Heather Gray, MSW
Burnout Specialist, Personal Development Expert
Working virtually, I offer clinically informed coaching to individuals and teams who find themselves in personal or professional development crisis.
I’m a clinically trained coach with 20 years of experience. I help people build lives they don’t want to run away from.
Back in 2015, I owned a brick and mortar private therapy practice but I was living with career ending burnout. It’s hard to run a successful business when you are decreasing your working hours and endlessly hoping for cancellations.
I stared my own burnout in the eyes and in a painstaking process, closed my business, moved away from offering therapy. I started a new coaching business and began to use my experience to help people through making changes without drama, fight or flight, or endless processing.
I am looking forward to helping you, or your team, too.
Here’s what I know to be true:
Burnout doesn’t stay relegated to work or to workplace hours.
It doesn’t only affect the people identifying it as their experience. When one person is burned out, the whole family feels it. When one team member is affected, there is a ripple effect in the company.
Burnout catches us when we aren’t looking.
It’s so sneaky the first phase is often called “the honeymoon phase”. We think we’re in the lives we want, the work is lighting us up, and our teams are filled with eager, high-achieving individuals. Then, the passion begins to be experienced as chronic stress. Solutions aren’t obvious. It’s hard to ask for help and it’s hard to know how to help.
Burnout isn't just reserved for the emotionally unaware.
You can know the value of your own emotional experience, or that of your team’s. You can trust and honor those feelings, but still find yourself unsure as to what you are actually supposed to do with them or about them.
Well-intentioned and informed leaders can often be hit with plaguing self-doubt.
If you’re the manager of someone struggling, you might find yourself wanting to help but feeling unsure of where your role ends and theirs begins.
Our thoughts influence and determine our behavior.
To act differently, we need to do more than think differently. We need improved self-awareness and renewed self-acceptance. It’s this new understanding that will change thoughts and empower changes in behavior.
Individually, I coach you to identify the hidden and buried stories that are getting in the way of the life and work you want to have.
When working with teams, I use consultation, coaching, and training to dig out the misguided assumptions that are interfering with communication, decision making, and emotional well being.