ABOUT TRICIA
I’ve spent years paying attention to what helps people become more capable of living from what matters to them.
I’m Tricia Parido, an Emotional Performance Strategist, Speaker & Writer, and the founder of Turning Leaves® Recovery, Life, and Wellness Coaching.
My work lives somewhere at the intersection of psychology, emotional intelligence, behavioral change, addiction, physical well-being, relationships, and the very ordinary business of being a human being.
What I’m most interested in is what happens after we understand something.
Because knowing is useful. But knowing what matters to us and actually being able to live from it are not always the same thing.
We can see the pattern and still get pulled into it. We can know exactly how we’d like to respond and still hear something come out of our mouth that makes us think, well... that wasn’t quite what I had in mind. We can understand ourselves beautifully on paper and then discover that relationships, stress, fear, exhaustion, habit, or our own nervous system have apparently not read the paper.
That space between knowing what matters and actually being able to live from it is where a lot of my work lives.
Over time, that work has become what I call Total Emotional Performance™, the applied framework behind much of what I teach, write about, and practice with people. It’s about becoming more capable of reading yourself clearly, responding with greater intention, and participating in your life in ways you can actually stand behind.
I’m not particularly interested in helping people become flawless.
I’m much more interested in helping them become more available for their own lives.
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THE WORK BEHIND THE WORK
I didn’t get interested in human behavior because I thought it would make a fascinating career.
I got interested because I had a whole lot of my own human behavior to figure out first.
Long before any of this became professional work, I was trying to understand my own patterns, coping, choices, relationships, physical well-being, emotional reactions, and why knowing better did not always magically translate into doing better.
Some of what I know came from school and professional training. A whole lot of it came from sitting across from real people while real life was happening. And plenty of it came from having to look at myself honestly enough to recognize that sometimes the thing making my life harder wasn’t only what was happening around me. Sometimes it was how I was participating in it.
That one took a minute.
It also changed the way I work.
I don’t believe every difficult feeling needs to be fixed, every uncomfortable moment needs to be escaped, or every hard season means we’ve somehow wandered off the path and need to immediately find our way back to being happy.
Sometimes life is uncomfortable because life is uncomfortable. What interests me is whether we can become more capable inside it. Can we notice what is happening without immediately making it mean something terrible? Can we sort what belongs to us from what doesn’t? Can we make choices we respect even when we’re irritated, scared, disappointed, hurt, overwhelmed, or just plain tired of dealing with whatever is in front of us?
I think we can. And that is very different from trying to control everything around us.
My professional work has only deepened that interest. Recovery, emotional performance, relationships, psycho-nutrition, intervention work, professional education, and years of coaching people through some very complicated seasons keep bringing me back to the same question:
How does a human being become more capable of choosing how to live?
“I’m still exploring that question. I suspect I always will be.
Sometimes life is uncomfortable because life is uncomfortable.
WHAT INTERESTS ME IS WHETHER WE CAN BECOME MORE CAPABLE INSIDE IT.
WHAT I BELIEVE
A good life is not one in which nothing difficult happens.
For starters, I don’t think that life exists.
I think a good life has much more to do with becoming increasingly capable of meeting what does happen without abandoning ourselves every time something gets uncomfortable.
There are a few ideas that keep showing up in nearly everything I teach, write, and explore.
Self-Authority
You can’t choose every thought, feeling, circumstance, or experience that arrives.
You can become much more capable of deciding what you do with it.
To me, self-authority isn’t control. It’s being able to recognize what actually belongs to you to lead, make your choices deliberately, and take responsibility for what you build from there.
It also means recognizing when something does not belong to you to control.
That part is inconvenient sometimes, but pretty important.
Emotional Agility
I’m not trying to help anyone become unbothered.
I’m not even convinced I trust people who claim they are.
You’re still going to get irritated, hurt, overwhelmed, disappointed, scared, jealous, tired, embarrassed, and occasionally have a first thought that probably shouldn’t become your next sentence.
Human development does not cancel humanity.
Emotional agility is becoming more capable of experiencing what is honestly present without automatically allowing it to decide what happens next.
Personal Refinement
Growth does not require being at war with yourself.
We can look at what worked, what didn’t, what belongs to us, what needs practice, and where we’re ready to do something differently without turning the whole process into evidence that we’re somehow failing at being human.
I prefer the word refinement.
We notice. We evaluate. We adjust. We keep going.
Sometimes beautifully. Sometimes a little less beautifully.
Both count.
Choice
Desire matters.
Reality exists.
That distinction is important to me.
I don’t believe we can create any outcome we want simply because we want it badly enough, think positively enough, or make a sufficiently attractive vision board.
There are other people involved in this life. There are circumstances we don’t control. Bodies change. Relationships change. Plans fall apart. People make choices we would not have chosen for them.
The work is becoming more capable of living from what matters to us inside the reality we actually have.
That is where choice becomes meaningful.
I'm not interested in helping people become flawless. I'm interested in helping them become more available for their own lives.
THE PROFESSIONAL FOUNDATION
The credentials matter because they inform the work. The work matters because it has to hold up in real life.
My professional background spans mental health, addiction, intervention, psycho-nutrition, coaching, professional education, behavioral change, and emotional performance.
The credentials and training matter to me because they give me different ways to understand what may be happening for someone. But credentials alone have never been the point.
What matters is whether what we understand can actually be useful when real life is happening.
International Mental Health Practitioner
International Master Addictions Specialist
Psycho-Nutrition Consultant
Nationally Certified Life Coach
Professional Life Interventionist
International Mental Health Coach & Credentialing Instructor
Degree in Psychology with a focus on process, behavioral, and chemical addiction
Founder, Turning Leaves® Recovery, Life, and Wellness Coaching LLC Creator of Total Emotional Performance™
Years of professional practice across mental health, addiction, intervention, psycho-nutrition, coaching, education, and emotional performance.
My practice is based on California’s Central Coast in San Luis Obispo County, with my work extending beyond the region through private work, teaching, speaking, and professional education.
Throughout the years, I’ve worked with individuals, families, professionals, and practitioners navigating everything from substance use and emotional eating to relationships, burnout, perfectionism, major life transitions, and the quieter question of why a life that looks perfectly functional from the outside doesn’t always feel particularly good to live inside.
The subjects can look very different. The deeper work is surprisingly consistent.
We learn to see ourselves more clearly, understand what is actually happening, recognize what belongs to us to lead, and become increasingly capable of living from what matters.
That’s the work I continue to practice, teach, write about, and refine.
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