Kayla:
Thank you so much. Yeah, I’m excited to be here.

Lorissa:
Why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Kayla:
Yeah, so like you said, my name is Kayla. I live in Boise kind of born and raised here, technically not born here, but have lived here since I was almost a year old. So and I love Boise. My husband and I have been married for eight years. We just celebrated our anniversary and we have a four-year-old son named Xavier who we call hobbies. So if I say that that’s the same person, hobby become hobby.

Lorissa:
Yeah. I know. Cause you guys speak Spanish and you are teaching him Spanish.

Kayla:
Yeah. So my husband’s family is from Nicaragua. And so that’s something that’s important for us to share with Havi. He attends a Spanish immersion preschool right now and he loves it. So it’s so fun to hear his little voice and he like, and in Spanish,

Lorissa:
I love it. I love it. Good. Okay. Anything else that about you?

Kayla:
Yeah, so I’m right now, I’m a stay at home mom and I have my master’s in social work. So before having him, I worked as a clinical social worker and children and children and mental health. And then I worked also with victims of domestic abuse and sexual assault. So not working right now, but that’s always kind of in the back of my mind as I think about my gifts and moving forward and whether or not I’ll work someday, I don’t know.

Lorissa:
Yeah. What I mean, gosh, what incredibly powerful work. So amazing. So thank you for going into that and using your gifts and talents in that way too, to want to make a difference in people’s lives. And now here you are as a, as a mom making an impact in your own children and you know, in your own family. I’m curious. Okay. So let’s dive in because I want to come back to this question because you have all of this experience in mental health stuff and that’s kind of what masters is all about. So I know it probably coming into it, you were like, yeah, either, you know, this has been the stuff’s very familiar to you or, you know, and I know that even within our community, there’s been times that in our private Facebook group, you shared some things from your, you know, background in all of this, that has been really beneficial. So first of all, when I thank you for that it’s always helpful when our members have insights, have tools that they can share. And, and you’ve done that for sure. But what made you want to join masters to begin with?

Kayla:
Yeah, so I heard about masters because obviously I know you for many, many years ago, and then I also know Sterling from a marriage group, we were in a number of years ago. So I’ve been following both of your journeys and was kind of curious about what is this masters thing all about? I’ll be honest that I had some hesitation about like life coaching and what that really meant. Especially as the mental health provider. I think I have a, a little bit of a bias towards like counseling. But at the time I was really kind of struggling with some depression and anxiety kind of related to a few different things going on in my life. And I was debating whether or not I felt like I wanted to go to counseling and maybe go on some medication or try something like masters.

Kayla:
And what attracted me to a master’s kind of initially was kind of the freedom and flexibility of like not having to go to a physical appointment or being able to like listen back to things like on my own time and kind of work on things on my own. And then also like the cost, like the the cost of, you know, a membership to this is depending on your insurance, probably a lot less expensive than going to counseling on a weekly basis. So I just decided to try it for a couple of months and see if it was helpful. Cause I always knew that, you know, I could always change my mind if it didn’t. And I have found it incredibly helpful. I know I was, my husband was asking if I wanted to continue at recently when we were looking at the budget and I was like, yes, like I do, I, you know, it’s so helpful. I feel like I was definitely having daily anxiety and depression when I first started. And I would say that, although I still struggle with that in pieces, like it has significantly decreased. Like I would say it’s less than once a week or even less than once a, every couple of weeks. So that’s been a huge improvement.

Lorissa:
That’s awesome. Oh my gosh. It gives me kind of, it gives me chills and, and praise God that you’ve had that, you know, had a positive experience from it. Why I guess maybe, maybe you could share with us what some of the things have, like what has been most helpful for you? Like what have you gotten the most out of in the master’s program?

Kayla:
Yeah, it’s funny because, so I’m actually trained in cognitive behavioral therapy. But it’s so different doing it with a client than it is to do it to yourself. And you guys talked about this a lot. Like you can kind of teach yourself to coach yourself at a certain point, but it is really helpful to have that other person kind of look into your mind. And I think hearing it from you guys in this way and this time in my life, really just as what I needed to hear, I think it was the holy spirit saying this is what I needed. And that awareness of my thoughts has been helpful in so many different areas. I think the first one that really hit me, like even just listening to the podcast and even that first week in master’s listening to some of the coaching calls, like I kind of gave myself a hard time, a little bit cause I’ve taught parenting classes.

Kayla:
I know all the parenting skills, supposedly I’ve read all the books. But implementing that in your own life is so different. And I really found myself thinking with my four year old, like he shouldn’t be doing this and because he’s doing this, I’m a bad mom. And I just noticed almost immediately like a increase of patients a willingness to do things that before were I guess you could say more difficult. For example, bedtime is always something that is, or was always something that was difficult for me. I don’t know what it was about the end of the day, but but now I’m much more willing to engage in it. I’m more patient, I’m more playful. And so even just that small change, I think is huge.

Lorissa:
Yeah, it’s fascinating. And I mean, I think that we’re all in this together because for me, I keep having all of these aha moments when I watched back coaching calls or even when I myself am coach, because you’re totally right. It’s one thing, you know, to understand the concepts of self coaching and doing it, but it is very helpful at times to have someone help you see those thoughts that are holding you back. And I think that’s been the biggest thing for me in my life is that it’s so optimal go through our day with these oftentimes pretty negative or self defeating thoughts that hold us back from really experiencing what I believe God wants us to experience, which is freedom and joy and hope. But we have these thoughts that we don’t even necessarily know that they’re there, but once we’re aware of them, then we can do something with it.

Lorissa:
And that’s, I think where the freedom comes in, where it’s like, oh, I see this now I see that I met was having, you know, this and we, because we’re a whole group of mothers, the whole fact that you mentioned just a few minutes ago about, you know, oh, if my child is struggling, I must be a bad mom. I mean, that’s one that we talk about over and over and over because it’s just there. But when you really start to look at it, you see how harmful that thought is and what it does to us when you run it through the model, you’re like, gosh, this is, this is a very toxic thought that does not in any way help me to be a better mother. So I’m glad, I’m glad you mentioned that. So would you say like watching the group coaching calls has been really beneficial? I know you’ve been on a couple. How has that for you?

Kayla:
Yeah, it’s I, yeah, I, I, I find the group coaching calls super helpful. And I liked that there’s, there’s so many during the week, cause I think we’re all busy and we all have different schedules and so you can hop on when it works for you. And I definitely try to, if I know I’m going to be attending a coaching call, I don’t necessarily, if I there’s something I want to be coached on, I definitely bring it. But I also have just been making a list of different models or different things that I’m working on that I could get coached on. Cause sometimes, you know, you go to a call and you know, you guys are asking like, does anyone want to get coached? And I totally understand if, you know, people don’t want to get coached like and so I always just have something that I can bring, cause even if it was something that was happening in a couple of weeks ago, I still feel like I can get new insight on it, but being coached live.

Kayla:
And so I always try to bring something if I am attending a call and just, it just increases that awareness so much. The other thing is I definitely have been going through you know, the website and, you know, taking a lot of the different classes. And the, the one thing I knew I needed to work on before going into master’s is my husband and I have been struggling with secondary infertility for about three and a half years now. And I think I knew that the circumstances, circumstance of infertility was not causing my anxiety and depression, but I didn’t feel like I had the coping skills to deal with it. And so watching, there’s a, there’s a video on infertility and the hyper fertility in the master’s program and then there’s also a workbook and that has been incredibly helpful for me. So

Lorissa:
Yeah. So can you, you want to, into that a little bit? Like what, what about that? Like what have you learned that’s helped you because I’m sure there’s women listening to this right now that are struggling with infertility and maybe feel like they don’t have hope or, or what, but like how, how did that course specifically, that was a course that Sterling did a couple of months ago. So how, like how did that help you or how has it been helping you?

Kayla:
Yeah, I think that there were a lot of thoughts that I was having pretty regularly that I think I knew I was having, but I didn’t realize how much they were impacting me. I definitely was thinking something along the lines of like I’m being punished or God doesn’t trust me or I’m not a good enough mom. And like, although like I know that those thoughts are not correct or not in a sense, like I was still thinking that when they were still, like, I think they’re almost kind of like sneaky thoughts that you know, just get in the way of, I don’t know where they come from, but they’re there and they definitely negatively impacted me. And I definitely felt like I was arguing. I know you guys talked about what the circumstance, like I was arguing with reality, a lot of like, this is what I want.

Kayla:
And like, I kind of felt like that toddler of like, this is what I want. Why aren’t you give me an it to me? Like, I felt like in a lot of ways I’m doing all the right things. I’m falling church teaching when it comes to like, you know NFP and you know, all of that sort of stuff. Like what, why isn’t this happening for us? And so that awareness of those thoughts, like I think I realized that I had kind of built this wall of anger and resentment towards God, although like I was definitely praying and I had my relationship with him. I know that Sterling says one time in the video, she talks about like, she realized that she wanted to be a Saint more than she wanted another baby. And I think when she said that, I realized that in some ways although I, I did want to be a Saint, I was living my life in such a way that I wanted a baby more than I wanted to be a Saint.

Kayla:
And I really needed to work on, you know, my desire for having my desire to be a Saint and that trust. And I think just that awareness of those thoughts, like helped me to even just recognize that I had built that wall up. And I think I also had tried on some intentional thoughts, like to kind of help me cope. Like I always would say like, God’s plan is better than mine and that’s true, but I don’t think I really believed that because of all these other thoughts that were kind of going through my head, if that makes sense.

Lorissa:
Yeah. Yeah. In our program, we teach women that like, if there, if there’s some, what we call unintentional butts which were like the ones you just mentioned a minute ago, like, is there something wrong with me is God punishing me as long as you’re holding onto those thoughts and maybe you don’t even a lot of times even realize it, it’s hard to move into an intentional thought of, you know, God’s God’s plan is greater than my plan. So it’s hard to believe that if you believe at the same time that God is punishing, you does that mean, you know? So and I think that’s, that’s obviously what you’re trying to say. So it’s, so what we want to do and what we do in our masters program, when we coach women on is we help them to see those unintentional bias that might be holding them back or might be causing them a lot of pain, because I want you to imagine if, you know, as you’re listening to this, if you, if you have a thought, even if it’s a sneaking one, even if it’s like, kind of like hovering in your subconsciousness, that maybe you did something wrong and for some reason, God might be punishing you, that leads to a lot of pain and it can lead to a lot of suffering.

Lorissa:
And you may not because you’re not even totally aware of that thought or it’s just kind of like in the background, you, you just don’t even realize what, what kind of pain and what that’s doing to you. And so then with that kind of pain, it really is hard to move into a place of wanting to trust in God’s. Well, because there are, those are conflicting thoughts. So awesome. So, so let’s talk about this for a minute. So if you’re having some of these negative thoughts, you bring them to the surface and then what helped you to, to get through those? Like what, what was it that helped you through that?

Kayla:
Yeah, I think, I think that first, just that awareness that they were there and it, and being really honest with myself that they were there. I think that those are thoughts that like I felt kind of ashamed for having, and I felt like I shouldn’t be having them. And so I definitely, for a long time was just pushing them away. So just that first awareness and honesty that they were there. And then I started to make kind of like little shifts of I wasn’t able to jump, you know, directly from God is punishing me to like they will be done necessarily. But I really started thinking about like that God is doing this for me, that not he’s doing this to me. Like he’s doing this for me, for my sanctification. And I have an opportunity here to grow with this, even though it’s not necessarily what I want.

Kayla:
And just that little shift of that one word, like this is for me, not, this has been done to me, like really helped me to reframe it. And then like the other thoughts that were really helpful that I kind of laughed. I read them because they were never thoughts that I would think would be helpful, but I focus a lot on like, God is they give him all good gifts and that’s, that really helped me see all the gifts that are in my life. I mean, and I feel for all the women out there who are struggling with primary infertility, because secondary infertility is a very different I mean, obviously there’s some overlap, but you know, it’s a very different journey. And you know, I’m very thankful for, you know, it feels like a hobby feels like a miracle at this point.

Kayla:
Like and focusing on that. And then like, I love my little family, which was the other thought, like, I think unfortunately sometimes in the Catholic church, it can feel like, you know, to be a good Catholic, you know, you need to have lots of children and like, and, and that if you, if you can’t get pregnant or you only have, or you have a small family, there’s something wrong with you. And I know that that’s not true like cognitively, but I think that that’s one of those other sneaky things that like kind of sneaks in. And it’s just that God calls us to all different families and, you know, we’re all called to suffer in different ways. It’s a different kind of heart. I always say that. I say that with lots of different things, like whether that’s the age of your children or the size of your family, it’s, it’s all hard in a different way. And it’s all beautiful in a different way. And I think that some of those shifts for me were really helpful.

Lorissa:
Yeah. I think that’s, that is so powerful. And I, it’s very easy for us to get kind of, you know, where we turn internally and we just see our own problems or we see our own struggles and that we get that it’s easy to get kind of caught up in that. But I love that you have switched to some of these thoughts of, I mean, I think that is such a beautiful one. God is the giver of all good gifts. It’s a beautiful, beautiful thought. And I love, you know, I love my family. I love my little family or, you know, I love the family that I have and it’s so true, Kalo, whatever, wherever you’re at. And I think this is the beauty of being in a community like masters, where we have a lot of mothers, Catholic mothers, we all have kind of shared values and shared beliefs, which is so nice, but we all have different sizes of families.

Lorissa:
And we all bring the same. Like we bring struggles, they’re not the same struggles, but we can identify in very similar ways. And I, and you’re so right. We do, we all have struggles no matter what our situation happens to be. And we all have great blessings. And it sounds to me like you were able to kind of shift out of being self consumed, like consumed with the, with the struggle and moved. You were able to kind of shift outward a little bit and recognize the gifts from God. I love your thought of like, this is not happening to me. It’s happening for me and trying to find, you know, whatever it is that God is trying to, like, I love that that whole notion of God is sanctifying me in this. I mean, imagine like that is an incredibly powerful five. So if w if any of us right now are in the midst of, of carrying a big cross, if we can get to the point where we can say that, that can create a huge shift, and it’s probably one of the hardest things to say, do you have any advice around that?

Lorissa:
Like, this is happening for me, not to me. Like, let’s dive into that for a minute, because that is one that’s really, truly embracing your cross. So how did you do that?

Kayla:
Yeah, I think I think there was a couple of things. I, the first thing that comes to mind is at least with infer tele, like it’s this cycle of hope and disappointment that it really wears on you. And I think every, every cycle, basically I have to be okay with the fact that there’s going to be some days where that’s a much harder thought to have than others. And just being able to experience that pain and like you know, I always think of Sterling says like, this is not a problem. Like, it’s not a problem that I’m experiencing the same. Like, you know, it is what it is. And then the other thing, and this happened a long time ago, but it, it always comes back to me when I have this thought is I had an experience in prayer where I was thinking about like that idea of carrying your cross.

Kayla:
And like it’s my, I just had like this image of, we carry our crosses, but it’s through the crucifix and the suffering, the suffering that, that cross is transformed, or their crucifix is transformed into a resurrected cross. And we can’t experience that kind of that transformation or that resurrection of our suffering. And until we actually walk through it, like if we just, if I just keep avoiding the suffering or I’m kind of not willing to walk through the fire or whatever it is like, then I can’t really experience that transformation that comes at the end. And that image was really helpful for me. It’s like, I almost needed to like really almost focused on like the crucifix more than like carrying the cross, because like, that’s where that suffering is. And that’s what ultimately has transformed.

Lorissa:
That is powerful. One of the things that we, we try to help our members with when they’re in the midst of pain is this whole, I mean, we call it processing pain and it’s, it kind of reminds me of what you were talking about, because so often when we experience pain in our life, we either want to avoid it. Like you mentioned, we want to resist it. We want to push it away. We want to run from it. And it’s always going to remain like we can’t escape it. Right. We can’t numb it. So a lot of times women will buffer from their pain. So they’ll like, they’ll be in a place of pain. They’ll try to numb it with food or alcohol or social media, whatever. We have all sorts of different coping mechanisms for when we’re in pain, but either pushing it away, hiding it, resisting it.

Lorissa:
And those are all ways of trying to deal with pain. But those are not ways that actually help us. It ends up actually prolonging the pain or, you know, making the pain at times even worse, more unbearable. And so we, we try to help our members learn how to actually, like you just said, like step into it, which is really, nobody wants to step into their pain. Right. But no, and to actually fully experience it fully feel it, and, you know, do some deep self-awareness around it. Right. And start asking those questions, like, what is going on? Where do I feel this pain in my body? What might God be wanting to reveal to me through this pain? What am I called to know, what am I called to learn? How, you know, because all, like, there are some deeply powerful things that we are called to learn.

Lorissa:
And then it’s like walking through that to get to the other side, which is the transformation piece and the resurrection piece that you’re kind of talking about. But I was never taught how to do this. Like I, most of my life, I even as a Catholic, even as a Christian, even as someone who, like you said, like cognitively knows, like Kate, pick up your cross and carry it. No one ever taught me how to do this. And so now that I know, and I’m not an expert at it either. I mean, even though we teach this, like I have to, like, I’ll find myself resisting pain or I’ll find myself buffering, but then I can catch myself too and go what Larissa, you know what you’re doing here. And then I can sit down with it and like actually enter into the pain. And it’s always really powerful.

Lorissa:
And I think, especially for us as Catholics, I mean, I think every human in the world is meant to bring God into those moments. But a lot of people don’t even know that they don’t even know him enough to know, to bring him into it. And yet in masters, that’s what we’re doing. We’re treating, we’re teaching women how to process through their pain, how to do it with Christ, who is the answer for all of it. And to hopefully come out the other side, experiencing transformation, experiencing growth, learning from something. And I always believe my own life that if pain keeps coming back, it’s T it’s an indication that I haven’t fully processed it. Maybe I’ve processed it a little bit, but as long as it’s keep, it keeps coming back. I mean, I know I need to sit with it. I need to enter into it. I need to keep asking these questions. I need to keep searching there. Something I’m meant to learn. There’s something I need to experience. And that I know that when I do this, God is going to help me to use this subtly to benefit myself, but to benefit others possibly down the road, because when we go through pain. And I imagine for you, as someone who is struggling with infertility, you probably have a huge amount of compassion and insight into what others might be going through in a similar situation.

Kayla:
Yeah, absolutely. I think I think that’s definitely one of the things that I’ve, I’ve thought about a lot. And it’s interesting, like it’s, it’s a silent suffering, I mean, so much suffering is. But I definitely have come across friends that I didn’t really know either struggled with this at one point in the past or currently struggling with this. And it’s, it’s something that we don’t really talk about in the church very much, or at least I haven’t experienced that a lot you know, in my community. And so when you find people who really get it or really understand, there’s this deep connection and, and that has been so helpful and powerful because it is a really lonely cross. I mean, you carry it with your spouse. But men and women carry things I think differently too. And we’re able to hold on to, to hope differently and all those sorts of things. So it’s, it’s been difficult for my, for my husband, but in a very different way than it’s been difficult for me. So

Lorissa:
Yeah, I think that’s incredibly powerful and I would imagine it would be very different. Your husband is, you know, carrying pain in a certain way, but he’s also knowing, like trying to figure out how he can support you. You’re experiencing, you know, I, I never even really thought about that. And I think you are right. It is something that is kind of probably a very silent suffering. A lot of emotional pain is especially, it’s so different from, you know, when we see somebody in physical pain, everybody wants to try and figure out how they can help in, and yet in a situation like this, either people don’t know or people don’t necessarily know what would be the most helpful. So this probably could lead to, to a lot of further conversations about what we could be doing better in a church to, to help women and families that are struggling in this area and provide more support and love there. Are you familiar with less than Carlo acutus? Yes. Okay. Do you know about him and his he’s being kind of like hailed as one of the new on patrons for infertility

Kayla:
I’ve I’ve heard a little bit about the story, but I’m kind of only bits and pieces.

Lorissa:
Yeah. So I meet you I’m, you know, he’s, he’s one that I love because, you know, as a youth minister, he was a young, you know, I think he died at the age of 15 and he had this deep and profound love for the Eucharist and he was using his gifts in computers and technology to, to teach people about the Eucharist. So like super cool teenager. So of course I love him for that, but from what I understand, he was an only child. So his mom had, his parents had him and then his mom could not get pregnant after that. And they struggled a lot with secondary and fertility and then he passed away. And so I can’t even begin to imagine how, you know, hard that I think he got leukemia and then died really quickly. And so truly like what a cross for his parents.

Lorissa:
Right. but from what I understand, shortly after he passed away, he appeared to his mother in a dream and said that she was going to have twins. And a couple months later she got pregnant with twins. And so a lot of people are saying like that he would be a great one to ask for intercession prayers for. So I just wanted to share that in case because, you know, we believe deeply in the power of intercession and he’s just another great young man to, to ask for his prayers. So wonderful. So let me ask you, is there anything else that, that you can share that that’s been helpful to you in the master’s program?

Kayla:
I mean, so, so much I hear like those are the two really big areas. That’s helped me the most as far as parenting and then infertility, I think too, like I know there there’s a couple of things coming up with preparing for the holidays and, and for the most part, I have a great relationship with my family and our in-laws, but just that self coach, you know, how do I want to show up in certain situations is so helpful for me, like, especially, you know, not all situations are ideal and I’m not always proud of the way that I’ve shown up in the past in certain situations. And so, and not to say that it’s, it’s a perfect process. But just having that as something that I can go to, you know, either, you know, what, on a daily basis, ideally, but on a weekly basis or when there’s something coming up I know my sister-in-law’s coming into town this weekend. And then she’s going to be here all week and we’re going to celebrate Halloween and a couple other things. And so I’ve been thinking a lot about like, how do I want to show up and what thoughts do I want to have this weekend? And so I find that incredibly helpful as well.

Lorissa:
Yeah. But it’s so, so good. And, you know, it’s funny, especially with the holidays or when we are going to be going into a situation with family members or people, a lot of times we can, we can set ourselves up. We can, we can have a lot of anxiety around that and we can in an, in a negative way set ourselves up for things that, so we, like, we worry, like, what if this happens? Or what if somebody does this? Or what if somebody says this? Or a lot of times I think it even has to do with our, maybe our own insecurities, like, what are they thinking about me or stuff like that. And so when we can get a grip on that and then switch it into more again of that intentional thinking of like, how do I want to show up and what, how do, what, like what kind of, you know, at like, just not, not energy, but like, you know, like showing up, feeling excited or open on all of those types of things that makes a really big difference.

Lorissa:
And so we are in master’s is going to be kind of going into this holiday thing and really talking about that because we want to have the best experiences we want to make these memories. We want to draw closer to our families and all of us, like our families are all wonderful, but nobody’s family is perfect. And there’s always someone that we kind of struggle with or there’s somebody, you know, there’s a personality that we kind of, maybe just, it’s just a little bit more challenging, but we can impact that. And I know for me in the past, like I’ve had some family members where I just completely anticipated in advance that it was going to go bad. And then of course it always does. When you think that, and you’re looking for that, and then you kind of show up almost bringing that a little bit, but then when you switch it and you’re like, okay, I can love this person, even though we don’t always see eye to eye or, you know, this is how I want to show up.

Lorissa:
So I love that you said that. And I think that when we shift things and we’d go into an experience kind of self-coaching ourselves, like you just mentioned, it can be really helpful. I was going to ask you if, if there’s a woman right now, that’s listening and she’s kind of on the fence. She’s like, maybe I should, you know, maybe she was kind of like you, like, maybe, maybe I should check out therapy, do therapy or give this a shot, or, gosh, I’ve been hearing more about this. Is it worth the investment? What would you say to someone?

Kayla:
I think the beautiful thing about masters, or like at least one of the things is you know, it is, it is an investment, but you can try it out and see if it helps you. And if it, if it doesn’t you know, you can try something else and if it does, then you can stay on as long as it continues to be helpful. I don’t think it hurts to give it a shot. And I definitely have found it just as helpful as if it were even more helpful than counseling. I think that counseling, especially like, you know, I have a bias towards, towards therapy. Like it can, it definitely has a time and its place and it definitely can be really helpful. But for me, masters has been practical in a way that counseling really never was, if that makes sense.

Kayla:
Like, it’s, it’s very focused on the here and now. And although we try to do that often as therapists, we definitely, I think we get caught up in the past and the stories sometimes more than we should, or at least I’ll admit that I did that as a therapist sometimes. And so that’s one thing that has been really helpful for me with masters is it’s is it’s practical in a way that is just incredibly helpful on a day to day basis. And it’s, it’s very usable from day one. Like you can start putting into practice the model and some of the skills, you know, as, as soon as you get into the program. And one of the beautiful and amazing things about counseling but also one of the challenges is it can take, it can take more time because you’re really developing that therapeutic relationship. And they do a lot more assessment about like where you are and where you need to go. And that obviously can be really helpful. But it can take more time to get maybe results if that makes sense.

Lorissa:
Yeah. And a lot of people wonder, like what’s the difference between counseling and coaching? And we agree, like we, we believe that there is a lot of benefit to counseling and to therapy. And even sometimes we’ll recommend, you know, like, gosh, you know, I, you know, I was talking with a client the other day and I was like, I think it might benefit you to get some, some counseling. There was some definitely some major things from her past, some trauma that I felt would be very beneficial for her to work through with, with a counselor because that’s we in coaching, we don’t really deal with deep trauma. Right. We a great explanation that I heard once was that if you’re kind of feel like you’re, maybe you’re not like a hole that you can’t get out of, that’s where counseling and therapy and some of those tools help people kind of get out of that hole, which, you know, especially if somebody’s struggling with trauma or deep depression, those types of things where they just feel like they’re in a really dark place and they don’t know how to get out of it themselves.

Lorissa:
Like that is really a great opportunity for, for a counselor, a therapist. Or maybe even if somebody needs to get on some medication, things like that for coaching, as you mentioned, we are very like in the present, like, let’s look at what we’re thinking right now. And then how do we want to move forward? And so coaching really is kind of like if you’re on level ground, so you’re out of the hole, you’re on level ground, and then you want to go to the next level. You want to go to that next place. And so we like to sort out the thoughts that are maybe keeping us stuck and kind of bring those to our awareness because we have 50 or 60,000 thoughts a day, and we can guarantee that some of those thoughts maybe are holding us back, but we can’t do anything about it if we don’t know what they are.

Lorissa:
And that’s where we feel, we feel sometimes hopeless or we feel like we’re stuck, or like, why do I feel this way? And I can’t seem to get out of this feeling of either feeling sad or frustrated or angry. And it’s like, why am I feeling this? A lot of times we will feel the emotions, but we don’t know that the, what the thoughts are that are causing them. So when we pause and slow down and get curious, and as a coach, we are, we’re kind of taught to ask certain questions, to bring those thoughts to our cognitive awareness. Then we can go, oh, that’s what I’m thinking. No wonder I feel this way. And then we can say, okay, is this serving me? Is it helping me? Is there something I need to learn from this thought, do I want to get rid of it?

Lorissa:
Do I want to replace it with something else and move in that direction? And so that’s where it’s really helpful. And I think you’re right. You can’t, you can’t always do that yourself. Sometimes you need someone else to do it. It’s kind of like like if I’m having back pain and I need to go get it, like a deep massage, I can’t do that on myself. Right. And so that’s where coaching comes in. And I think that when you sometimes will have struggles and then you’ll watch a group coaching call and you’ll get so much insight just from watching someone else get coached, that it actually helps you with your own issue. Like, have you discovered that for yourself where you like, oh, that was like, that helped me just by watching someone else?

Kayla:
Oh yeah, absolutely. I think I try to listen back, even if I’m not able to attend. I listen back to every coaching call. And even in areas where I don’t necessarily have like specific goals, like currently I’m not necessarily focused on like weight loss, but I still find that those calls are incredibly helpful because it’s all about what are you thinking? What’s going to set you up for success, all that sort of stuff. And I think like for me in thinking about like counseling versus life coaching I definitely had a depressive episode a long time ago where I had a lot of physical, like symptoms of depression. I am, my sleep schedule is super off. I was sleeping a lot. I had trouble concentrating. And I think for that, like I don’t know if like coaching would have been helpful at the time, but I really did need to get on a medication to kind of snap me out of it. But at this time I wasn’t necessarily having like those physical symptoms of depression. It was more like I said earlier, like I just don’t feel like I have the coping skills to like deal with this. And it, in that way, this has been incredibly helpful. Cause it’s, it’s not coping skills in the traditional sense that we talk about coping skills and counseling. But it has given me skills to cope with what I was struggling with. So.

Lorissa:
Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you for sharing that. And yeah, I think that we we’re all in this together and what we wanted to create with the master’s program was obviously a place where women could come and get coached. We wanted to create an affordable program for women so that every woman could have access to these tools. They can have access to getting coached. One of the, one of the cool things that I, and I think it’s awesome that you mentioned this, that, that you’ve gone back and watched or listened to every call. One of the features that we’ve added recently to our masters program is a private podcast of all of our coaching calls. So I know sometimes it’s hard to actually watch it on a computer, but you can always all of our masters members had access to the podcast. So they can, if they’re out going for a walk, driving in the car, things like that, you can listen. So I was going to, I was curious, how do you, do you watch the calls back? Do you listen to them on the podcast? How do you, how do you watch them or listen to them?

Kayla:
I think I do the podcast most often because yeah, a lot of times I’ll, I’ll download it onto my phone and I’ll either listen to it, the car or while I’m doing chores or yeah, even sometimes I like to ride my bike. So sometimes if I, if like this weekend, it was raining really bad and stars on the trainer, which is kind of like my bike set up on like a kind of, almost like a Peloton, but with your own bike. And I was just listening to one of the coaching calls while I was on there. So, and that would have been more difficult to do with the video. So yeah, the podcast has been awesome.

Lorissa:
Yes. And the reason why we do that is, I mean, we know that moms are busy and we want to make everything that we offer as accessible as possible. So even the courses, you can listen to the courses on the podcast which makes it really easy. You can just be about your day cleaning the kitchen or on a bike ride in Ottawa and have access to this content because we don’t want to take moms away from their families or from the things that they’re doing you know, completely. So we want to make this as accessible as possible. And I think that’s about it. Is there anything else that you have that you want? Is there any big dreams that you have? I know you’re, I mean, you mentioned like here you are with, you know, with your, with your husband savior living your life, loving God, serving him his church. Is there any, anything else going on that you wanted to share with us or any dreams or goals?

Kayla:
Yeah, I think the thing that I’m working on right now the most is kind of that idea of like loving my daily life. I think and that’s both the challenge and also really exciting for me. I think too, like I don’t think I realized, I think I knew this, but in masters that comes up a lot. Like I think I had stopped dreaming and stopped setting goals and things like that. And so I’ve definitely been praying about like, if there’s opportunity other opportunities out there to use my gifts where I can still, you know, be here to serve my family. But you know, it was God calling me to something other than just this right now. I mean, I’m involved in a couple of things. Like obviously I have our home and my son and then I’m a catechist for catechesis of the good shepherd at our parish. But I’m also open at this point to kind of seen how I can use my gifts in other ways. And so that’s a really exciting thing to me and a couple opportunities have kind of kind of presented themselves. And so I’m just kind of so praying and looking and I’m excited to see what, what God has for, for me and for our family. So

Lorissa:
I love it. I love that. And I love the whole notion of, of doing the work to love our daily lives. Maybe that’s a great way to end this interview because isn’t that ultimately like what we’re called to do, like God gave us our lives. He’s given us these vocations and I do believe that he wants us to enjoy it. It’s not that that’s going to be void or free of any pain or suffering, but how do we pause and take the time and to really enjoy the life that he’s given us and to do that. And I think that that takes some thought work really easy to get bogged down in the day-to-day, where we’re like, oh, it’s another day, you know, but when we take the time to really intentional about the thoughts and the thoughts that we’re having and how can we, what thoughts do I need to have to really enjoy this life that I’ve been given? It puts things into a different perspective and then it will, then it opens up space for us to dream and to discern what, what else he might be inviting us to. So I think that’s awesome. Thank you, Kayla, for coming on this podcast today, wish you the very best. I’m so thankful to have you in masters. And I know that this, this episode and the insights that you shared are going to be very life-giving for a lot of Catholic mamas. So thank you. And I’ll see you soon inside masters.