Current POV

You’re tired of feeling overwhelmed, ashamed, and burned out by popular goal-setting hacks.

You’ve been through some Tough Stuff® and, while you’ve made progress on the healing front, it’s harder to push yourself or accomplish things the way you used to.

At the same time, you want to grow again. You miss the satisfaction of setting goals, making progress, experiencing mastery. You want to grow again, but not if it means sabotaging wholeness and balance.

Me too! I created the SAFER™ Goals Foundations Program for people like us.

Having goals doesn’t have to be this grueling.

It’s hard to set goals and make progress in our lives without resorting to destructive patterns like perfectionism, self-loathing, or even dissociation to motivate ourselves. You might find yourself swinging between the extremes of perfectionism and over-compliance on the one hand, followed by burnout and paralysis on the other.

This is especially true for those of us who’ve been through some Tough Stuff.® Our nervous systems may already be primed for this kind of dysregulation.

As a recovering perfectionist, trauma survivor, and certified trauma-informed coach, goals and personal growth have been a central theme in my life. In my own healing and post-traumatic growth, I’ve had to work hard to reshape my relationship with my goals to support healthy rhythms, values, and self-compassion I need to function well. In the past few years, I’ve helped dozens of private coaching clients begin to do the same.

I’ve slowly brought the most useful tools and processes together into one system.

That was the beginning of the SAFER™ Goals Framework.

Learn more about SAFER™ Goals in my free infographic.

Once upon a time, I would have described myself as a highly productive, goal-driven person.

But behind my bloated CV was desperation. I assumed the right goals (and an insane amount of effort) would keep me safe – from poverty, from memories I didn’t know what to do with, from fears of my own inadequacy, from the clawing anxiety that routinely woke me up at 3AM with the insistent terror that Iran was harbouring nuclear weapons they weren’t telling us about. 

Spoiler #1: Iran WAS harbouring secret nuclear weapons. 

Spoiler #2: Not even hyper-achievement could solve all my problems.

A decade, some seriously distressing life-developments, and a few months of a global pandemic later, and my life was basically imploding. 

I began to get serious about addressing the impact of trauma on my life and functioning.  

Only one problem: the more healing I experienced, the harder it became to ramrod myself through unrealistic, overly ambitious goals in my usual, intense way. 

So much of my high-achieving tendencies were coping mechanisms. My goals and achievements helped me gain approval from others, or fight (and flee from) difficult feelings like fear, scarcity, shame, or purposelessness.

While these coping behaviours once helped me survive and thrive in some distressing circumstances, now they risked throwing me into overdrive and burnout.

Luckily as my trauma-informed coaching practice began to grow, I realized I wasn’t alone. More and more clients expressed the same question I’d been asking myself:

“How can we stay gentle and self-compassionate with ourselves while still working towards the hard, meaningful, scary, thrilling things that give life purpose?”

I developed the SAFER Goal-Setting Framework for them, and myself, and for anyone who feels like they have to choose between self-compassion and achievement.

Because, Spoiler #3: you don’t.

Nicole M. Roccas, PhD
Certified trauma-informed coach

6 Weeks to SAFER™ Goals is here to help you…

• Disrupt unhelpful patterns of perfectionism, rigidity, and burnout around our goals by identifying ways conventional goal-setting strategies might be reinforcing maladaptive coping mechanisms, dysregulation, and trauma/stress responses.
• Acquire both practical tools and reflective practices to help you move toward your goals in a safe, whole-person way through the SAFER™ Goals Framework.
• Safely reconnect with your purpose, ambition, and potential in a way that supports rather than supplants wholeness and self-compassion.
• Experience the power of community as you connect with like-minded individuals on a shared journey of self-discovery and transformation, finding support, inspiration, and camaraderie along the way.

How will 6 Weeks to SAFER™ Goals unfold?

Week 1: Introduction

We’ll get familiar with each other and the course materials + forum. We’ll also identify one goal or intention we want to work with during the program.

Week 2: “S” for “Safe” Goals

This week, we’ll learn about what safety consists of and feels like in our bodies, why it’s crucial to setting manageable and life-giving goals, and practice building greater safety into the goal we’ve chosen. We’ll learn why everyone needs safety to thrive – why safety isn’t a crutch for “weak” people, but a practice we can deepen over the course of our lives to create the space and gentleness we need for personal growth.

Week 3: “A” for “Attuned” Goals

This week, we’ll build on what we’ve learned so far and explore the role of attunement and self-attunement with regard to goals. We’ll learn what goals look like when they are or aren’t attuned to our inner states, and we’ll practice building greater self-attunement into the way we set and move towards our goals.

Week 4: “F” for “Free” Goals

This week, we’ll delve into freedom – what it is from a trauma-informed perspective and why it is vital to the way we work towards goals and intentions in our lives. We’ll examine our personal relationship with freedom, and learn ways to bring greater freedom into our goal-setting journey.

Week 5: “E” for “Embodied” Goals

We’ll explore the important connection between embodiment and our goals. Safe embodiment can help us stay rooted in the reality of our fluctuating strengths and needs as we work towards our goals, even ones that may not seem very physical/bodily in nature.

Week 6: “R” for “Responsive” Goals + Wrap-up

Finally, we’ll learn about what it means to be responsive in our goal-setting journey. To wrap up the program, we will revisit the way we formulated our goal in Week 1 and apply what we’ve learned. We will also identify SAFER rhythms of support so we can continue to move towards our goals after the program ends.

Program information

What’s included in enrollment:

When you sign up for the SAFER™ Goals Workshop, you’ll get:

• Enrollment in the 6 Weeks to SAFER™Goals Foundations Program (June 25 – July 30) and all course components and materials:
  • Weekly group sessions
  • Access to session recordings for the duration of the program
  • Access to moderated community forum
• A downloadable copy of the SAFER Goals workbook
• Access to the moderated SAFER Together Community for two additional months (until September 25, 2024) for ongoing community support, resources, and guidance as you continue your SAFER journey
• Opportunity to remain part of the SAFER Together Community at an exclusive founder’s rate

When is it?

The program takes place June 25 – July 30, 2024. Weekly group calls will take place on Tuesday afternoons at 2PM ET, with video recordings available afterwards for those who can’t make it in real-time. Our first group call will be Tuesday, June 25 at 2PM ET.

How much is it?

The program costs CAD$340 (~USD $250) payable as a single payment or in two installments of CAD $170 (~ USD $125).

Make sure to use code EARLY2024 at checkout for $10 off final cost of the program when registering on or before June 17, 2024!

Testimonials

This is the first time I’m offering this specific program, but here’s what others have said about the SAFER Goals webinar and previous group coaching programs I’ve facilitated!