When life changes, it can leave you wondering who You are.
Therapy and Coaching for people navigating relationship change, identity, loss, anxiety, abandonment, midlife transition and major life change.
What are you struggling with?
These are some of the areas I help people with.
Understanding what's happening inside you
Much of the difficulty we experience comes from different parts of ourselves pulling in different directions. One part may feel afraid or vulnerable. Another may criticise, judge, or push us. Another part may know what would actually help, but struggle to be heard. I use the filial psyche to help you understand three different parts of yourself and how they interact, so you can respond with greater clarity, self-trust, and compassion.
Inner child.
Your feelings, needs, and earlier emotional experiences
Inner critic.
The voice of fear, doubt, judgement and self-criticism.
Adult.
The part of you that can think clearly and respond in the present
Nurturing Parent.
The part that can offer reassurance, compassion, and care
Find Yourself Again
Sometimes life changes so much that you no longer feel quite like yourself. This space is for exploring identity, loss, change, old emotional patterns, and the question, "Who am I now?"
Find Your Way Back To Yourself
Featured Video Programme – Separation and Divorce
Life's challenges can sometimes leave us feeling lost, uncertain and disconnected from who we really are.
Separation and divorce are particular examples of how major life changes can affect our sense of identity.
This six-part therapeutic video programme explores the emotional impact of relationship endings, how earlier experiences may influence our reactions, and how we can begin reconnecting with ourselves.
Includes practical Inner Child exercises and a 26-page companion workbook.
Complete programme – £29 one-off payment.
About Steve
I'm a therapist, psychotherapist, counsellor, and life coach with many years of experience helping people understand themselves more deeply and navigate periods of change, loss, and uncertainty. My work brings together therapy, coaching, and my filial psyche model to help people recognise old emotional patterns, strengthen their relationship with themselves, and move forward with greater clarity.
Ready to Talk?
If something on this website feels familiar, we can explore what's happening and whether working together might be helpful.
Books by Steve
My new Book is available.
“How Therapy Works”
Have you ever wondered why we think, feel and behave the way we do? This practical guide explains how therapy works and emotional healing become possible.
Available now in paperback and Kindle editions.
Becoming You is a therapeutic journey into the relationship that quietly shapes every other relationship in your life.
Drawing on decades of therapeutic experience, psychotherapist and life coach Stephen Ellerker explores why so many of us become disconnected from ourselves—learning to seek approval, silence our feelings, question our instincts and become the person we believe other people need us to be.
About me
As an Identity Coach, I help people in midlife navigate times of change and uncertainty. Many of my clients come to me feeling low, directionless, or struggling with a deep sense of loss and disconnection. Together, we work to rebuild clarity, confidence, and purpose—so they can live with meaning again.
This isn’t just theory for me. My own life has been marked by seasons of emptiness, loneliness, and despair. At times, I hid that lack of direction behind food, drink, and relationship drama. But through my own journey of identity work and personal development, I’ve discovered how to reconnect with myself, create purpose, and live authentically.
Now I guide others through the same process—helping them rediscover who they are when life changes everything.
“Your life is a reflection of your thoughts. If you change your thinking, you change your life.”
— Brian Tracy
My Story
I haven’t always been The Identity Coach. My journey began in a very different profession — a long career as an optometrist and self-employed businessman. But life has a way of changing our direction. Following a difficult divorce in my early forties, I stepped into a second career as a Counsellor and Psychotherapist, training first at Keele University and later completing a Master’s in Transactional Analysis Psychotherapy at the Berne Institute.
After a brief retirement, I retrained as a Life Coach — and that was the turning point. Coaching gave me more than skills; it gave me a roadmap back to myself. It was through this process that I uncovered who I truly was, beyond the roles I had played and the expectations I had carried.
But my story starts much earlier. Having been abandoned to a children’s home at the age of three and sent to boarding school at seven, I grew up without the nurturing environment that helps a child develop a secure sense of self. For many years, I lived with the consequences of that early disconnection — chasing success, but feeling an inner emptiness.
The truth I have discovered, both personally and professionally, is that we never completely lose ourselves. Our true identity doesn’t disappear — it becomes buried under layers of survival strategies, limiting beliefs, and unhelpful narratives. My own healing came when I stopped abandoning my inner child and began to nurture myself with clarity, kindness, and compassion.
This is why I became The Identity Coach. My purpose is to help others who feel lost, stuck, or disconnected rediscover who they truly are. By blending the depth of psychotherapy with the forward-focus of coaching, I guide clients through life’s transitions — divorce, redundancy, burnout, midlife crisis — into a place of clarity, confidence, and belonging.
If my story resonates with you, I invite you to take the first step on your own journey of rediscovery. Book a free discovery session, and together we’ll begin uncovering the identity that has always been there — waiting to be seen, heard, and lived fully.
Read my story as featured in an article on Metro in association with my work as coach for Kindling Dating and how I helped 55 year old Suzy Walker find love in her article featured by The Daily Telegraph.
Testimonials
“If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things.”
— Albert Einstein
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