Our main objective here at the National Coach Academy is to enable aspiring coaches to reach their full professional potential. One of the most effective ways to educate students about the world of coaching is by offering them a window into the world of real, practicing coaches and showing them all the different ways coaches make a difference in the lives of their clients.
We hope today’s interview adds another insightful glimpse into the dynamic world of coaching.
Today we are interviewing Nora Helbich. Nora is an Intuitive, Healer, Coach & Author based in Albuquerque, NM.
NCA: Can you describe your coaching practice and the kinds of clients you typically work with?
Nora: My coaching practice is a combination of intuitive healing, coaching, and hypnosis. I could feel the energy of pain in the body. By doing some hands-on work and studying some energy healing, I’m able to help people remove and release the pain: emotional, mental, physical, spiritual. In this awakening as my intuitive opening happened and I began studying hypnosis and a number of different modalities, I found that I have a unique way of coaching that blends all of these things and helps bring to light some of the barriers that clients don’t see right out.
I try to identify the basics of coaching: where do they want to go and helping them to determine goals that are realistic. Because I’m bringing the intuitive piece to it, they typically gain an insight from the get-go about the block or the barrier that immediately creates awareness. As you know, awareness is everything because awareness is where you can make the change.
I work with primarily women, though I do work with some men. I do a combination of a number of modalities. The women I work with tend to have trauma in their lives. Sometimes dysfunctional households, sometimes physical/sexual/substance abuse kinds of trauma.
I find that with my coaching style, I am able to impact people in very short order. Meaning, people do not necessarily work with me for six months, although they could. People typically move through big leaps and jumps right from the beginning. I’m able to usually help people reorient and meet their goals in six to eight sessions. The difference is that I’m bringing the intuitive healing to it and we use a number of different tools. We’re not just using one coaching methodology, but really addressing all of the barriers: emotional, mental, physical and spiritual. Once I do that, it seems to move very quickly. People have really profound changes in short order.
People often don’t understand the value of coaching and that they are reticent to invest in their own healing. They think that life is supposed to be hard and they’re supposed to be in pain or it’s supposed to be difficult. That’s why it’s so rewarding when you can get those people to invest in themselves
NCA: In working with your clients, what would you say is the most rewarding part of that process and on the flip side of that, what is the most challenging aspect of the work that you do?
Nora: I often will work with clients who have exhausted other resources. They’ve either gone the mental health route, the analyst route, the doctor route, maybe even their clergy. They get some help and have some success, but then they come to me throwing their hands up in the air going, “I’m just giving this a shot because nothing is working.” For these people who have lost hope, it’s rewarding to see that restored and then for them to see and recognize significant changes in literally one, two, or three weeks. Sometimes even at the end of the first session, they’re already talking about how different they feel.
We also do a lot with grief coaching and counseling. The biggest challenge I find is that women, in particular, have a history or an ingrained programming of “Suck it up. This is what everybody goes through. Everybody has struggles. If you’re overwhelmed, then you’re weak.” What we’re finding is that the people with these poor programs and patterns of thinking will tend to mitigate or negate their ability to heal because they really believe that’s what the status quo of life should be. They’ve lived that all their life and maybe that’s all they’ve ever seen.
What I find is that people often don’t understand the value of coaching and that they are reticent to invest in their own healing. They think that life is supposed to be hard and they’re supposed to be in pain or it’s supposed to be difficult. That’s why it’s so rewarding when you can get those people to invest in themselves and they see in short order how dynamically and drastically their life changes and how they become empowered with the ability to make change. That’s the gift. That’s the gift in the work.
Also with grief, too. People don’t understand the process of grief and grief healing. They think everybody has grief so you just have to suck it up and you just go through it.
NCA: Can you think of a mentor or a coach in your own career who was the most vital to your success and in what ways did this mentor help you thrive in your career?
Nora: Because I was pulling from a bunch of different areas and modalities, I was very fortunate to have some esteemed teachers. I think I gained the most from Dr. Mona Lisa Schulz. She helped me to understand my skills and my gifts and how to use them on a more fine-tuned level.
My hypnosis teacher was a wonderful mentor in the fact that there was no limit set. “You could do this, you could do this, you could do this. Do it. You got it. You’re doing it great.”
There was a lot of really positive reinforcement for the expansion of the work through these teachers. I don’t know that there was one in particular that was more profound or impactful than others, but each brought a very unique aspect to my own professional growth.
NCA: One of the most common challenges new coaches face is self-doubt. Some coaches call it Imposter Syndrome, where early on they feel somehow inadequate to take on the role of coach. What is one piece of advice that you would give to somebody who is in the beginning stage of their coaching career and dealing with these doubts in their mind?
Nora: The first part of it is to listen to it. I’ve had a lot of people come to me because they were working with people in the past who were not comfortable, or not highly skilled or experienced. What they got was thus inadequate. Coaches were doing some of their own work in those sessions. Coaches weren’t confident so the client ultimately didn’t feel confident with them.
What I’ve found is, for people who work with a coach that was not very helpful to them, that makes it rough for the rest of us because now they don’t want to even do coaching again.
Sometimes I think people get really excited about wanting to help people. I think that’s a beautiful thing and I think that’s what we’re all here to do. But it’s important to know when you’re in a place to do the work and when you’re not. Whether you need your own work to do before you start working with someone else because you’re coming from your own place of pain, insecurity, lack of confidence. It projects. Energetically it comes off before anything else.
