About The Adult Chair®
The Adult Chair® is more than a framework — it’s the place I return to when I want to lead, live, and love from my most grounded, authentic self. It’s where I’ve learned that the most powerful truth, healing, confidence, and empowerment begin within.
As someone who naturally connects with others, sees potential, and moves ideas into action, I’ve often found myself giving endlessly, driven by a deep desire to serve and uplift. The Adult Chair taught me how to pause, listen inward, and lead from truth rather than overextension. It invites me to lead from compassion and boundaries, to respond instead of react, and to honor all the parts of me — especially the ones that need care and attention, not just the ones that serve others.
The Adult Chair has taught me how to live from my most grounded, present, and emotionally healthy self. It’s been a cornerstone in my healing, resilience, and ability to show up fully — for myself and for others.
THE ADULT CHAIR MODEL
The Adult Chair is a manual for your life. It’s a tool that helps you feel empowered, confident, and equipped with a clear roadmap to your healthiest, most authentic self.
Through The Adult Chair, you will understand how your life experiences have shaped you, give a voice to the different parts of who you are, gain greater self-awareness, and respond to life in a healthy way.
The Child Chair
Your inner child forms between ages zero and seven, and it is the foundation of your true feelings and needs. The inner child is deeply vulnerable, which makes it the source of deep, connected relationships. It is also where early wounding can occur, which shapes our view of the world as we grow up. When seated in the Child Chair, we find creativity, passion, spontaneity, trust and intimacy.
The Adolescent Chair
In adolescence, you begin to develop your own identity and realize that you are separate and unique from the world around you. As the ego forms, so does the desire to protect yourself, whether the daggers are real or imagined. When seated in the Adolescent Chair, we often become perfectionistic, judgmental, and controlling. We begin to develop masks to hide our authentic selves from a world that can seem cold and rejecting. Most of us live from this unconscious place (the Adolescent Chair) until we become conscious and make the decision to change.
The Adult Chair
The Adult Chair represents your highest self: living in the present moment, dealing with facts and truth over stories and assumptions and being able to set boundaries from a place of patience and compassion. While seated in the Adult Chair, we can deeply connect with our inner child’s needs and feelings and objectively observe our adolescent’s behaviors. It is here, and only here, that we can become aware of—and overcome—the emotional triggers and negative patterns that hold us back.
“Through Sam’s mentorship, I’ve learned to move beyond surface-level feedback and be able to dig deeper, to truly listen between the lines, to notice what’s being said, and sometimes what isn’t. Using tools like StrengthsFinder, the Enneagram, and exercises from The Adult Chair and trigger awareness work, I’ve developed a deeper level of self-awareness and empathy. These insights have transformed how I connect with others, how I approach our culture work, and how I show up as a person.”
- Dulsa H.“Sam has a remarkable ability to draw out meaningful self-awareness. She has helped [my team] grow in emotional intelligence, communicate more effectively, and collaborate with a new level of clarity and confidence. I have watched each of them step more fully into their leadership abilities because of the work she has done with us.”
- Jacob C.