Mallory Woods Youth Coaching at a Glance:
"About" Summary:
Mallory Woods Youth Coaching* provides one-on-one, remote coaching for youth ages 9-19, with a dedication to connection, collaboration and combining innovative supportive modalities.
Mallory specializes in working with youth, LGBTQ+ matters and themes surrounding identity. Additionally, Mx. Woods is a keynote speaker, educator and facilitator who, as a former youth in Government care, speaks as an advocate for local and federal youth empowerment. Mallory Woods Youth Coaching is dedicated to creating low-barrier support that welcomes youth and families as they are. |
*Youth coaching is a branch of life coaching focused on supporting youth.
The Difference Between Coaching & Therapy
Coaching1. Coachee. 2. The coach helps the coachee access their own wisdom, resources, and strengths. 3. The coachee is looking to build or rebuild their life and self, perhaps after crisis. 4. Focused on the possibilities of the future and changing current events. 5. The coach facilitates access to the coachee's inner wisdom to reveal healing, growth, and resourcefulness. |
Therapy1. Client. 2. The therapist gives advice to the client. 3. The client is in immediate crisis or working through crisis. 4. Works mostly with the past. 5. The therapist is consulted and suggests courses of action best suited to the client. |
Youth coaching is a branch of life coaching dedicated to those impossible feeling years of adolescents.
The Origin Story of
Mallory Woods Youth Coaching:
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"At Sixteen, I was homeless and mentally ill. During this time, my peers and I struggled to connect to supports who , it felt, could understand the challenging realities of our lives. |
What Makes Mallory Woods Youth Coaching Special?
When it feels like it is you against the world, as it often does during adolescents, the repetition of feeling alienated by analytical or unrelatable professionals can be harmful. Often, this disconnect can make navigating the terrain of professional help a bit of a dance. Both parties are looking for common understanding and, with time, it can be achieved and connection can begin to grow. However, for many pairings, especially those with significant generational gaps, that disconnect is never fully reconciled.
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Unlike therapy, counselling, or doctors, I don't tell youth what they need. Instead, I help youth discover their needs and collaborate with them to create and implement creative, effective solutions. I build a foundation of shared views and, through connection, ensure equal and respectful power dynamics, allowing for deeper healing and true change. I take my dedication to connection one step further by combining coaching with strength and evidence-based approaches, elements of play therapy and “traditional” avenues for professional support, and the four pillars of Trauma and Violence Informed care: Connection, Collaboration, Trust, and Choice.
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In summery, what makes the work I do special is that I forefront genuine, healthy connection, I infuse all of the work I do with the pillars of TVIC, and I operate from the belief coaching work is strengthened by connection and collaboration, dissolved by hierarchical power-dynamics, and powerful enough to create long lasting positive change in the lives of youth.
Trauma & Violence Informed Care in Mallory Woods Youth Coaching
Trauma and Violence Informed Care (TVIC) operates from the understanding that trauma and experiences with violence are prevalent, individually unique, a response not a condition and contextualizes trauma within the larger human experience. The goal of TVIC is to reduce the risk of re-traumatization within the care provided.
TrustRecognizes trust as the foundation of healing and collaboration. Creates and maintains safe, trust-worthy relationships that are dependable, genuine, and earned. Operates knowing that trust is both necessary and healing unto itself. Choice & VoiceEnsures that one's voice, opinions, needs, and decisions are heard and recognized. Seeks to create endless opportunities for the coachee to have choice and control over one's life. |
CollaborationDedicates time and effort to ensuring and maintaining, safe, equal power-dynamics between the coach and the coachee. Dedicated to co-creation, partnership, connection, and collaboration rather than hierarchical, authority-based structuring. EmpowermentStrength-based approaches contextualize symptoms as necessary adaptions made to protect oneself. Encourages self-efficacy and the active creation of one's life. |
My Credentials
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I want to be clear, I have no letters behind my name. I am not a doctor, a psychologist, or a therapist and I am glad I am not. Many of the youth I work with have tried those avenues before, they have spoken to lists of therapists, done dozens of consultations, and are, frankly, tired of “traditional” approaches.
So no, I do not have a PhD. Instead, I have years of extensive training in trauma and violence informed care, adolescent mental illness and emotional well-being, and recovery from depression, PTSD and physical illness. I have dedicated years to learning about coping with grief, bullying, self-harm, homelessness, loss of purpose, low-confidence, anxiety and the other heart-breaking experiences youth go through. My experience working as a behavioral interventionist and my education in identity and LGBTQ+ themes also informs my work. In addition, I am greatly informed by my life experience of living through child maltreatment, isolation, mental illness and, eventually, healing and recovery. Learning to create and live a life that is happier and more fulfilling than I could have ever imagined as a child has been my life’s work and the slow process of turning my hardship into medicine for others has always been my goal. I combine my life experience, my formal and informal education and my coaching training with Foundational Co-Active Life Coach Ross Taylor, to create a original approach for supporting youth. My work takes the best from well-established modalities and combines it with leading-edge techniques. The result is a coaching process rooted in connection and collaboration, which operates within a Co-active Coaching framework, and is informed by the needs of each specific youth. |
About Mallory Woods
Mallory was born and raised in British Columbia on the lands of the Squamish, Musqeum, and Tsleil-Waututh Peoples and humbly recognizes that they currently learn, live, and practice on the unceded territory of the Snuneymuxw First Nations.
Mallory Woods is a non-binary* coach, facilitator and public speaker who specializes in working with youth and educating on themes of identity and LGBTQ+ matters. As a former youth in care, Mallory takes every opportunity to advocate for youth and youth-focused services and programs. Mallory works alongside the Youth Futures Education Fund and is passionate about supporting youth through all manners of difficulties. *Mallory uses the gender-neutral honorific Mx. (pronounced "Mix") and they/them pronouns.
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