Sarah Withey

Everyone knows the saying that you can’t force a square peg into a round hole. Our modern world is very much designed and built for those round pegs to slip simply and easily into the round holes of life. So what about all those magnificent square pegs who struggle every day with every thing and just cannot fit in no matter how they try? Well, we don’t want them to lose those unique edges, those extraordinary qualities that make them who they are. There are things we can do together to make adaptations to their environment and how they interact with it to enable them to slide through those institutional round holes a little more easily.

So how did I get here doing this? Following on from a successful career in the NHS in critical care, teaching and management I trained as a life coach, NLP practitioner and executive function (EF) coach. My coaching is now dedicated to supporting neurodivergent individuals with their executive functioning and life skills development.

As an executive function coach I support children, adolescents and adults to understand where their difficulties lie and help them develop those all important EF skills such as planning, organisation, getting started and staying on task, impulse control, adaptability, resilience and emotional control.

We now understand that EF skills develop over the first 25 years of life. A delay in their development is often associated with neurodivergence such as ADHD and autism but, in fact, everyone has a unique EF profile of strengths and challenges and I work with individuals with and without a diagnosis.

One of the most helpful adjuncts for parents is to make changes in their approach to supporting their children (and I know this from first hand experience). I offer parent coaching which can be invaluable in the first instance or in parallel to individual coaching for children, adolescents and young adults.

My coaching focuses on developing self management and self regulation skills in my clients giving them the opportunity and the confidence to function more effectively and independently wherever they are.

You may have heard of the four pillars of health; nutrition, exercise, sleep and stress management and my coaching is built on these which, alongside developing executive function skills, will maximise an individuals health and well-being and enable them to achieve their goals.