MEET MY MONSTERS

What makes it possible for us to change a difficult situation for the better? What is the interplay between our inner landscapes and our agency in the outside world? What is there to be learned from unpleasant (and pleasant!) feelings? How does our ability to cooperate with our inner monsters affect our sense of fulfilment in life?

My first serious encounters with monsters were through literature. While at Cambridge and later in Berlin, I studied their usage as metaphors for everything designated ‘unwanted’, ‘not normal’, and ‘dangerous to the existing power hierarchies’. After my PhD on monsters in English language picture books, I encountered an entirely different species of monsters: those inside myself. They hit me with full force.

I didn’t want them, but that seemed to make them even more pestering. They ranged from nagging self-doubt and depression to a bewildering lack of orientation and strange, occasional bursts of exaltation. This, my second serious encounter with monsters, became the cornerstone of my work today. This time, I studied inner monsters – not only my own, but those of other people, too. They became the stuff of my second book and initiated my professional engagement with them in my role as coach and trainer.

Our inner monsters’ power to make us feel stuck and the power we can gain through a liberating interaction with them will probably continue to intrigue me for the rest of my life.

QUALIFICATIONS

EXPERIENCE

  • full-time coach and trainer since 2017
  • mostly in academic and research settings (e.g. the Max Planck Society, Helmholtz, graduate schools)
  • with international and German researchers at the doctorate and postdoctoral levels as well as professionals in government, non-profit and for-profit organisations in their early and mid-careers

FORMATIVE NON-COACHING EXPERIENCE

  • assistant and co-trainer with Maren Drewes, an organisational development consultant
  • fundraising and communications at a social enterprise in Berlin
  • influencer marketing at a start-up in Berlin
  • mother of two children
  • commitment to my queer and polyamorous family
  • working in a French-German kindergarten in Paris and studying French at the Sorbonne

ACADEMIA

  • 2010-2015: PhD in American Studies (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
  • 2007-2009: M.A. in Comparative Literature (Freie Universität Berlin)
  • 2003-2007: B.A. in Modern and Medieval Languages (University of Cambridge and Université de Montréal)
  • Alumna of the German Academic Scholarship Foundation

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