Wildcranberries

My love getting a job here and being able to live together. Having enough money last year to hire a coach. The article that made me start Bikram yoga a year ago. Being able to stay on at Ivy League University and thus to get a visa for the next year while I figure things out. People being supportive when they hear I’m quitting. People suggesting books. Finding my way back here.

really important. Sometimes I think no-one under 35 really understands it, though.

(“Hi, I’m Wildcranberries and I’m middle aged.”)

Despite knowing several very smart people who I respect who are coaches (including my own), I have to agree with Martha Beck who says ‘life coaching must surely be one of the cheesiest sounding phenomena to emerge from the twentieth century.’

And so, when I find myself bold enough to even say to other academic people that I’m thinking about changing careers, I say ‘I’m considering training as a psychoanalyst.’ Because I’m still shallow and scared and concerned with what other academics think. ‘Psychoanalyst’ still sounds like someone with intellectual credentials. You know, they publish scholarly papers and stuff.
‘Life coaches’, on the other hand… no official licensing procedure, wildly varying training programs, and you can get an internet diploma in five days. Well, you don’t even need that since anyone can set up shop as a ‘life coach’. And a few of the people who I have come across are not… well, the subtlest and the most sophisticated bananas in a bunch.

In addition, much of the profession seems to be operating like a pyramid scam. Many of the hugely successful coaches seem to make their money training new coaches who then must take further training courses to build their businesses. Obviously the market will be saturated at some point if every coach needs ten current clients to survive.

And yet, some of the happiest memories of my life have been doing coaching and self-coaching with friends. Getting my own coach was one of the best ways I’ve ever spent money. I love the idea and practice of the process. And I like the idea of working with reasonably functional, motivated people. I think counseling people who are struggling with mental illness, addiction and poverty is incredibly important, but I don’t think it’s my path and it’s not what I want to be doing. And looking around me, in the Ivy League, I see a huge number of potential clients. Although, they probably all have therapists already, if my experience in Chicago is to be trusted…

There’s a coach training program by the oldest school in business starting close by in September. Trying to figure out if this is the next step or whether I should get trained as a marriage and family therapist as a prerequisite to psychoanalyst, or to start studying clinical psychology at an extension school, open university style.

No wonder my stomach hurts.