From PR to Relationship Coach – Tamarisk Saunders Davies shares how she made the transition

Olive: What subjects did you study in school?

Tamarisk: I studied Psychology at the University of Newcastle. Originally, I had thought I would be an actor. It dawned on me that what I liked about performing and acting was learning to understand the key characters. It slowly came to me that if that’s why I was pursuing acting, then I was pursuing the wrong thing. It’s people I am most interested in. I want to know why people do the things they do. Psychology was more in line with my interests.

Olive: Once you left the university what was your first role?

Tamarisk: By the time I left the university, I was desperate to get out in the world and start earning a living. I was sick of being a broke student. I had had enough. I was attracted to the bright lights, big city, so “Hello London!” I thought to myself, “What am I good at? I am good with people.” Someone asked, “Why don’t you try public relationships?” I didn’t know what the job was; I had never heard of it, apart from “Ad Fab.” I thought that I would give it a go. I secured some student internships and got a job offer before even sitting for my finals.

Olive: How long did you work in PR for?

Tamarisk: I started in fashion. At first it seemed very glamorous, but the reality of the job for me was that it was insanely boring. All I did was send out fashion samples to magazines and log them when they came back in. I couldn’t see how that would change as I progressed up the PR career ladder. I hopped around a bit and tried different sectors of PR like restaurant, consumer goods (e.g. champagne brands) and property. I found the PR that I was interested in within the property sector however, I had this overriding sense that I did not want my boss’s job and I did not want to set up an agency. So I asked myself, “Why am I here? The longer I stay here, the more I am stealing time from my future self and the less I am in touch with what I want to do with my life.” I don’t want to get to my 80th birthday and realize that I regret doing that and that and that… I couldn’t escape the uncomfortable feeling that I had to do something different. I tried many ways to escape the uncomfortable feeling. I did more shopping, holidays, read more books. Nothing I tried made it go away.

 

Olive: When did you make the commitment to yourself to change your career? You had tried various things within the same field.

 

Tamarisk: The feeling crept up slowly and steadily. At the time it was scary. Looking back, I see it was an opportunity. In my mid-20s (around 25-26) I knew that I was in the wrong career. At 26 I secured a spot on a training programme in counselling and psychotherapy. I got a part-time PR role to support myself.

 

Olive: So you made the decision to retrain and you also needed to financially support yourself. How did you decide to retrain?

Tamarisk: I knew that I was passionate about understanding people and wanting to help people. I was mindful of my own strengths. I have always been an intuitive person. I am good with people and I am a classic extravert. I had a positive experience of working with a therapist myself to unpick events in my early teens. I lost my mum at 12 and had moved countries. The therapy experience had been fantastic for me. I felt strongly called to help people.

 

Olive: The theme I am hearing is to do with working with people. What were some of the challenges that you faced when transforming your career?

 

Tamarisk: There were few opportunities for counsellors and psychotherapists. I wanted to enter the field but I had no time for the concept of noble poverty. I am not going to be a good service to people I am meant to serve if I am broke and can’t afford to pay the rent. If I can’t take care of myself first, how on earth can I create the right space to work with my clients? The second challenge was transitioning from being a psychotherapist to coach. I had a sense of unease with psychotherapy, in terms of the emphasis on the past. The clients I was working with didn’t have years to spend on the past. I found that frustrating. I was committed to getting results with my clients. What I had been taught was to stay committed to theory. So I turned to a coaching model, supporting clients getting into action. It was about giving myself permission to take what works and leave behind what doesn’t.

 

Olive: Some of the listeners/readers may be curious as to what a relationship coach is. What is a relationship coach?

 

Tamraisk: I was seeing the same issues in my clients: women 29-36 single and sick of it. Their stories were similar. They had been in a long term relationship and had gone through the process of grieving. They had done the rebound stuff. It had been past a year and nothing was happening. They were asking themselves “What’s up? What’s missing?” I saw a real need for that gap to be filled. I went back the drawing board. I mapped out what needs to happen for a healthy long-term, committed relationship, if that’s the goal. I put together a program which addresses different areas around achieving that goal. When I work with clients, the part that we uncover very quickly is that they are kind of living their lives on hold. So the first piece we dig into is: “What do you want your life to look like? What’s working? What isn’t working? What are you putting off until Mr Right comes along? What are you delaying doing? Is there any kind of fairy tale rescue fantasy? What are the limiting beliefs you have around relationships that are holding you back?”

One limiting belief might be that relationships are hard and that THE ONE is out there. If you have that belief, you can become incredibly pressured and tense because you start to think to yourself, “What if I have already missed him?” The belief that there is one special person out there is nonsense. I work with what ever comes up for the client to process; helping them to discover how they have been standing in their own way, in terms of getting into the relationship they want. Creating a life they absolutely love. Also, a lot of people are not taught the tools that they need to be in a relationship, e.g. communication skills. It is important that the work we do together  is fun.

 

Olive: There are many parallels with career coaching

Tamarisk: I don’t think we can be compartmentalised. If you are unhappy in your career, you are probably going to be unhappy at home. It is foolish to separate things out. If you are in a career you hate, how is it serving you? When you craft a life that you absolutely love and you are really in love with … it is magnetising. Like attracts like or the opposite is that misery loves company. If you are a happy upbeat person, who is filled with gratitude for all the opportunities that life throws your way, and actively take the attitude, “I am in charge of my happiness. I can choose to be happy or I can choose to be miserable.” you are not going to want to spend your time around people who bring you down. You will always see the negative and complain all the time. You just don’t want to be around those people.

 

Olive: Tamarisk, what would you say to women who are feeling trapped in a career that they no longer love?

 

Tamarisk: Don’t wait another minute. Google, get on Amazon and buy books, hire a career coach. Sit down and brainstorm with your friends, find a mentor. Do whatever it takes to figure out what you do want. The reason you are in a career that you don’t like is because it contradicts your values. No one ever really asks what your values are. Get into the nitty-gritty of figuring out what your own values are. Update them. Your values at 16 are going to be very different than your values at 60. Your values then become a compass in which to make decisions. You find you can make decisions with ease. It’s so incredible when it becomes clear that this job is wrong for me. It is clear for me now. I’ve gone through this and am clearer on what careers would be right for me.

Olive: Tamarisk, if any women have been inspired by your story and would love to connect with you, how can they get hold of you?

 

Tamarisk: I would love them to come and hang out with me at http//www.TamariskSD.com. Sign up for the newsletter and receive the fantastic ebook that I’ve written about taming that inner critic that we all have, that ends up beating us down and keeps us making decisions that don’t really honor our higher purpose. There are also plenty of blog posts.