For education and social sciences students navigating the internal conflicts of academic life.
You came to study. What you didn't expect was the internal war.
Cultural displacement. Imposter syndrome. The weight of expectation—from family, from yourself, from your institution. The voice that says you don't belong in academic spaces. The feeling that you're faking it, that everyone else understands something you've missed.
For students in education and social sciences, there's an additional layer: questions about positionality, reflexivity, ethics. Am I the right person to research this? Do I have the authority? Who am I in relation to this work?
These aren't problems to overcome. They're negotiations waiting to happen.
Using the frameworks from Your Civil War Within, we work with these voices as governance, not as enemies. You learn to negotiate with them. To understand what they're protecting, what they're afraid of, and what treaty might actually hold.
The internal conflicts that show up in PhD/MA study—especially in education and social sciences—are real. And they're also portable. The negotiation skills you learn here transfer everywhere: to your writing, your research, your relationships, your sense of yourself.
If you're neurodivergent: ADHD and autism show up differently in academic spaces. Executive function challenges, sensory overwhelm, social communication patterns—these aren't character flaws. They're part of how your brain negotiates the world. We work with that reality, not against it.
We meet on an ongoing basis (typically weekly or bi-weekly, adjusted to your needs). Each session starts where you are: What's the internal conflict showing up right now? What voices are competing for governance? What negotiation needs to happen?
We use the frameworks to map the territory, understand what each voice is protecting, and build toward a treaty—not a solution where one side wins, but an agreement that holds across multiple truths.
You'll also work with structured journaling as part of the coaching (see Journal Writing Coaching if you want to deepen that practice separately).
I specialise in working with students in education and social sciences because these fields ask something different of you than STEM disciplines do. You're not just mastering content—you're learning to position yourself within power structures, to interrogate your own biases and beliefs, to hold complexity and contradiction as valid.
That's harder. And it requires a different kind of internal negotiation. I've been working in these spaces for 30 years. I understand the specific conflicts they create.
The result: you move through your PhD/MA as yourself, not in spite of yourself. You learn to negotiate with the voices that hold you back. And you build treaties that last.
Book a discovery call to discuss your situation and how coaching might help. We'll talk about what's showing up for you right now, what internal conflicts are most pressing, and whether we're a good fit to work together.