John and Joree bring over 50 years of combined professional experience in emotional health, mindfulness, psychology, and relationship coaching to Proximity. They are also a real married couple actively practicing the same tools they teach — because they believe the most powerful guides don't stand above the work. They stay in it.
The people behind the work
Dr. John Schinnerer is a psychologist, executive coach, speaker, author, and media host with 30 years of experience in emotional intelligence, positive psychology, and men's emotional development. He is known for making the science of the mind feel immediately usable — not abstract, not clinical, but grounded in what real people face in their daily lives, their relationships, and their highest-pressure moments.
His work has reached tens of thousands of people through coaching, online education, speaking, and media, and his approach has always centered the same core belief: people deserve emotional tools that actually work, delivered in language that respects how they think and who they are.
Joree Rose has spent 20 years helping people come home to themselves. As a mindfulness and meditation teacher, relationship coach, author, and podcast host, her work has reached thousands of people navigating the real complexity of emotional life: the anxiety that won't quiet, the relationships that feel stuck, the burnout, the self-doubt, and the quiet longing for something that finally feels more like peace and less like performance.
Her approach is warm, direct, and deeply practical. She doesn't believe growth requires perfection. She believes it requires honesty, curiosity, and a willingness to keep showing up — even when it's uncomfortable, even when the patterns run deep, and especially when it matters most.
"They did not set out to build an AI company. They set out to solve a growing human problem."
After decades of working in psychology, coaching, mindfulness, relationship education, and human development, Dr. John and Joree kept witnessing the same painful pattern: people who genuinely wanted to grow — to communicate better, feel less reactive, stop repeating the same cycles in their relationships — but who couldn't access the consistent, real-time support that kind of growth actually requires.
Quality coaching and emotional support can be genuinely life-changing. But it is often expensive, logistically difficult, or simply unavailable in the moments when it matters most. And most of what passes for emotional support in the digital world feels shallow, generic, or impersonal — it may be built for everyone, which means it's built for no one.
What people need most is not another app telling them to breathe. They need someone in their corner when conflict flares at 10 PM, when anxiety spikes on a Tuesday morning, when they don't know what to say next and the silence is getting heavier. They need practical tools for what to actually do, say, and feel — in real time, in the middle of their real lives.
Proximity was built to be exactly that.
The deeper foundation of Proximity Coaching came not only from professional expertise — it came from Dr. John and Joree's own lived relational experience together.
Both were previously married to their high school sweethearts, and both experienced divorces that became pivotal turning points in their own healing journeys, though from very different relational dynamics and very different endings.
When they met in 2015 after matching on Tinder, the connection was immediate. A lunch the day after they matched became the beginning of a deeply aligned relationship grounded in growth, emotional curiosity, self-awareness, and shared purpose. Love came easily. Emotional safety did not.
Like many couples, they eventually found themselves repeating painful relational patterns rooted in attachment wounds, nervous system protection, fear, reactivity, avoidance, and emotional conditioning formed long before they ever met each other. Even after years together, an engagement, and decades of combined personal and professional work, they reached a heartbreaking point that led to a temporary separation.
That breakdown became the breakthrough.
It forced both of them to confront a truth they now teach at the center of everything they do: awareness alone does not heal relational patterns. Together, they committed to the deeper work of building true emotional safety, accountability, vulnerability, repair, nervous system regulation, and secure attachment — not as a concept, but through daily relational practice with each other.
That lived experience became the heartbeat of their work. And eventually, the heartbeat of Proximity.
Today, John and Joree openly share their own humanity, struggles, growth, repair processes, and continued self-reflection throughout their coaching, podcasts, and relationship work — because they believe authenticity creates safety.
Dr. John often tells clients: "May you have the courage to look at your own sh*t."
Joree's work is grounded in a belief she returns to again and again: "You can't change what you're not aware of." That is the heart of what Proximity does: it helps you see the blindspots where you keep getting stuck, so you can actually move through them instead of around them.
Both believe that if they are asking others to courageously examine themselves, heal patterns, and take accountability, they must be willing to model that same honesty and humility themselves. That integrity is not incidental to Proximity. It is foundational to it.
People don't need perfect experts pretending to have life figured out. They need grounded guides willing to practice the same tools they teach — and to keep practicing them, especially through the hard seasons.
That is who Dr. John and Joree are. And that is what Proximity was built to give you access to.
Why AI? Why now?
"We kept asking a different question: What if AI could become a bridge back to healthier human relationships — instead of a replacement for them?"
As artificial intelligence became rapidly integrated into daily life, most people viewed it as a threat to human connection. Dr. John and Joree saw a different possibility.
Rather than building a generic chatbot or another impersonal wellness tool, they built a human-centered coaching ecosystem rooted in decades of their own original work — lived relational experience, emotional frameworks, courses, podcasts, relationship teachings, mindfulness tools, communication practices, and coaching methodologies developed across a combined 50+ years.
The result is Proximity Coaching: a platform that uses AI as the vehicle while keeping human growth, healing, accountability, and connection as the destination.
The goal is helping people reconnect to themselves, to each other, and to the emotional skills many were never taught growing up. Technology makes that possible at a scale that was previously out of reach.
Proximity was intentionally designed to feel like a relationship, not a service. In a world full of impersonal tools, the work here is human — warm, grounded, and built from the inside out.
John and Joree share their own struggles and repair processes openly because they believe people don't need perfect experts — they need grounded guides willing to practice what they teach.
Life doesn't pause for scheduled appointments. Proximity is built for the real moments — when conflict flares, anxiety spikes, or you simply need a steady, grounded voice in your corner right now. That's the whole point.
Choose the coach that meets you where you are. All memberships include 24/7 coaching — and if you upgrade to group coaching, you'll have live biweekly sessions with Dr. John and Joree.
