Stephanie Thrower, PhD
Therapy & coaching at the intersection of parenthood + career
Liberated Career Support
Connect with your intuition to feel more empowered & clear
My clients have invested a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into building their career. Many have even secured their "dream job". Despite their many accomplishments, anxiety, doubt, perfectionism, and lack of self-care has caused burn-out, disconnection, and confusion.
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At its best, work is a place to explore and experiment in finding out what really matters to us and what our unique talent is. It can be a place where we feel valued by others and where we can financially support ourselves & our family. Work can help us grow, provide us with community and a larger mission, and it can keep our hope alive when life gets hard.
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But at its worst, work can feel unbearable. It can be endless anxiety & stress, lifelong resentment, "wasted talent" and/or a re-creation of toxic interpersonal dynamics from childhood.
I have so much hope for people's ability to grow, change, and recover, because I've been honored to witness it first-hand from my clients. My clients work in various career fields including: medicine, finance, biotech, academia, marketing & sales, writers, small business owners as well as parents who are full-time caregivers and home-runners.
Career coaching & counseling
My approach is rooted in unearthing individual values & purpose in order to help clients feel engaged and fulfilled in work. Conversely, I may support clients in de-prioritizing some goals when they no longer serve client’s or keep them stuck in burnt out and helplessness.
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We work together to identify knowledge and skills areas to grow. Clients often want to improve communication, self-advocacy, and boundaries in order to achieve goals, improve confidence, and build in recovery & rest into their work approach.
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Issues Addressed:
Work transitions & interviewing
Negotiating pay & benefits
Returning to work following a period of time as a full-time caregiver
Building & running a business
Writing dissertation, completing intense professional training, or test anxiety
Navigating career decisions while pregnant, postpartum and through motherhood
Building a practice of rest, recovery, and nurturing within client’s work lives
Building stronger self-advocacy skills (to set boundaries, attain opportunities)
Recovering from toxic workplace environments (i.e., being a scapegoat, facing sexism, racism, or any other social identity discrimination) and rebuilding a safe and more confident career
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Perinatal & Caregiver Career Coaching
Is this a thing? Well, it should be.
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We undergo so much career transition during the perinatal process (i.e., from pre-pregnancy to two years postpartum). The process of becoming parents and holding the primary caregiver role requires unique career support that understands and values the challenges parents face.
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I support women to:
navigate career decisions
manage career anxiety
make sense of the competing demands of childcare
help prioritize and make sense of medical issues & decision making ingrained in the caregiver role
value their work as caregivers & home runners
cope with body changes and body expectations in the work environment
connect parent philosophy with their career story & purpose
establish & practice boundaries
increase advocacy confidence
roll with all the changes that come with this time
Career Assessment
My goal is to take clients through a full process to appreciate their unique talents and values. I hope that clients use the key take aways (as result of synthesizing career story and assessments results) to help them deepen understanding of their career identity and develop a sort of compass that helps them navigate career decisions throughout their lives.
This process tends to be 3 sessions for the intake, assessment, and feedback process. I use about 3-4 assessments depending on the client. My goal is to integrate features of a person's career story, focusing on congruent & incongruent pieces of information where we may discover the importance of match in work environment & tasks. Feedback is usually provided via discussion, but I can provide some written notes (if helpful) of my impressions and suggestions going forward.