Gerling, Ph.D.

Serving the Seattle Area

Home
About Kelly

LIFE STORY COACHING

Kelly's Quest

Key to each person's worldview is a timeline and a story—a life story. The central character in our life story is the self. You. But the particular story you've been living, the way you remember your past, the very goals you seek and the unsolved problems you struggle with, may be real and relevant only as part of your life story up to now. You can author a new story for your life. Here's why:

At some time in a person's life, external circumstances or inner stirrings call for change. Those who care to understand how their lifestyle emerged from early experiences can examine and analyze their story in light of current problems, current goals, your stage in your life journey, and the circumstances in the real world.

This process of Life Story Coaching provides you as a client a way of engaging in depth introspection. Based on the methods of depth psychology, and the latest insights into how people structure stories, this process helps you gain a perspective on the very story that forms your goals, defines what is and is not a problem, and informs your important decisions. Such a view allows you a perspective from outside your own story. From the “wisdom of outsight” you may choose to create a new narrative that defines your new goals, informs your new plans, and generates your fulfillment in the next stage of your life. From this exercise, you clarify the larger framework for your life journey: your destiny.

Through an analysis of daydreams and night-dreams; long, nearly forgotten aspirations, and current circumstances—and especially your most intense, heart-felt desires—this process helps you to unfold a new plan that represents the fulfillment of your destiny in life. You'll experience a process of reevaluating your values in light of outer and inner callings for going into a new direction.

The process involves not only a series of in-depth, guided, structured discussions, but also the reading of key books. For example, the book, The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho is a classic, popular book that addresses the issue of personal destiny through a simple and entertaining novel.

Here is the question this service is designed to address:

What is the unique contribution for you to make, such that you would be pursuing your interests, applying your skills and knowledge, and offering to solve problems of others in the real world?

The diagram to the left shows a way of thinking about the question of how to find your unique contribution—your mission.

In answering this question, you may develop a new vision of your future, and potential new means for fulfilling your values and those of others with whom you would work and for whom you would serve.

What is at stake is the rest of your life—how you envision your future; how you strive for that future; and how to achieve it. Life Story Coaching provides a means to do that through re-examining your life story up to now, and revising it according to your own values, dreams and realistic aspirations.

METHODS
Depth Psychology
NLP

Hypnotherapy

Conflict Resolution

Values

Healing

Spirituality

Conceptual Blending

Synthesis

TYPES OF SERVICE
Individual Counseling
Family Counseling
Life Story Coaching
Mediation
Physician Coaching
Leadership Consulting

GETTING STARTED
FAQs
Appointments
Contact Kelly

RESOURCES
Books and Tapes
Links