What Coaching Actually Does (And Why I Finally Said Yes to It for Myself)
As I mentioned in last week’s entry, The Very Thing I Feared Brought Me Fully Here, a lot has been spinning around in my head and heart lately. A creative restlessness. A knowing that something wants to shift. And a mind that keeps throwing cold water on the whole beautiful mess of it.
I’ve been journaling about it. Talking to my nearest and dearest. Giving what wants to surface its day in the sun. And still, some days, now most days — I feel this creeping impatience with the feelings that keep coming up. As though inspiration is knocking at the door, and my very competent, very well-meaning ego is standing guard, arms crossed, saying, not so fast.
I know this pattern. I’ve lived it before. Everything in me says: Come on, take a chance, you can do this, and then the logical mind steps in like a big wet blanket and quietly puts out the fire.
Here’s the part that made me laugh, and then made me sit with some real humility: I am a life coach. I recognize exactly what’s happening. And yet, when I turn that gaze on my own life, my perspective is remarkably small. We really can’t see our own picture from inside the frame.
So last month, I did something about it. I found a coach and committed time and resources to forge a clearer path forward. I’ve had four sessions now, and already the pent-up frustration is giving way to new ways of thinking and feeling. It was almost as though the moment I decided to reach for support, things began to shift.
What Coaching Is (and What It Isn’t)
This is actually where my own story begins. Years ago, I was carrying extreme loss and behavioral patterns that were quietly sabotaging my life in ways I couldn’t yet see clearly. I spent five years with a CBT therapist, and that work was essential; it gave me a foundation, a language for what I was carrying, and the beginning of real healing.
But therapy, by its nature, looks backward. It understands the roots of our patterns, processes past wounds, and works through what has shaped us. It’s clinical, it’s deep, and for many of us, it’s been necessary and even life-changing.
Coaching is different. Coaching starts from the premise that you are whole, capable, and already possess the wisdom you need. It looks forward. It asks: What do you want? What’s in the way? What’s the next courageous step? A good coach doesn’t hand you the answers; they help you hear yourself more clearly, so that the answers already living in you can finally be spoken out loud.
There’s no diagnosing. No pathology. Just two people, in honest conversation, working toward the life you actually want to be living.
I have found, in my own practice, that coaching works best for people who are not in crisis, but who feel stuck, who sense they’re on the edge of something, who have an intuition that they’re capable of more but can’t quite find the door. That restless, reaching, something has to change feeling. That’s exactly where coaching begins.
An Invitation
Because my own experience this past month has reminded me so viscerally of what this kind of support can do, and because I know some of you are in that same in-between place, I’m opening 6 spots for private coaching.
This is a four-month engagement, just us, working together one-on-one. Think of it as a standing date, just you, your truest self, and someone in your corner who will not let you off the hook.
We’ll use the nervous system as our foundation, because the body almost always knows what the mind is still arguing about. We’ll slow down enough to hear what’s actually asking for your attention. And we’ll build a path toward it, one honest conversation at a time.
You can reach me at Sarah@SarahBrassard.com if you’d like to talk about whether this might be right for you.
There’s no pressure — only an open door,
Always in your corner, Sarah
