We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Christina Carlson a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Christina, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What do you think Corporate America gets wrong in your industry?

If coaching is about supporting people (which I believe it is), then it needs to be deeper than setting and reaching goals. True healing and progress can really only happen when we start to listen to our bodies and get in touch with ourselves and our own intuition. Practicing believing we are enough, as we are.

This is difficult in coaching in corporate culture because it’s focus is on productivity, and getting “better” for the sake of being able to do more, accomplish more, be more. Within this culture that productivity often comes at the expense of our bodies.

I think that the biggest power coaching has to offer is in being supported by someone who already believes in your worth and value now, and can support you to see and value yourself.

If our culture, particularly corporate America is going to address the mental health crisis, it needs to start looking at coaching and therapy as necessary support structures, not for productivity, but for the collective health of our world.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

I love a good intro! My name is Christina Carlson and I am an embodiment and Life Coach. If you have no idea what that means, I get it. Allow me to explain. I support people to have healthier relationships with their work, relationships, and their bodies. So some of the issues I support clients with are low confidence, second guessing themselves all the time, decision freeze, chronic over-giving in relationships and work and over responsibility (taking care of everyone’s needs besides their own.
I see all of my clients as powerful and capable people who by the end of working with me are able to see that in themselves as well, move towards things they want with confidence, and take up the space they deserve in their lives.
I focus on compassion, and practices that keep my clients focused on their own sensations, naming feelings, and connecting with themselves in a way that feels good to them.
I’m a very curious person and am always learning and wanting to know more. My podcast ‘Bitches, Witches, and Queers’ is a space where I share incredible conversations about what it means to move through life being human, moving away from shame and living with deep confidence.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

My coaching business started out with a pretty narrow niche. I was given the advice that the more niche I was the easier it would be to gain an audience. This was not bad advice at all, but it ended up boxing me in a little. My primary work has been with people navigating the aftermath of a faith transition (or deconversion). A pretty big portion of my clients are still in this category, but I have an equal amount of clients who experienced similar negative impacts just from how they were conditioned in our culture. I hate to be polarizing here, but I’m going to be: dogmatic religion has similar traumatic impacts as patriarchal programming, especially in those socialized as women, and queer folk. All that to say, my podcast and much of my work previously centered the exreligious crowd, but has shifted to center anyone who is wanting to reconnect with themselves, heal shame, and live from confidence in who they truly are, not just who they’re told they ‘should’ be.
My podcast used to be called Religious Renegade and featured stories of deconversion, and now, it is titled Bitches, Witches, and Queers, and honestly, it centers being human, and what it means to value ourselves in systems that don’t tend to reflect that value back to us.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

When I first started my business I had this idea that I needed to ‘be professional’ in how I showed up on social media. In theory that may sound like good advice. Don’t get me wrong there is a lot of value in getting dressed for my zoom calls and caring about my background, and being fully present, etc. I however had equated being professional with not being myself. I showed up on social media in a way that I later realized was quite performative. Trying to prove that i deserved to be in this industry. Honestly I just did not know better, but it’s something I have to remind myself to be kind to my younger self about. There are many gifts to being in this industry, and one of them is that I get to relearn over and over again the beautiful lessons I work on with my clients. Ultimately within the coaching industry, I am selling a transformation, sure, and also, I am selling time with me. That goes a lot more smoothly when I show up as me to begin with. Go figure :D

Contact Info:

• Website: www.christinamcarlson.com
• Instagram: @christinacarlsonlifecoach
• Facebook: @christinacarlsonlifecoach
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/ChristinaCarlsonLifeCoaching

Image Credits
Josiah Carlson – Photographer Eli Jorgensen – Artist