Meet Joan Ridsdel

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Joan Ridsdel. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Joan below.

Hi Joan, so great to have you on the platform. There’s so much we want to ask you, but let’s start with the topic of self-care. Do you do anything for self-care and if so, do you think it’s had a meaningful impact on your effectiveness?

There are two parts to my story. The first is that I discovered Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT or Tapping for short) as a way to help me manage my stress/anxiety and emotions and as an additional tool to use with my coaching clients. I found it easy to use and powerful as it lowers stress levels in the body and allows us to think more clearly – we’re able to explore events, challenges, limiting beliefs etc. with more ease and at a deeper level when we’re relaxed and open. Change and transformation happen through gentle tapping on acupressure points on our head and upper body while breathing, talking through our fears and worries, and the stress we experience in our bodies. So, I teach basic tapping to clients if they’re open to it and I Tap daily myself as a way to keep myself grounded and centered.

The second part of my story is about writing. I’ve always loved to write – writing a blog post about topics that were relevant to me and my clients was a way for me to express myself and be creative as well as support the women I worked with. And then there was journal writing, something I did on and off for years. I loved writing in my journal – I’d write about events and struggles, what was troubling me and I found getting my thoughts out of my head and onto paper a great self-care strategy.

The problem was with all my writing that I was inconsistent, something I did on a whim or when I felt like it. What I wanted was to write consistently so I could benefit from it – we know that writing is good for one’s mental health, for managing stress, for working through the “messy” middle, for giving us a sense of control in our lives as we write our thoughts, feelings, hopes and dreams down. Plus, I wanted to practice what I preached as a coach!

So, I decided to become a consistent writer. I started with making a decision I’d write weekly on my blog and newsletter. Then, I decided to write daily in my journal – I started with a commitment to writing one word per day no matter what. If I got into bed at night and realized I hadn’t written in my journal, I’d get it out and write “good night”. It’s almost been a year since I started on June 1st 2024, and except for one or two days, I’ve found myself writing daily.

It then occurred to me that combining Tapping and writing could be an even better way to take care of myself. I started doing a round of tapping and breathing before putting pen to paper – with a calm, centered body and a more open mind, my writing capacity has expanded. If I’m short of time I still write one or two words just to be consistent – and that feels congruent to who I am and want to be. But when I want to explore more deeply the issues I’m writing about, I tap and write to help me shift, change and transform my thoughts, feelings, beliefs, see my problems from a different perspective and help me problem solve.

After discovering all of this, I took a Therapeutic/Reflective writing program and began educating myself in this area so I could not only help my clients with their self-care through tapping and writing, but also use this modality with myself. It’s helpful to have prompts to spark creativity and help sort out the issues when something is complex or difficult.

I now offer Tap and Write to clients in small groups of women as well as private 1:1 sessions where I carefully craft therapeutic/reflective writing prompts and pair them with tapping scripts. This is an impactful way to take care of oneself as it helps resolve, change, allow for reflection, or uncovers resistance to an issue that we’re grappling with.

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?

I may have answered some of this in the first part!

I am a retired social worker who decided to become a life coach in the 3rd act of her life. I created W.I.S.E.R. Woman Coaching in 2016 – W.I.S.E.R. is an acronym for Wisdom, Intuition, Self-compassion, Energy, Resilience and Responsibility. These are the tenants of my work and at the core of what I personally continue to engage with and practice in my life.

I began coaching women who struggled with emotional eating but my practice has naturally morphed into supporting women in mid-life and beyond who want to create meaningful change and navigate transitions with more ease. My amazing clients are women whose children have left home and their wondering what’s next, who struggle to know who they are now that life has changed for them, who want to explore their inner world more deeply, finally address and change the limiting beliefs they’ve carried with them, sometimes for decades.

And, as I mentioned before, I began using EFT and therapeutic/reflective writing together myself as a way to support myself and then wondered what would happen if I offered it to others – a friend invited me to create a process and offer it to a few people just to see what would happen. The feedback gave me the momentum to offer another Tap and Write session and since August 2024, I’ve been offering them monthly for small groups of 4-8 women. Each month I create a Tap and Write Circle based on a theme such as managing stress, stepping into a New Year, self-compassion and the next one resilience in May 2025.

My dream is to offer Tap and Write retreats in a beautiful setting where women come together to connect and grow through these two mediums, where they can take a breath and combine learning, growing, healing individually as well as make connections that might just create lasting friendships. This dream is growing and fits so beautifully into the self-care realm!

From small groups of Tap and Write, I now also offer private 1:1 Tap and Write session where I create a special session based on the issue or concern you want to work through. This is for the woman who prefers 1:1 or has something specific she’d like to explore.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

I think it’s important to gain as much formal and experiential training as you can is important – coaches training as a base for example and then adding in additional training and qualifications whether it’s in EFT, NLP, or whatever you want to so that you can support your clients with a variety of tools.

One of the qualities I believe is so valuable is curiosity and has been one of the reasons I was able to create Tap and Write, for example.

I think it’s really important as a coach to understand trauma and be trauma-informed so that if and when a trauma emerges while working with a client you know how to support the individual/group and work with it or manage it and refer to someone who is experienced in dealing with trauma.

How can folks who want to work with you connect?

I mentioned my dream to offer Tap and Write retreats. I envision partnering with someone who offers retreats and could either offer Tap and Write as an “entree” or “desert”, at the beginning or end of the retreat, or collaborate with the person and combine other things like art, yoga or writing. I’m open to exploring ideas for the future.

Also, I envision continuing to work with women in mid-life and beyond (ie 40+ years old) who are navigating change, craving more in life – they’ve had a career or are nearing the end of one, been a caregiver, and been responsible for family, and now it’s time for self. They’ve done some inner work but are ready to go deeper and are drawn to the idea of combining practical, creative expression with healing and growth. They may not know what they want but they are ready to begin figuring it out. They may be writers or women who used to write, or they’d like to write more and create a writing habit but at the heart of they are women willing to bring curiosity and courage to each Tap and Write session. They are attracted to Tap and Write even if they don’t Tap because it’s a gentle, powerful, respectful process that honours both emotions and wisdom, allows them to feel more at ease in their bodies, more confident and open to change and transformation.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://joanridsdel.com/tap-and-write
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joan.ridsdel/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/joanridsdelcoaching

Image Credits

All are my photos, owned by me.