About Me
I built this practice because I kept seeing what people-facing work does to the people who do it. And I kept watching organisations fail to respond in any way that actually helped.
The woman behind the work
I am an occupational trauma recovery coach. I work with individuals, teams and organisations where staff carry the human cost of their work. People who support others through difficulty, crisis, loss and complexity. People whose jobs ask more of them than most, and whose wellbeing is routinely the last thing anyone thinks to ask about.
About Lydia
How I Came to This Work
I have worked in and alongside health, social care and public sector organisations for over twenty years. In that time I have had a front-row seat to something that is rarely named clearly: the way that sustained, people-facing work quietly damages the people who do it.
I have sat with nurses who could not explain why they dreaded going in on a Monday. Social workers who knew exactly what every family on their caseload needed and could not get out of bed to deliver it. Paramedics who could stay composed through any emergency in the field and could not handle a quiet Tuesday at home. Teachers who had given everything to their students and had nothing left. Managers who had held their teams through impossible periods and were the last ones anyone thought to check on.
None of them were struggling because they were weak. None of them had made poor choices or lost their way. They were carrying more than any person should carry without support, and they were doing it inside systems where asking for help can feel like a professional failing.
What struck me, over and over, was not just the scale of it. It was the gap. The gap between what formal provision offered, an EAP referral, an occupational health assessment, a return-to-work plan, and what people actually needed. Language for what they were experiencing. Space to process it without reliving it. A structured, supported path back to themselves and to their work.
Nothing was designed to fill that gap. So I built something that was.
What Occupational Trauma Recovery Coaching Is
Occupational trauma is what happens when the demands of people-facing work consistently exceed the support available to manage them. It is burnout that has gone deeper than exhaustion. It is the moral injury of knowing what good practice looks like and being unable to deliver it. It is the slow erosion of professional identity that comes from caring, year after year, without adequate recovery.
It is not a clinical diagnosis. It does not require a dramatic incident or a formal breakdown. It is the accumulation of ordinary professional experience in extraordinary conditions. And it is very common, in health, in social care, in education, in emergency services, in the legal profession, in charities. Wherever people carry responsibility for others under sustained pressure.
Occupational trauma recovery coaching is the structured, evidence-informed response to that experience. Not therapy. Not a generic wellbeing programme. A specific, purposeful form of coaching that creates space for practitioners to name what has happened to them, understand how it has affected them, and find their way back to sustainable, values-aligned practice.
It works before staff reach crisis point. Alongside occupational health, providing the layer of support that OH is not designed to deliver. And after OH discharge, when someone has been cleared to return but does not yet feel ready. That gap between fit to return and genuinely recovered is where much of the damage is done. It is also where this work makes the most difference.
Occupational trauma is not a personal failing. It is a predictable consequence of caring work carried without adequate support.
Recovery is possible. It does not require you to relive what happened. It requires the right kind of space, at the right pace, with someone who understands both the experience and the world in which it happened.
How I Work
My practice is grounded in real knowledge of the organisations and systems my clients work within. I am not an external consultant arriving with a programme. I am a practitioner who has spent twenty years inside these systems, who knows the language and the pressures and the culture, and who has built a way of working that begins from where people actually are.
Every engagement begins with what the person or group brings. I work at the pace the person needs, not the pace a process prefers. Nothing is required in terms of disclosure. The direction of travel is always forward, towards recovery, reconnection and return, not back towards what was most painful.
The ANCHOR framework underpins all three strands of the practice. It moves through Acknowledge, Nervous System, Connect, Hold, Own Your Story, and Restore. It provides structure without rigidity, and direction without prescription. It has been developed specifically for people-facing professionals and draws on ACT, narrative therapy and strengths-based coaching.
This is coaching, not therapy.
I do not diagnose or treat clinical mental health conditions. If the work surfaces needs that go beyond the scope of coaching, I support the person to access the right clinical services. What I offer is a structured, trauma-informed thinking partnership for professionals who are ready to begin the process of recovery.
Who I Work With
I work with individuals, teams and organisations across the sectors where occupational trauma is most present and least well addressed.
For individuals, I offer one-to-one coaching through the Return to Practice Coaching strand: for practitioners at any stage of their experience with burnout, moral injury or occupational trauma, whether they are currently off sick, recently returned, or still showing up but knowing something is not right.
For groups, the Staff Recovery Programme brings together small cohorts of up to eight practitioners doing similar work, creating a structured, confidential space to process what they have been carrying, together. It is not a support group. It is a coached, purposeful programme with a clear direction of travel.
For organisations, the Trauma-Informed Manager Coaching programme equips line managers and team leaders to hold distressed teams, recognise occupational trauma in the people around them, and take care of themselves in the process. Because the people expected to hold everyone else are almost never held themselves.
I work across NHS and healthcare, social care, education, emergency services, charities and third sector organisations, public sector and local government, and the legal profession. The specific pressures vary. The human experience of carrying too much for too long is the same. If you lead people who do people-facing work, this practice was built with your organisation in mind.
Book a Discovery Call
If any of this has resonated, I would welcome a conversation.
A discovery call is free, takes thirty minutes, and requires nothing from you in advance. It is simply a conversation about what is happening in your organisation and whether this is the right fit.