And why that’s exactly the point…

People come to coaching expecting a plan. A roadmap. Maybe some encouragement and a few good strategies to carry them forward. And yes — all of that can be part of the work. But if I’m being honest with you about what coaching really looks like in a private, one-on-one setting, I have to tell you something first: it can hurt.

Not because I want it to. Not because pain is the goal. But because real growth often lives just on the other side of something we’ve been quietly carrying alone.

The Permission You Didn’t Know You Needed

One of the most common things I witness in a private coaching session is someone crying for the first time about something that happened years ago. A loss. A transition. A version of themselves they quietly gave up on. Not because they’ve never felt sad — but because they never felt they had permission to feel it out loud.

I hear it all the time, offered almost apologetically: “People have suffered worse.” Or, “I know others are dealing with more stressful things than this.” It’s a reflex — a way of making their own experience smaller so it takes up less space. As if feeling something deeply is somehow selfish, or insensitive to the struggles of others.

But here’s what I know: your experience doesn’t need to earn its validity by comparison. Pain doesn’t work on a scale where someone else’s harder story cancels yours out. In the coaching space, you don’t have to justify what you feel or need. You just get to feel it, need it— maybe for the first time.

What a Private Space Can Make Possible

There’s something that happens in individual coaching that simply doesn’t happen the same way in a group setting. Without an audience, people drop the performance. Without the pressure of being observed or compared, something quieter and truer can surface.

I’ve had clients face things in a coaching session that no one has ever asked them to look at directly. Not because the people in their lives don’t care — but because the people who love us often can’t resist steering us. Parents, partners, friends — they want the best for us, and that wanting tends to come with direction attached. “Have you tried this?” “Maybe you should…” “I think what you really need is…”

This is especially true for students, who often find themselves caught between what they feel and what the people who love them want for them. It’s not that they can’t talk to their parents — it’s that talking to a parent almost always activates a parent’s instinct to guide. In coaching, there is no agenda for who you should become. You are allowed to be exactly who you are right now, and to figure out who you want to be from there.

In that space, young people feel something that is surprisingly rare: seen, heard, and valued — without condition.

Reading What the Body Already Knows

One of the things I love most about this work is paying attention to the things clients don’t realize they’re saying or doing.

A voice that softens around a particular topic. Shoulders that pull inward. A breath held just a beat too long. A deep, involuntary sigh in the middle of a sentence. These aren’t random — they’re the body’s honest commentary on what the mind is still deciding whether to say.

And because I’ve been trained to listen for nuance — whether we’re on video, in person, or even on the phone — I catch them. Not to pounce on them, but to gently hold them up. “What was that deep sigh just now? Tell me about it.”

“I didn’t even know I sighed.”

That pause. That moment of turning inward. That’s where the work lives.

Nothing is assumed. Nothing is diagnosed. I’m not telling you what your sigh means — I’m asking you to discover it yourself. And when you do, it’s yours. Not my interpretation. Your truth.

The “Aha” Doesn’t Come from Avoiding the Discomfort

Coaching is not about sitting in problems. I want to be clear about that. The goal is always forward motion, clarity, and growth. But you can’t build a solid next step on ground you haven’t honestly assessed.

The “aha” moment — that flash of recognition where something clicks into place — often arrives right after the uncomfortable realization. The client who discovers they’ve been enthusiastically pursuing something they don’t actually want. The person who realizes the story they’ve been telling themselves about a relationship has been quietly costing them. These moments of clarity are powerful. They often end in a little laughter. It was always there; they just didn’t see it.

That laughter or sting isn’t something to rush past. It’s information. It’s the system working.

My Role: On Your Side, Without an Agenda

Here’s what I’m not in that room for: my preferences about your choices. My hopes about your outcomes. My vision for who you should be.

I have no attachment to what you decide. I am genuinely, completely on your side — whatever you want. Your pace. Your direction. Your definition of a good life.

What I do bring is presence. Curiosity. The ability to notice what you might be too close to see, and to reflect it back without judgment. I’m not your mirror telling you what’s wrong. I’m the steady witness helping you see what’s already there.

And I bring the capacity to hold space for whatever emerges — including the hard things. Especially the hard things. Because if you’re sad in session, I’m not sad with you in a way that floods the room. I’m steady. I can hold it. And because I can hold it, you don’t have to manage my feelings on top of your own.

What I Know About People

I love this work because I love people. All of them — the full, complicated, beautiful spectrum. Every client brings a different set of beliefs, experiences, perspectives, and ways of moving through the world. Every person carries their love differently. Every person has their own relationship with joy and pain and meaning.
It’s like watching clouds drift across the sky. Each one looks a little different. Each one is beautiful. Each one is moving with purpose — carrying shade, or wind, or rain to somewhere in this world that needs it. And even the rain, in its own time, brings new life.

Holding space for the dynamic needs of the human condition isn’t work I do despite the complexity. It’s work I do because of it.

So yes — coaching sometimes hurts. It surfaces things that have been buried. It shines a light on patterns we’ve been moving around for years without looking at directly. It can feel like loss before it feels like freedom.

But on the other side of that discomfort is something I’ve seen again and again: a person who finally, truly knows themselves a little better. Who makes choices from that knowing. Who stops living by default and starts living on purpose.

That’s the enlightenment coaching is really after. Not a better plan. A more honest life.

Did something resonate with you? Let’s chat.