Accompaniment, Clarity, & Growth for
Life, Habits, & Relationships.
Self-knowledge, Self-mastery, Self-gift.
You have goals, dreams, and values you want to live your life by — and obstacles getting in your way. My mission is to help you bridge the gap between the way things currently are and the way you want them to be.
You have questions — about yourself, your personality and patterns, your desires, your relationships, and your future. My mission is to help you discover the answers that resonate with you most.
How can I help you?
Individuals
Ready to get serious about transforming your life for the better?
Hop in the driver’s seat and tell me what you’d like to better understand or change. Whether it’s reaching clarity through the mental clutter or finally overcoming habits that have been holding you back, I’m here to help you sort through your questions and struggles to help you reach the destination you have in mind.
Couples
Ready to make the investment of building a rock-solid foundation for your relationship?
I am a certified Prepare/Enrich facilitator. This program is deeply rooted in psychology research and provides a very effective structure to better equip you with essential knowledge and skills to deepen your capacity for connection.
From understanding and appreciating personality differences and attachment needs, to making an intentional plan of life together, to practicing advanced communication skills, this program will help each of you feel more understood and appreciated. Schedule a consultation call and we can personalize the plan to fit your needs.
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Please see the Schedule page.
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No. Life coaching does not treat diagnoseable disorders and therefore is not eligible for health insurance coverage.
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However you’d like!
Some people prefer a video call (Google Meet) so they can talk face-to-face but without the hassle of traveling. Others prefer a simple phone call, which can actually enhance the power of thinking deeply by eliminating visual distractions. If you are in the Madison, WI area and prefer to meet in person, my office is located at 5610 Medical Circle, Suite #3.
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First I’ll describe their main differences, then I’ll share my own thoughts on some of their similarities.
The APA (American Psychological Association) defines psychotherapy as “any psychological service provided by a trained professional that primarily uses forms of communication and interaction to assess, diagnose, and treat dysfunctional emotional reactions, ways of thinking, and behavior patterns.”
The most important thing to note here is the definition of psychotherapy. Operating under this definition is reserved for licensed therapists. This means that if your primary concern involves the assessment or treatment of a diagnosable disorder or another form of dysfunction that is causing serious impairment in your life, you should see a therapist.
Generally, the following framework is the most helpful guide to knowing whether coaching is right for you: Therapy helps you return to a baseline of functioning if you've been experiencing significant dysfunction or distress in your life. Coaching assumes you already have a capacity for basic functioning and you want to continue growing. You can think of therapy as being focused on treatment, healing, and recovering, and coaching being focused on growth, flourishing, and reaching your goals.
I do think there can be some overlap that is often not acknowledged. If we imagine a spectrum that goes from dysfunction to basic functioning to flourishing, coaching and therapy sometimes overlap in the middle. They both can focus on increasing insight and self-understanding. They both can be goal-focused or solution-oriented. However, the ultimate factor that determines when something falls under the definition of therapy is when the focus is on addressing a problem that meets the criteria for a diagnosable disorder.
If you still have questions about this and whether coaching is right for you at this time, feel free to schedule a free consultation with me.
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I love its non-pathologizing approach to helping people figure out their lives and accomplish their goals. I love that it provides flexibility and opportunities for me to offer creative services that are carefully designed to help people accomplish specific goals more efficiently and cost-effectively. Stay tuned for updates on group coaching, workshops, courses, and wilderness retreats that incorporate all the most helpful findings from the fields of positive psychology, human formation, habits, and relationship research!
Brief Bio:
My name is John Paul Schiedermayer. I live in Madison, WI with my lovely wife and 3 year old daughter (although I’ve also lived in Montana, Georgia, New Jersey, Virginia, and Missouri!). Outside of my passion for helping people become healthier and happier humans, I love all things active and outdoors, especially fishing, hunting, boating, and playing rec basketball. Lately, my wife and I have hopped on the pickleball train as well.
I suppose you could call me an “almost psychologist” and an “almost priest.” I spent 4 years in college seminary for the Diocese of Madison, WI before graduating from Seton Hall University with degrees in Catholic Theology and Catholic Studies. I later spent 6 years studying to be a psychologist through Divine Mercy University. Before I finished the dissertation, I made the decision to pursue life coaching instead of clinical work. I found that the majority of people really benefited from having a space to talk things through with somebody who was really trained in the art of listening and asking questions, and I decided to lean into my passion for work that was centered around finding clarity and striving for healthy growth instead of restricting myself to the process of assessing and treating clinical disorders.
During my psychology training, I provided psychological evaluations and therapy (individual, couple, and family) in several different settings, including rural community mental health, a residential program for adolescent boys with substance use disorders, a university counseling center, a Catholic outpatient clinic, and an ADHD evaluation clinic.
An avid learner, I’m currently working towards certification through the Professional Christian Coaching Institute and the Human Formation Coalition. I’m also a certified Prepare/Enrich Facilitator, which is an excellent assessment-based resource for enhancing relationships.
Some thoughts on the power of coaching and its role in relation to therapy
“It’s my belief that, since the end of the Second World War, psychology has moved too far away from its original roots, which were to make the lives of all people more fulfilling and productive, and too much toward the important, but not all-important, area of curing mental illness.”
This quote (from one of the fathers of positive psychology and a former president of the American Psychological Association) captures my own sentiments that led me to leave the therapy world so that I could devote myself entirely to coaching.
The essential goal of therapy is symptom-reduction (specifically, decreasing distress and reducing impairment of functioning). In other words, therapy is structured to help people achieve a level of health that is considered complete as soon as a basic ability to function without significant distress or dysfunction in your life is achieved. If you are experiencing levels of anxiety, panic, intrusive thoughts, etc. that are significantly interfering with your life, then therapy is the appropriate place to address those symptoms so that you can live and function with a basic level of health again.
Therapists are not trained to help people move beyond baseline functioning and into flourishing. This is not their specialty, and the insurance system reinforces this by withholding reimbursement once a client no longer meets the criteria for a diagnosable disorder. As soon as stable functioning is achieved, the therapist has an ethical obligation to begin the process of terminating therapy because it is no longer medically necessary.
““People organize their brains with conversation. If they don’t have anyone to tell their story to, they lose their minds. Like hoarders, they cannot unclutter themselves.””
Coaching, on the other hand, is exclusively dedicated to helping people move beyond basic functioning and into flourishing. Instead of assuming there is a baseline of pathology that needs to be treated by a healthcare provider, coaching assumes that you are currently healthy enough to be capable of knowing what you need most. Coaching focuses on drawing out what’s already within you, evoking new levels of awareness about you, your goals, the gap between them, and the steps needed to bridge that gap. A coach empowers you to lead the way, trusting that you are capable of knowing what would benefit you most.
““Simply put, Coaching is where you work with someone to connect with yourself, redesign your environment and your life, and then take action to implement it!””
I firmly believe that regardless of where we find ourselves along the spectrum of dysfunctioning to functioning, we all benefit from talking things through with someone. For most of us, the things that we are wrestling with on a daily basis are not actually diagnosable disorders or some kind of mental illness. If you’re looking to increase your self-understanding and improve your ability to overcome patterns that have been holding you back from flourishing, I highly recommend that you try meeting with a coach!