The origin of UPAD Psychology and Coaching dates back to 2009 at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, where two students of Sports Psychology began their Master’s practice in a prestigious sports club in the Community of Madrid.

From then on, Fernando Callejo and Carlos Rey would not separate their paths again, officially founding the UPAD Psychology and Coaching in the summer of 2014. Gone are the projects as independent psychologists in the sports field, the participation in the sports psychology unit of the UAM, the Human Resources consultancy and the individual consultations. The centre for personal and professional development that we know today was born in Madrid, to accompany people in the difficult task of “turning their problems into challenges”.

With this approach extracted from Positive Psychology and Coaching, they began to form an interdisciplinary team of professionals, helping their users to face situations of a very diverse nature (sport, work, studies, personal, social, sexological, clinical, etc.), seeking to optimize their levels of performance, well-being and satisfaction with life.

How does the UPAD team work?

The UPAD team is organized around the joint assessment of the different needs posed by its users , so that after an initial consultation of a free nature, it can determine what type of team professional is best suited to accompany each user in his or her development process.

Located in the centre of Madrid, they have extended their scope of action thanks to the advantages offered by new technologies, offering their innovative and particular working methodology both in person in the capital and online to people from inside and outside our borders.

As psychologists, UPAD professionals do not trust in endless therapies and therefore, they set themselves the goal of contributing to the people who come to the centre to pursue their challenges, to acquire the responsibility for their own development and to achieve in the future the capacity to regulate themselves autonomously in the face of coming challenges, empowering them beforehand to do so.

In the UPAD Psychology and Coaching, each person is conceived as a complex system , composed of various gears that represent the different areas of relevance to their lives (personal, emotional, social, family, training, professional, etc.), in each of which, there may be moments or situations throughout its development, which pose difficulties for the proper functioning of the entire mechanism.

To achieve this, they evaluate the different areas of relevance of each user who comes to the UPAD, in order to determine what type of techniques and strategies are convenient to use, which favor self-knowledge, acceptance and overcoming of the different situations they may be going through.

Each period presents its challenges, so they offer their services of psychological care and development in all stages of life, from children, adolescents, adults, couples, families and seniors.

Areas of psychological intervention

At the UPAD they focus on finding the lowest common denominator underlying the different areas or contexts of psychological intervention that we can find in practice, in order to optimize a series of objectives, which correspond to the major areas of work that psychology addresses, finding among them:

  • Our behavior (manifested in the performance we obtain in the different spheres that make up our life).

  • Our feelings (expressed in terms of the well-being, or lack thereof, that we experience on a day-to-day basis)

  • And our thoughts (responsible for our level of satisfaction).

By interweaving these threads, they can be addressed as the real culprits in our states of frustration, mistrust or fear among others in various types of situations such as, for example:

  • The person who does not have confidence in his or her ability to adequately address his or her relationships with others.
  • The professional who is having a hard time at work because he doesn’t feel motivated, recognized or directly fit in with his colleagues.
  • The athlete who finds it difficult to face the competition with sufficient performance guarantees or similar to those found in his practice during training.
  • The dancer or musician who finds it difficult to control his or her states of tension arising from auditions and concerts.
  • The student or opponent who stays up all night before exams and tests.
  • The guy who has trouble assimilating a breakup or coping with his relationships with girls and vice versa.
  • The self-demanding person who gets frustrated before starting his projects because of his high expectations.
  • Those who wish to increase their self-knowledge and reach higher levels of autonomy in managing their person.
    Where there is a challenge, UPAD seeks a way to accompany these people in the development of their self-control, focusing on those aspects that they can truly control.

Psychology and Coaching

The approach of the professionals of the UPAD is oriented to combine the application of different types of therapeutic techniques that come from the field of Psychology and Coaching, to adapt to the specific needs presented by each of the users that come to the centre .

It goes through more basic approaches, based on training in psychological skills management strategies for people with a lower level of knowledge in this area, to a less directive approach, with a desire to explore new possible scenarios for action, more based on coaching.

Courses and training

Another of the most characteristic aspects of the UPAD is its commitment to training and excellence , offering both classroom and online training through its website, in environments of all kinds (sports, academic, professional, personal), pursuing various objectives such as prevention, awareness, skills training and development among others.

Special mention should be made of their involvement in the practical curricular training of university students from various universities in the Community of Madrid (UCM, UNED, URJC, CUCC, UPC, VIU, etc.) for which they have been external tutors for more than 10 years and on an ad hoc basis, with other universities outside our borders.

The informative task

The UPAD team is very aware of the importance of transmitting knowledge , making Psychology known to both the specialized and general public, serving as a “speaker” of its work methodology (in its own professional training courses for psychologists) and various articles on different topics related to Psychology through the blog of its website (one of the most active in the networks).

  • Follow them on their official Twitter.