Living with a Life Coach

I’m a therapist, and my husband, Mike, just got certified as a life coach. He’s standing in front of me in the kitchen as I chop vegetables, reading me a letter from his coaching school’s CEO. It’s loaded with praise for having completed the program. You’re incredible. I’m proud of you. You’ve earned this. You’re part of a vibrant community that’s cheering you on.

“And here’s how it closes,” Mike says, pausing for a few seconds, either for dramatic effect or because he’s choked up and struggling to get the words out. “It’s time to change lives around the world. It’s time to serve.”

It’s time to serve dinner, I think.

“Kudos,” I mumble. “That’s great. I’m happy for you.”

The truth is, I’m not in the mood to celebrate anything, right now, especially his prospective coaching clients. I’ve been seeing therapy clients all day. One is struggling with chronic depression, which has worsened since he got furloughed from his job. An older couple is on the brink of divorce after one of them gambled away half their retirement savings. Another client’s mother has been diagnosed with early Alzheimer’s, and my client is overcome with ambiguous loss and grief.

Mike snaps the letter back into the white binder they sent him when he paid his tuition. It contains the coaching school’s policies and detailed protocols for leading structured, pre-planned sessions around nine core themes.

“Once I get my website up, I’ll start seeing a few clients, maybe from your office on your off-hours,” he says. “There’ll be a learning curve, but I know I can do this.”

“Yup, I’m sure you can,” I say, spraying a frying pan with oil.

“How about a little more enthusiasm?” He raises a hand for a high five.

I roll my eyes and tap his palm.

“Come on—you can do better than that!” Mike assumes a power position with his arms raised. This coaching thing has really gone to his head. “Give me a real high five.”

There’s no denying that something has changed between us. Ever since he decided to become a coach, I’ve been asking myself, Who is this man? Can I even trust him? It’s like I’m sleeping with the enemy now, professionally speaking.

“Fine, you want a real high five?” I mutter, swinging my arm back up over one of my shoulders. A moment later, when our palms collide, the ringing echoes through the kitchen like a clap of thunder. It takes a few seconds for the sound to fade out completely.

“That’s more like it!” he laughs, shaking his hand like it’s on fire.

“Well, you sure became a coach fast, I’ll give you that,” I say as the tingling in my own palm subsides. I return to chopping vegetables.

“Are you implying it was too fast?” he asks as he lifts a jug of water from the fridge. “I earned this certification, honey. We covered a ton of material. I was online from 8 a.m. till 6 p.m. for five days straight.”

Now it’s my turn to laugh.

“Five whole days. Wow! You must be wrecked. Maybe you should take a vacation.” Obviously, this isn’t my proudest supportive-spouse moment.

“There’s no need to get competitive about this,” he responds, filling both our glasses with water and depositing them on the dining room table alongside our forks and napkins. “You’re a therapist, I’m a coach—they’re completely different things.”

I push the vegetables off the cutting board into a pan. They sizzle.

“Do you remember how long it took me to become a therapist?” I’m sure he remembers, since we were living together at the time, but that’s not the point. I’m teeing up my argument. “First, I got a master’s degree, which took me two years. Then, I completed hundreds of supervised clinical hours, which took me another two years. That’s four years right there. How many days is that? Around fifteen hundred, I think—just slightly more than five. Oh, and then, I studied to pass an exam. Did you have to pass an exam?”

“I’m not sure why this upsets you so much,” he says.

“I’m not upset,” I lie, shaking the pan. “I’m annoyed.” A few chunks of carrot, zucchini, and onion flop onto the stove.

For years, I’ve been secretly convinced that the coaching industry would collapse like a housing bubble. Instead, it’s ballooned. Coaches are everywhere. They’re at dinner parties and pickleball meetups. They’re in buses and subways. They’re on For You Pages, in Facebook groups, and on neighborhood listservs. They’re eavesdropping on the sotto-voce argument you’re having over FaceTime in a coffee shop and preparing to offer you their Instagram handle so you can register for their communication skills mastermind program, get on their list for a bi-weekly newsletter, access their core training videos, and join their online community.

These coaches are versatile, eager, and creative. They’re unhampered by any overarching obligation to provide evidence-based treatment. Like divinities or secret agents, they go by many names: life coach, executive coach, leadership coach, health coach, decision coach, parenting coach, legacy coach, self-care coach, spiritual coach, transformational coach, pleasure coach, relationship coach, somatic coach—even, shamelessly borrowing therapist terminology, mental health coach and trauma recovery coach. They know how to lure clients off our caseloads and into casual discovery sessions. Therapists, the International Association of Trauma Recovery Coaching tells us on their website, “intervene at a deeper level to direct care, prescribe behavior, and make choices on behalf of their client. A coach never takes that much control over a client’s life. Guide and encourage, yes. Command direction, never.” After reading that description, who would you want to work with? The encouraging, nonintrusive, friendly coach or the probing, controlling, nurse-Ratchet therapist? Coaches are marketing geniuses who turn their artlessness into a competitive advantage. They’re savvy renegade healers, self-appointed modern-day shamans, resourceful urban sorcerers. They want—and get—results. They want—and get—clients who can pay them out of pocket.

Here’s the thing: I have nothing against coaches. I’ve hired a few myself, even when they’ve asked me to buy sessions in bulk and charged double what I charge my clients as a licensed therapist. One coach who loosely modeled his sessions after Byron Katie’s “The Work” helped me sort through some complicated reactions I had when my father left my brother and I out of his will (normally, I would’ve seen a therapist, but I was obsessed with Byron Katie at the time). A decade later, I met a “soul-centered” coach at a woman’s retreat who encouraged me to explore why I find the idea of God repellant. She helped me connect with my spirituality by interpreting seemingly random coincidences (like finding a heart-shaped earring in a parking lot) as signs of a loving consciousness tuning into me. My last coach was a friend and psychedelics guide who showed me how to trust my body and tune into its needs more often while taking tiny amounts of psilocybin daily (you can read about how I navigated those coaching sessions here.)

I fully embrace a world that contains more coaches, at least in theory. Why should therapists have a monopoly on helping people? Why should universities and graduate programs be the gatekeepers of healing? Different people need different kinds of help. Coaches are helpers. They’re down to earth and accessible, often more direct and hands on than therapists. You can text them between sessions about your wins without feeling like the boundary police are about to arrest you. Coaches jump into the trenches right alongside you to help you solve problems. They care. They’re passionate. They curse more than therapists do and they give it to you straight. Coaches are like smart, confident friends you can rent when your actual friends are busy doing other things—like building their coaching business.

But the truth is, I resent the way coaches have encroached upon our field. This is probably why my feelings toward Mike have gotten conflicted. Why do coaches get the instant gratification of focusing on achievable, future-oriented goals? Why do they get to divorce themselves from worrying about high-risk clients on weekends or getting stressed out over state reciprocity, ethical guidelines, and regulatory boards? How come when I give advice on the job, I’m a heretic who’s gone to the therapy dark side, but when coaches give advice, they’re “real” and “authentic”? Who gave them the right to throw around snappy jargon like solution-oriented mindset, branding your truth, and big picture vision?

I know I sound bitter. Maybe I’m suffering from compassion fatigue. I should probably seek out a self-care coach for a discovery call to see if they can help me develop a solution-oriented mindset and get clear about my big picture vision.

Mike lifts two bowls from a shelf and sets them on the counter. After spooning in some rice, I tip the pan and deposit our steaming vegetables on top. “Hey, I get it,” he says, putting his hands on my shoulders. “You’ve invested a lot of time and energy in your career, and then I come along and—presto!—I’m a coach after a couple of days. On some level, that must hurt.” He’s good alright; his coaching clients are going to love him. “But you know what I was thinking?” He picks up our bowls and carries them to the table. “There was this woman at our training yesterday—she was really knowledgeable—and when I told her I was married to a therapist, she suggested we combine forces. She said we’d make a great team. The best of both worlds!”

As we sit down to eat, I notice an expansive feeling in my chest. Maybe being married to a coach won’t be so bad after all. I picture us standing in front of a cheering crowd of people who’ve traveled from all around the globe to learn our ground-breaking approaches and techniques. Our retreat could be called something like “Therapy-Oriented Coaching” or “Coaching-Oriented Therapy,” and we could host it someplace scenic, Costa Rica or Portugal. We’d be like an older version of Vienna Pharaon and Connor Beaton, a powerhouse therapist-coach couple who do workshops in upstate New York. At the end of a learning module, before breaking for a walk on the beach or an Ayurveda treatment, we’d invite feedback from the crowd, and Mike would direct any questions about mental health my way. “That sounds like a question for my therapist-wife.” I could do the same for him: “How about you take this one, coach?”

I could also let my license lapse and become a coach myself.

Then again, the clients I saw earlier in the day—the one who’s chronically depressed, the older couple, and the one grieving her mother’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis—sought me out because I’m a trained therapist, not a coach. Therapy will probably never offer anyone—therapists and clients alike—a reliable sense of unambiguous satisfaction. It’ll probably always eschew quick fixes and seductive guarantees. In therapy, you can learn a range of approaches and techniques to create the conditions for healing, but you can’t force success. This keeps most therapists humble. Psychotherapy deepens our capacity for complexity and heightens our awareness of our own and our client’s humanity.

Mike hands me the soy sauce. I pass him the red pepper flakes.

“Anyway, I thought that was a nice idea.” Mike begins chewing.

“Uh-huh,” I say, taking a sip of water. “I guess anything’s possible.”

Maybe one day I’ll tire of the challenges that go with my job, but for now, along with the envy, resentment, and longing I feel about coaching, I’m proud of what I do.