Welcome to Becoming Ourselves
ABOUT PSYCHOLOGICAL TRAUMA & HEALING

Julia Vaughan Smith is an author, reader, teacher and speaker about the impact of developmental trauma and its healing. Her aim is to help people to become fully themselves, free from the entanglements from the past. If they are practitioners in coaching or therapy, additionally to use that in their practice.

What Julia offers
​SERVICES

Talks to book groups/writing groups/womens’ groups
FREE - ONLINE - UP TO 1 HR

Publications
IN ​PRINT AND KINDLE

Daughters: How to Untangle Yourself from Your Mother
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Julia's most recent book is written for daughters who are/were in difficult or challenging relationships with their mother, and for those coaches, counsellors and therapists who work with such daughters. 
AIM: To help readers untangle the relationship and become their own loving mother.

Coaching and Trauma: Moving beyond the survival self

Until very recently, this was the only book that brings trauma awareness to coaching. Many readers have expressed how valuable it has been to their work and themselves. For online workshops and blogs associated with coaching please visit  www.coachingandtrauma.com. 
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Therapist
​into Coach
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Julia wrote her first book in 2005 for counsellors and therapists who wished to become coaches. It is still used in training programmes to this day. Julia says "I would write it differently now with the benefit of a further 17 years of practice but I am thrilled that readers still find it useful." 

Book reviews 

This is an extraordinary book. It has transformed the lives of so many of my friends and colleagues who have grappled with, and been impacted by, the complexities of their relationships with their mothers. It has brought them understanding where there was resentment, anger, where they were constantly trying & it was never enough, or where constant irritation and tension was the norm - and a wide range of other not-so-healthy-or-pleasant emotions and relationships with their mothers. For some they are now on the journey to much greater inner peace - a relief for them personally - and consequently how they are with their own families, children, friends, colleagues is changing, for the better. An overriding relief for many was to know they were not alone in daughter-mother relationship complexities and they are so appreciative of Julia Vaughan Smith, the author, guiding them  with kindness, knowledge and insights, and her sharing her own experiences along the way.
Gillian Biscoe AM, Adj Professor
​ABOUT: Daughters: How to Untangle Yourself from Your Mother
​This is a hat trick from Julia Vaughan Smith – her third book, and the best text I’ve ever read on the mother-daughter relationship. Drawing honestly on her own experience, Julia leads the way from the heart - by navigating, without blame, the entangled dynamic between mothers and daughters. 
 
She encourages the reader by being generous and compassionate to both parties and this means that healing is far more likely.  Julia takes complex concepts and presents them in bite sized sections – enabling the reader to put the ideas into practice.  
 
Lucid - Empowering - Releasing - Generous - Compassionate - Healing
Valerie James, Independent Consultant: Corporate Psychologist
​ABOUT: Daughters: How to Untangle Yourself from Your Mother
There have been other books on the daughter-mother dynamic but this one is unique in neither demonising nor justifying maternal behaviour. The book provides a calm and penetrating insight into the lasting impact of a daughter’s connection with her mother. And if you are personally entangled with your mother, how do you free yourself? Read this astonishing book to find out.
Jenny Rogers, Executive Coach, Author of ‘Are you Listening?’
ABOUT: Daughters: How to Untangle Yourself from Your Mother
This is a must-read book for all coaches who want to become 'trauma informed', both for themselves and for the benefit of their coaching clients. Julia guides us through a very readable and easy to understand explanation of how the 'here and now' of common coaching dilemmas such as imposter syndrome, bullying, stress, burnout, inner critic, stuckness etc can be connected in some way with the 'there and then' of some past trauma...
Yvonne Flynn
 ABOUT: Coaching and Trauma
This book fills an important gap in coach development that many of us didn't know we had! It helped me make sense of what I often noticed in the coaching room, but hadn't felt confident enough to raise with clients without straying into therapeutic territory. Since reading the book, where appropriate, I have been working with the models and approaches that the author suggests. I can now report that it has been nothing short of transformative for my work with clients, for my development as a coach, and for my personal growth. Read this book to keep you on the edge of you development seat, to keep you honest as a coach, and to keep your practice in rude health.
Maria Fay, Executive Coach
 ABOUT: Coaching and Trauma
This is a hugely important book. If as a coach you think trauma is off-limits and belongs firmly in the therapeutic world, then please read this. This book shows us how often trauma is present in the coaching room. If we are blind to that, we might be doing our clients a great disservice, perhaps unintentionally colluding with survival driven behaviours. We can be very clear that coaching is not therapy and still recognise how a client's trauma history might inform the work we do in coaching. An invaluable book.
Zen Reader
 ABOUT: Coaching and Trauma
I am in the middle of a specialist, therapist to coach training course and Julia Vaughan Smith’s Therapist into Coach is one of the course core texts. I found the book engaging right from the start where the author describes the potential reasons and motivations for therapists to move towards coaching. I felt almost uncomfortably seen; as if she knew what was going on in my mind.

I have ADHD and struggle to engage with many of the standard, coaching texts on theory. There is something about Julia’s understanding of her target audience, and the relational way in which it is written, made it much easier for me to stay focused. I found the examples of coaching conversations very helpful in demonstrating how therapy and coaching do differ, complimenting the chapter that explicitly describes the key differences.
Ms. A Williamson
ABOUT: Therapist ​into Coach
I found the book engaging right from the start where the author describes the potential reasons and motivations for therapists to move towards coaching. I felt almost uncomfortably seen; as if she knew what was going on in my mind. I have ADHD and struggle to engage with many of the standard, coaching texts on theory. There is something about Julia’s understanding of her target audience, and the relational way in which it is written, made it much easier for me to stay focused. I found the examples of coaching conversations very helpful in demonstrating how therapy and coaching do differ, complimenting the chapter that explicitly describes the key differences. This is essential reading for therapists who are moving towards coaching.
Amanda Williamson, participant on Therapist to Coach training programme
​ABOUT: Therapist ​into Coach
This book has been on the recommended reading list of my EMCC Global Therapist to Coach Senior Practitioner in Coaching Programme for many years. It provides a perspective of the differences -and similarities- of coaching and counselling. Crucially, there is a really valuable chapter on the traps therapists can fall into when they get 'stuck' as a coach and fall back into 'therapeutic mode'.
Dr Trish Turner.  Managing Director of Therapist to Coach Ltd
ABOUT: Therapist ​into Coach

"It is easier to try to be better than you are, than to be who you are."
Marion Woodman, Coming Home to Myself

"Be patient toward all that is unresolved in your heart." 
Rainer Maria Rilke

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