Katie Phillips is one of those women you could just talk to all day; she’s like a best friend but with a wealth of personal experience – some wonderful and some heartbreaking. Combining that with her training she’s now a life coach with a big difference, helping women across the country to overcome their demons and live life to the full. So here’s what she had to say…

What do you do?

I’m a transformational coach – I call myself the ‘self love’ mentor because I believe that the key to change and help is self love. There’s usually a belief system surrounding the ideas of ‘I am not enough or not worthy enough’. It’s more than life coaching, it’s about looking much deeper at what’s going on in someone’s life, looking at why they believe certain things about themselves. My work is to transform those beliefs into something that helps their every day.

How did you get into it?

I had to learn to love myself. It started with me, my own personal and spiritual journey, which then lead me to training in that arena. The thread of coaching that I do is based on humanistic psychology – I go back to childhood programming. So it was important that I had to heal my own sense of self first. I used to be really depressed, anxious, stressed, and in pretty unhealthy, codependent, drama-fuelled relationships and I didn’t know I could change it. I thought you were dealt a lot in life and that was it. My mum took her life when I was 21 and I just thought that was my life story until I realized I could change. That was a miracle to me so I knew I had to help other people. I only really work with women, I used to work with men as well, but I know women, so I find it more effective.

What do women come to you with?

Women often feel like a bit of an emotional yoyo and like they have no control over that, they also often have a people pleasing side to them and are looking after others to their own detriment. Frequently they have volatile relationships and can be martyrs – working so hard to do everything for everyone else and generating a lot of anger at not getting their own needs met. They are often awesome, successful people who always smile and from the outside seem happy, but inside really desire peace and connection and just to know themselves. I seem to attract women just like me; I was that woman.

What made you change?

I could see myself heading in the same direction as my mum – the relationships, the anxiety and the depression. Most people who have a moment of change have a moment of rock bottom, and I had that – closing the doors, closing the blinds in the middle of the day, I was a single parent with a small child and could see myself becoming my mother and I could see this generational pattern. I think because I had a child I didn’t want that for him. I didn’t know what to do, but I knew I had to change and with that decision things started to fall into place. Eat Pray Love became my bible, I had counseling, I listened to music and guided visualisations – one thing after another showed me how to change. It went in stages. I hit bottom at 30, rock bottom at 35, and now I am about to turn 40. I tried a lot and slowly discovered what worked well and lasted.

What one piece of advice would you give to women wanting to change their lives?

It would be the importance of feeling and expressing your way to the other side of a problem rather than thinking your way through it – that’s where the deepest healing happens.