Beyond Sobriety: Recovery Coaching Tools that Work
Sober But Still Stuck
Sara came to coaching six months into sobriety, clear-headed but emotionally raw.
She wasn’t drinking anymore — but she was still numbing.
She numbed with over-functioning, caretaking, apologizing, fixing, managing — anything that kept her from feeling her unmet need: to be seen and comforted without having to earn it.
On the surface, Sara was thriving — a 41-year-old Jewish American woman, creative director, mother of two. She had structure, accountability, and a sponsor. But underneath, there was an ache she couldn’t name. Every time she reached for connection — especially with her mom — she hit the same brick wall.
“You think that’s bad? I had it worse.”
“You just have to live with things, Sara. That’s life.”
Her mother had survived scarcity, antisemitism, and a life where emotions were dangerous to have. Empathy wasn’t modeled — endurance was. And because of that, Sara learned to equate love with self-erasure.
The Function of the Drink
Alcohol had once served as a translator — turning pain into something bearable and loneliness into something quiet. Sobriety removed the buffer. Suddenly, the very needs she’d buried were right at the surface: affection, appreciation, and comfort .
But she didn’t yet know how to ask for them.
She didn’t even fully know what they were.
So we began with awareness.
Working With Recovery Coaching Tools
The Feelings Wheel
The first tool we used was the Feelings Wheel — a deceptively simple map of emotions that helps people identify what they’re actually feeling beneath anger, anxiety, or shame.
Sara started tracking where emotions showed up in her body — tightening in the chest when her mom dismissed her, heaviness behind her eyes when she longed for comfort.
At first, she’d name them as “frustration” or “disappointment.” But when she followed the wheel inward, she found deeper words: grief, longing, hurt, abandonment.
Naming the feelings wasn’t just labeling — it was permission.
Each time she could say, “I’m feeling this,” she reclaimed a piece of herself she used to drown in wine.
About this tool: Psychologist Dr. Gloria Willcox created the Feelings Wheel in 1982 to help people identify and express emotions that were often hard to name. Inspired by Robert Plutchik’s emotion theory and Joseph Zinker’s psychotherapy work, she designed the wheel as concentric layers of feelings—expanding from core emotions to nuanced states. Today, countless adaptations trace back to her original model, which remains a cornerstone of emotional literacy.
Relational Needs Assessments
Once Sara could identify her emotions, we moved to understanding what those feelings needed.
We used tools to understand her top relational needs and who met them as she was growing up.
She discovered that her core unmet needs were:
Comfort (empathy): being met with tenderness, not advice.
Attention: having someone truly enter her emotional world.
Appreciation: hearing that she mattered beyond what she produced.
When she compared her current relationships to her childhood chart, she saw a pattern: she surrounded herself with people who needed her, not people who could hold her.
There are many tools to understand unmet needs. A trained coach or therapist can help you work with them. However, ten common unmet needs in parent-child relationships include emotional support, open communication, quality time, safety, acceptance, validation, affection, praise, trust, and independence. When these needs are unmet, it can lead to lasting emotional wounds that affect a child's self-esteem, their ability to form healthy relationships, and their overall mental well-being
What a Trauma-Informed Recovery Coach Actually Does
A trauma-informed recovery coach doesn’t diagnose, interpret, or analyze trauma.
We don’t process childhood memories in the clinical sense — but we do support clients in building awareness of how those experiences live in the present.
We use tools like the Feelings Wheel and Relational Needs Assessments to:
Help clients name emotions and unmet needs without shame.
Build emotional regulation skills through awareness and self-compassion.
Translate therapeutic insights into everyday action — setting boundaries, asking for help, creating emotionally safe routines.
Where a therapist might explore why a wound exists, coaching explores what you can do to care for it now — ethically, gently, and without retraumatization.
For Sara, that looked like practicing small acts of vulnerability: asking her kids for hugs, receiving appreciation without deflecting, saying “I feel hurt” instead of “I’m fine.”
Each step rebuilt her nervous system’s capacity for safe connection.
Recovery Beyond Sobriety
Months later, Sara told me:
“I sat with my mom last week. She said, ‘Just live with it. I had to.’
And I realized… she’s still surviving. I don’t have to.”
That moment was freedom — not because her mom changed, but because she did.
Her healing wasn’t about confrontation. It was about integration — learning that empathy doesn’t have to come from her mother anymore. She could source it from community, friendship, coaching, and her own presence.
That’s what trauma-informed recovery work really is: the art of replacing coping with connection.
Higher Vibes Coaching | Trauma-Informed Recovery & ADHD Coaching
If you’re in recovery from substances, burnout, people-pleasing, or family dynamics that left you hyper-independent — you already know that survival mode can wear a thousand masks.
At Higher Vibes Coaching, we help you rebuild emotional safety and self-trust — using trauma-informed, ethically bound tools like the Feeling Wheel and Relational Needs frameworks to turn awareness into action.
You don’t have to live with it.
You get to live through it — with clarity, compassion, and community.
About the Author
Minal Kamlani is a trauma-informed ADHD recovery coach based in NYC. She works with neurodivergent adults in recovery from trauma, burnout, and survival-based coping. Her coaching blends structure and nervous system awareness to help clients reclaim function—without shame or perfectionism. Learn more at Higher Vibes Coaching.