Coaching for Veterans and First Responders in Charleston, SC
Gnosis Wellness Collective offers non-clinical coaching for veterans, first responders, and their families in Charleston, South Carolina and online. The framework we use was built and field-tested with Veterans and first responders throughout SC.
Life coaching to help you understand what's happening beneath your patterns and experiment with new ways of responding.
What This Is For
The strategies that kept you effective were not a malfunction. Scanning a room, staying ahead of what could go wrong, going quiet when things got loud, keeping people at a distance; those are the adaptive responses in high stress environment, where often seconds count, and it's imperative to be able to make decisions quickly.
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The trouble can be when those strategies become difficult to turn off when the environment changes. So, maybe they show up in a staff meeting, at your kid's game, or when you'd least like them to.
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Often for first responders it is usually not one call, it's the accumulation, and the fact that you went back on shift the next day and the one after that.
Coaching here is about identifying, patterns and giving you a new way to approach the world rather than diagnosing them.
Why Coaching?
Therapy and coaching do different jobs. Therapy treats a condition. Coaching builds toward something.
You do not need a diagnosis to work with a coach, and you do not need something to be wrong with you. Plenty of people are stuck, flat, or drifting without being ill, and there is not an obvious door for that.
Coaching also has a shape. ADAPT is a structure with actual protocols and tools, and a lot of the people we work with would rather run a system than have an open-ended conversation about how they feel. ​
Therapy is the right call, If you are in crisis, if you are drinking to sleep, or if a diagnosable condition is the main thing in the way. In that case, coaching is not the answer and we will tell you. Gnosis offers counseling with licensed clinicians, and the Veterans Crisis Line is 988, press 1.
The Method
ADAPT is a five-stage framework for creating change, developed by Dr. Maia Gill and refined since 2009. It is a set of named, evidenced informed, manualized protocols with their own practice structures; not just general wellness content. Despite being a curriculum, its adaptable, and was built with to meet diverse cultures where they are in a way that feel coherent and natural, and has been utilized successfully in Veteran and first responder organizations in South Carolina.
You leave able to name and use the tools rather than only having talked about them.
45% of Local Law Enforcement and 32% of Federal Respondents
Named stress and PTSD symptom management as their top training need. ADAPT is built around what people in these roles said they needed, not around what seemed like it would help.
On the Water, Outdoors, or in a Room
Online
Available anywhere. Coaching is non-clinical, so unlike counseling it isn't limited by state licensure.
In Person in Charleston
Charleston County, including Mount Pleasant, West Ashley, James Island, Johns Island, Daniel Island, and North Charleston.
Walk-and-talk
Outdoors in low-traffic locations. Being outside helps people feel grounded, and walking gives you somewhere to put the energy.
Surf & paddleboard
beginning spring 2027. Ninety minutes, structured so the coaching happens before, during, and after time in the water.
Does the VA or TRICARE Cover This?
Coaching is not health care, so it is not billable to the VA, TRICARE, or any insurer, and it is not part of VA Community Care.
People often ask about HSA and FSA funds.
On its own, coaching is generally not a qualified medical expense, because those accounts are meant for treating a specific diagnosed condition rather than general wellbeing. Some clients have used HSA or FSA funds with a letter of medical necessity from their own physician. Whether that is accepted is between you, your doctor, and your plan administrator, and it is worth checking before you assume. Spending those funds on something that does not qualify makes the withdrawal taxable and adds a penalty. We can provide an itemized receipt either way.
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Our counseling services are licensed mental health treatment and are usually HSA and FSA eligible without any of that.
If cost is the barrier, three things are true. We have a sliding scale. Group surf sessions are $75 a person. And Warrior Surf Foundation runs free programming for veterans in Charleston, if that is the better fit for where you are, we would rather tell you than not.
Who You'd Be Working With
Bill Jarboe
ISA LVL 3, Surf Therapy Certified, Coach
Bill is a combat veteran, husband, father, and the kind of person who found healing in the ocean before he even knew he was looking for it. After years of navigating PTSD, addiction, and the disorienting quiet that follows military service, Bill discovered that the water could reach places nothing else could. What started as a birthday surf lesson became a calling - and eventually a life's work. Bill is a Groundswell-trained surf therapy facilitator who believes healing isn't about fixing what's broken. It's about reconnecting to what was always there. He brings lived experience, radical honesty, and a deep understanding of what it means to carry invisible wounds while still showing up every day.
Jordan Dasher, Coach
Jordan Dasher is a former Army combat veteran and a graduate of the Warrior Surf Foundation program. In the eight years since, he has volunteered there and taught surf sessions, first as someone going through the program and then as the person in the water with whoever came next. He is lifeguard and CPR certified. He is trained in ADAPT and coaches adults working through transition, burnout, and questions about direction and purpose. Jordan is also an artist, musician, and muralist who uses creative expression to talk about lived experience in a way that reaches veterans and civilians alike, and he has spent years teaching and mentoring in his community. He is a husband and a father of four.
Common Questions
01.
Do I have to talk about what happened?
No. Coaching is not trauma processing, and it does not require you to give an account of anything. We work with what is happening now.​
02.
Is this therapy?
No. Coaching is non-clinical and involves no diagnosis. Gnosis offers counseling separately, with licensed clinicians.​
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03.
What if my spouse is the one who wants me to do this?
It has to come from you. Nothing works if you are not ready or not committed to using the tools, so doing this only because your spouse wants you to is a reason that runs out.
That said, it is all right to do something for yourself. Taking care of yourself and making space to learn new ways of relating to the world and to your own experience is a reasonable thing to want, whoever suggested it.
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04.
Do you work with active duty?
Yes. Coaching is available in person in Charleston and online, which tends to matter for people moving, deployed, or on temporary duty elsewhere.
05.
Is this really for first responders, or mostly for veterans?
Veterans tend to get the most attention when it comes to accessing help, and first responders often end up as the afterthought on someone else's page. First responders need the same support and the same access to resources.
The first responder version of this work was built off a formal needs assessment of that population, not adapted from the veteran one.