Navigating Life's Challenges With Neuroscience-Based Support – Exclusive Interview With Dawn Smith

Dawn Smith is a relationship coach for couples in crisis, a career transition coach, and an executive coach for philanthropic and other purpose-driven leaders ready to get out of overwhelm and make high-level change. She writes and speaks on dismantling "best practice" myths about ideal relationships and careers, and on achieving monumental transitions in minutes a day. Her speaking clients include VISTAGE, Intrepid Health, Team Rubicon, the National Association of Catering Executives, WeddingWire, UCLA, USC, Creative Mornings, and UNICEF. She wakes up every day grateful to do what she loves.

Dawn Smith, Relationship Coach

Dawn, can you tell us a bit about yourself and your work?

Yes, I’m the founder of Whole Life Solutions, and serve as a coach, counselor, and speaker supporting individuals through life's major transition points. I’m also a single mom to two Awesomers, and a multi-media artist.

For over a decade, I have served as a career transition coach for hundreds of professionals and a premarital counselor who has worked with nearly 1000 married couples.

When the pandemic hit, I began hearing from more and more couples in crisis, and decided to bring together the emotional safe space and neutrality of traditional couples counseling with the solutions-based tools of coaching to offer a shorter-term, neuroscience-based alternative to traditional couples counseling.

Were you always in this line of work? Tell us a bit about your journey…

No way! My background before this work was a long and winding road, quilted of a very eclectic array of experiences.

I’m the daughter of immigrants and daughter and granddaughter of trail-blazing rebel academics, inheritance of anxiety, and both saddled and gifted with over-the-top ADHD and sensitivity. A quest to make a creative, positive impact in the world has perpetually been at the core of my being.

I grew up in rural Jersey to European parents who never became Americans. I got bullied, was lonely, and never quite felt I belonged anywhere. But soon, I relished connecting with any and all on the ‘fringes’. I became a theater kid, then got involved in community organizing, followed by, among other things, running Vermont’s first internet cafe and community center, directing and editing a documentary on the New York City hot dog vendors, and then launching a successful hip-hop focused violence prevention youth center in Los Angeles. But all the changes left me exhausted and needing to face the ADD, anxiety, and lack of confidence that had held me from stability and growth. I delved into research on how humans can successfully navigate decision-making and change and learned the importance of embracing risk and boundary-pushing in a strategic way to get out of the sometimes paralyzing captivity of the status quo.

I combined my love of theater and service in a unique way, launching a small business in the wedding world, marrying interfaith and multicultural couples and offering premarital counseling. I loved it so much that I wanted to support others to find that alignment, so in 2013, launched Whole Life Solutions, as a disrupter to the traditional model of business and career coaching- designed to support other established professionals in navigating into careers more in alignment with their values and purpose. Finally, Relationship Coach Dawn was born in 2022 to bridge the safe space of traditional couples counseling with the very practical tools of coaching, offering a much shorter-term alternative to traditional therapy for couples in crisis. Now I get to wake up every day and work with clients with whom I feel resonance, and to do the work I love.

Tell us a bit how Relationship Coach Dawn really distinguishes itself from traditional couples counseling?

In the last few years, I noticed a lot of couples found themselves struggling and feeling isolated in their challenges, and when seeking professional support, often found they had no luck– good counselors were hard to come by, and often had 6-to-12-month waitlists. Those who were lucky enough to connect with someone who felt like the right fit would often report back that sessions were helpful in having a safe space to talk about things, but often not much seemed to change on the home front. 

After 15 years as a premarital counselor and a decade as an integrated career coach, I realized it seemed like traditional couples and marriage counselling was often missing the mark. Relationship Coach Dawn offers couples the safe space for deep vulnerable conversations of traditional counseling combined with the real information, tools, and solutions of coaching. We provide an effective short-term solution to couples at a crossroads by going deep quickly on personal challenges, and sharing knowledge about what the foremost researchers in the field have shown as to what makes successful couples work. We offer research-backed tools for decision-making, rituals, prioritizing and effective communication, so couples can work with on their challenges, rebuild trust and deepen connection on their own. I often joke that I am always working myself out of a job because my goal is to quickly give couples the information and tools necessary for them to do the work of building and rebuilding on their own.

Many of the individuals and couples who come through have never tried counseling before, but are at a crossroads- dealing most commonly with betrayals, trust, and communication challenges, and ready to know if their challenges are foundational or fixable. We can quickly identify the dynamics, then decide the best path forward.

How can people know if relationship coaching may be right for them?

Do any of these scenarios resonate?

1. Things between you can escalate quickly. One partner might storm off, leaving the other feeling abandoned and even more stressed. Or worse, both of you might stay in your heightened state and continue the back and forth until you’ve said things you don’t mean.

2. There’s been a real or perceived betrayal, and your trust issues now feel like they might be insurmountable.

3. You never quite ‘fight’, but you keep going in circles around the same things so much, that now you both seem to just sweep it under the rug to avoid dealing with the same pattern again.

4. You’re at a crossroads— you’re either going to dive in, or move on. or

5. You used to be romantic and passionate and… fun! But these days, feel more like roommates then partners.

If any of these fit, I would definitely recommend scheduling a free consult to find out if coaching is the right fit.

Thanks for being with us, Dawn. What’s the best way to reach you, and what one tip would you like to leave our readers?

Thank you for giving me the space to share my story and passion with your readers. I can be reached through the website. There’s a button to schedule a consult, and currently, all calls and messages will be answered by me.

My one tip? We are wired for negativity bias we tend to focus significantly more on real or perceived critiques than compliments, so today, give someone you care about three appreciations or gratitudes to tip that scale just a little in the positive…

Read more from Dawn Smith