Online and In Person Holistic Counseling and Life Coaching with Martha S Bache-Wiig
Online or In Person sessions in holistic counseling and coaching is a powerful approach to help heal your emotional, psychological and existential pain so you can begin to live a life that is abundantly supportive of your needs, and full of love, beauty, truth, and purpose.
Through more than 30 years of working with adults, Martha has developed a broad range of holistic counseling and coaching services designed to help people transform emotional, psychological, and existential pain into renewed energy for living more expansive, meaningful, and fulfilling lives.
While counseling and coaching share common ground, they serve different purposes. Counseling invites a deeper exploration of your inner world, including your personal experiences, emotional patterns, and family history. Coaching, by contrast, offers practical tools and strategies to help you create meaningful changes in your daily life.
Marthaâs holistic approach integrates both. It recognizes that human beings are multidimensional, with mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual dimensions that are deeply interconnected. This work helps you develop greater awareness of how your unique inner world functions, what you truly need in order to feel whole, grounded, and confident in your place in the world, and how to meet those needs in ways that support lasting wellbeing.
The deeper spiritual dimension is understood not as something separate from everyday life, but as the foundational aspect of our beingâthe place from which meaning, purpose, and authentic selfhood emerge. By working with the whole person, Martha helps clients move beyond surviving toward genuinely thriving, with greater clarity, resilience, and enjoyment of life.
The Individual Journey
The double spiral in Martha’s logo symbolizes how the deeper we go to heal the wounds from our individual and intergenerational pasts, the “higher” we go in terms of quality of life, love and understanding of our purpose as humans and how we can fulfill it, together with others.
Understanding how early life experiences, conditioning, and trauma may still be affecting you today is a foundational part of meaningful inner work. The beliefs and emotional patterns we develop in childhood often become the invisible framework through which we experience ourselves, our relationships, and life itself as adults. Because these deeply ingrained beliefs can operate below conscious awareness, we may not realize how powerfully they continue to shape our choices, reactions, and sense of possibility.
While coaching techniques, positive affirmations, and structured routines can certainly be helpful, they often do not reach the deeper core beliefs that quietly function like an internal program influencing how our lives unfold.
Symptoms such as depression, procrastination, anxiety, anger, emotional instability, addictions, or recurring unhealthy relationship patterns are not signs of personal failure. They are often meaningful signalsâcalls for attention arising from the deepest parts of ourselves, pointing toward unmet needs, unresolved pain, or aspects of our being that require care and healing.
Rather than viewing emotional suffering or sensitivity as evidence that something is inherently âwrongâ with you, a holistic approach seeks to understand the full picture of what may be contributing to your distress. With compassion, curiosity, and respect for your individuality, this work helps you recognize your unique emotional, psychological, physical, relational, and spiritual needs, and begin making choices that genuinely support your wellbeing rather than reinforce patterns that no longer serve you.
By exploring your personal history, family system, cultural influences, and the deeper stories that have shaped your identity, while also identifying your needs, aspirations, strengths, and innate gifts, this tailored whole-person approach can help you work through even the most difficult life challenges. In the process, you can develop a deeper sense of self-respect, self-understanding, and the capacity for healthier, more authentic relationships with others.
This work is not about discovering what is âwrongâ with you, nor is it about striving for perfection. It is about taking your pain seriously with compassion, understanding what parts of your life and inner world are calling for loving attention, healing old wounds, and learning new attitudes, skills, and practices that empower you to care for yourself more consciously and take fuller ownership of your life.
We Heal Together
Taking ownership of your life does not mean blaming yourself for choices you made in the past. Nor does it mean that healing, growth, and self-care must be undertaken entirely on your own.
On the contrary, true healing often begins with the recognition that just as we did not create ourselves out of nothing, neither are we meant to heal or evolve in isolation. We are born of two parents, shaped by our families, influenced by our cultures, and formed within the societies in which we live. Many of the beliefs we carry about ourselves, others, and life itself were learned within these systemsâsome supportive, and others limiting or even harmful.
Because many of these patterns and beliefs operate unconsciously, meaningful change often requires the compassionate presence and support of others who can help us see what we cannot yet see for ourselves. Healing is often made possible in relationshipâwith people who have done their own inner work, addressed their own wounds and conditioning, and understand from lived experience that another way of being is possible.
The renowned therapist Alice Miller, author of The Drama of the Gifted Child, a groundbreaking work that helped illuminate the lasting effects of childhood trauma, used the term Enlightened Witness to describe the unique kind of healing presence offered by someone who has worked through their own suffering and can truly see another with compassion, clarity, and understanding.
Today, even neuroscience affirms what many healing traditions have long understood: profound neurological and emotional shifts can occur when we are in the presence of someone who offers genuine attunement, empathy, and compassionate understanding. Healing does not happen through judgment or force, but through safe, supportive relationships that help us reconnect with our authentic selves and discover new possibilities for living.
Holistic Counseling and Coaching grounded in compassion and empathy, science and art
Holistic Counseling and Coaching grounded in compassion and empathy, science and art
It is this compassion that can help us begin to heal not only our hearts but it quite literally helps heal the brain. This is important to keep in mind in this time when AI is changing our lives in so many ways. While AI is certainly wonderful and helpful for many things, it can never replace our need for, and the importance and beauty of, human interaction, perhaps especially when it comes to our desire to live a full life, full of not only material comforts but also love and connection with others.
By learning new tools and perspectives while receiving empathetic emotional support, we slowly but surely come to understand where our blocks really lie – not in the people and the circumstances around us, but within our own thoughts, beliefs and emotional/neurological set-points – and how to change them.Â
It means slowly understanding how the default trauma responses and defenses like fight, flight, freeze and fawn are operating within us, so we can tune into our deep knowing that we each truly do have purpose, meaning and value and are worthy of love and support exactly as we are. The article highlighted in the link is by a psychotherapist named Pete Walker, who has done excellent work on CPTSD and has deeply influenced Martha’s personal and professional journey. His book Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving is extremely helpful for anyone ready to begin to look at their pain from a holistic point of view.Â
Another important resource is the 12 step program known as ACA or Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families. It was and remains a true pioneer in the treatment of childhood trauma and meetings are a great place to begin to understand how your own upbringing may be affecting you today.Â
Healing and Human Evolution
We each have our own special place in life that we are here to fill; we only need to understand better what that place actually is, and how to show up for ourselves – starting with wherever we may be today.
Changing our deep seated beliefs and patterns is an act of existential creativity; we are quite literally creating a new way of living, for ourselves and others. weFrom the raw material of our own personal characteristics – which are completely unique to ourselves – and our life experiences, with our growing love and understanding of ourselves, others, and of life, we can begin to choose new ways of thinking and acting. Our new choices are quite literally like chisels that transform our lives, and slowly sculpt both inner and outer experiences that we could have never imagined possible before.
As we become more adept at making choices that truly serve our wellbeing and the wellbeing of others, we develop a sense of groundedness and personal agency that brings deep inner peace, and increasing freedom to enjoy your life and your relationships with others.
Whether or not you can see it right now, your healing and growth actually contributes to new ways of thinking and acting in the world. Your increased wellbeing not only releases more positive “energy” into the world in general, but your filling your own special place with loving purpose fosters the development of ever more sustainable, mutually supportive, respectful and vibrant models for living together as couples, families, communities, in our business and creative efforts, in our nations and the world.Â
This also applies also to your career / business and financial spheres, as the ways in which we earn a living and manage our time and our finances have a direct effect on our general wellbeing. Martha’s long experience as a self-employed person as a musician, educator, and counselor / coach have allowed her to develop important tools for building a prosperous and sustainable work-life and financial balance, so very important for all of us and perhaps especially for those who are self-employed in the helping and creative professions.
Following is a list of the kinds of services available to help you take the steps that can help you move towards the life that you dream of. It may seem impossible today, but once you begin the journey, you may be truly amazed by the changes you can see take place, inside you and in your outer reality.
Click on the headings to get more information, or write to Martha (martha@marthabw.com) for more information today!
Individual counseling and coaching for adults
Relationship counseling and coaching for couples
Counseling and Coaching for groups of people: families, business teams and creative projects
Business coaching for self-employed creatives and practitioners in the healing arts
Family Constellations Workshops
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