Listen to the full interview here
Welcome to Coffee with a Coastie. We had the pleasure of sitting down with Kerry Davenport. In 2017, Kerry was diagnosed with complex PTSD, severe depression, and anxiety. Then over the last 5 years has reinvented herself, releasing a book in 2022 along with others titled ‘Elevate Your Performance’. It is a true blessing that we still have Kerry here to talk to, as she mentions on her own website that a miracle of sliding door moments or universal intervention stopped her from taking her own life twice. Kerry now says she is extremely grateful for everything that she has experienced, as it fuels her passion and purpose to serve and help others through the same dark emotions. So it was with absolute gratitude that I got to sit down and chat with Kerry.
You are a certified life coach. Can you talk about what it is that a life coach does for people?
A life coach helps someone see outside of where they are. They may be standing in anxiety or depression, or a lot of people will say, I’m just stuck in life, and it’s hard to solve a problem when you’re standing in it, day in and day out. So a coach can help you identify what’s important to you, help you identify your goals, and then help you remove the blockages and limiting beliefs holding you back. There are three major things that affect us, limiting beliefs, trapped negative emotions and values conflict, and a coach can help you remove these three roadblocks.
Having served in both the fire brigade and police force for many years, how did you and why did you become a life coach?
I was a retained fire fighter for five years at Terrigal in the nineties and I joined the Australian Federal Police in 2000. I had a breakdown in 2015 as I came out of child protection operations. I tried to push through and prove that I was okay and that I could do my job. But I finally succumbed to the memory loss and night terrors in 2017, when everything just collapsed. I’ve never forgotten, I remember sitting on a beach in a very dark moment where I was going to take my own life, crying and crying. Then suddenly, I’m having this conversation. I didn’t know who I was having the conversation with at the time, but it turned out I was having this conversation with God. I know that now. I’m a big believer in God today.
I remember saying, I’m coming home, I’m coming home, I’ve failed you down here. I was so disconnected from my soul, I was just so lost. I then remember saying that if I’m meant to stay here, you need to show me and if I survive this, I will serve you for the rest of my life.
That night I was with a group of people where we were, but they’d all gone out and I didn’t. I had it all planned out for the next day, how I was going to do it? Then suddenly it was interruption after interruption. I won’t go into the events of the night, but the next day I woke up and thought okay I don’t feel too bad at the moment. We’ll just see how I go tomorrow. Then I kept getting these sliding door moments, these interruptions. I ended up buying a ticket to ‘Unleash the power within’, which I don’t remember buying, but when I walked out of it, I knew my purpose was to use everything that happened to me to help others. I realized that everything I’d experienced, every trauma, every emotion, everything that happened to me was meant for me to use to help others. I still needed to work through releasing a lot of trauma from the body, but I started looking at life differently and when we change the way we look at things, everything changes.
What event or person has had the biggest impact on your journey and why?
Oh, that’s a tough question, there’s been so many pivotal moments. In saying this, there was one moment when I’d come out of child protection operations and I was having massive memory issues and night terrors, and I wasn’t telling anyone because admitting something was wrong was a sign of weakness. Then I had a breakdown and had to prove myself again. So I had to go to Canberra and do a four week course as I really wanted to continue to be a police officer, but I knew there was all this stuff happening in my mind and I was abusing alcohol, trying to sleep at night and everything like that. Then whilst in the college I totally lost my memory and I didn’t know what was going on. I just knew I had to get through this course or else I wouldn’t be able to be a police officer. I started having really dark moments thinking of suicide. As I couldn’t answer questions, I couldn’t do anything, it got worse and worse. Finally, I got called into this office and there was a superintendent there, I wasn’t going to pass the course because I couldn’t do anything right. I’ve never forgotten this moment though unfortunately I can’t remember her name; I don’t remember much about her at all.
I just remember she turned around and said, is there anything we need to know, was there something going on? I said yeah, I have to be honest, I’ve got PTSD and I think it’s come back really bad since being in the college. She asked did I have a psychologist? I said, yeah. I told her who the AFP psychologist was, she then asked if I’d call her after I left the college? I said no. I haven’t told this story before. She put her hand on my arm and said, don’t move, give me the number, I’m going to call her right now. The fact that she touched my arm she brought me back into association. As when she asked me would I call her, I was so disassociated. I had no intention of calling her, I had no intention of ever coming back. I was going to end it and it was just that simple act of compassion and empathy that the new superintendent had, that saved my life that day.
Many of us have stories that we narrate to ourselves about our life, and we can allow these stories to define who we are and to justify our struggles and addictions. Can you talk about the stories we tell ourselves and how best to deal with these stories?
The first thing I’m going to say to this is the past is the past. We can’t change it, but we can change how long it lasts. So, if we keep telling ourself the same story over and over again, we’re actually myelinating it into our brain.
When you tell yourself over and over again, you’re useless, you’re no good, or that this happened to me or whatever, then you are myelinating that belief into your brain. Because you are saying it, feeling it, seeing it all the time, then you create it’s visualization. So we have to change the story. We have to look forward, if you keep looking back, you’re going to keep creating what you’re looking at. Everything you’re thinking about now is what you’re going to create in 10 years time. The question is, what do you want to create in 10 years time?
Do you want to create more of what you’ve got, or do you want to create something different? The more you tell the story, the more you create the story. You’ve got to step out of that story and ask, what do I want to create? What do I want to achieve in life? And if you can’t achieve it on your own, then get help. It doesn’t matter who it is that you get help from. It could be a coach, psychologist, psychiatrist, counsellor, a doctor it doesn’t matter. Someone that can help you.
Lastly, if a person wants to reach out to get help from a life coach, how do you recommend finding the right life coach for the right person?
First of all, these days we can work with anyone anywhere. You can look up life coaches and see what their specialties are. I love helping people find their true self. I love helping remove trauma, that’s kind of my niche. I love working with the mindset. I run a program called ‘Reset Your Mindset’. I try and speak to all my clients before they see me and I’ll let them know whether I can help them or maybe I refer them to someone else. You’ve got to do what feels right. Also, the right person may come along and they may be the right person for a year or two years and then you may move on to someone else. Follow your feelings and intuition.
Our sincere thanks to Kerry for her time and openness. You can find out more about Kerry on her website allelementscoaching.com.au