When Coming Back Home Is Not Enough
Healing brings you back to yourself. Coaching takes you beyond yourself.
Healer vs Coach *
I never liked the names that are available for what I do. Many have called me a healer, I don’t correct but that is not the name I use for myself. I use coach because it feels more neutral yet in truth I do both healing and coaching.
There’s a moment in the work of the healer when you realize someone doesn’t need you anymore. Not the way they used to.
The crisis passed. The ground steadied. They’re sleeping through the night, showing up to work, no longer texting at 2am with “I can’t do this.”
They may keep coming to sessions, and you may keep showing up the same way, gentle, receptive, holding space, because that’s what worked. That’s what brought them back from the edge.
Except now they’re not at the edge.
They’re standing on solid ground, looking around, asking “okay... now what?”
I was offering presence, empathy, comfort. Allowing them to come back to themselves and it felt good to both. But in the process our sessions started to lose momentum, to offer less benefits, less advances.
The energy fizzled out and the engagement would stop.
Only because I wasn’t able to shift from healing to coaching. It cost me dearly. I had a great network of people who trusted and liked me but couldn’t find clients for my coaching work.
* I'm not claiming these are the definitive meanings of "healing" and "coaching"—just using the terms to mark a distinction I've observed in the work. The words are often used interchangeably, and that's fine. This is a construct, not a correction.
Two Different Calls
Picture the same client, six months apart.
First call:
“How are you doing today?”
“I’m okay.” Yet within minutes the voice cracks. Eyes well up. The body finally admits what the mind’s been denying. We drop below the story into what’s actually present.
The healer’s job is hold coherence while their system remembers it’s safe to feel.
To stop bracing. To let what’s been held finally move.
This is healing. Back to yourself. Restoration. The work happens when someone feels safe enough to stop performing.
Same client, six months later:
“How are you doing?”
“I’m good. Actually good.” And they mean it. The voice is steady. The system coherent. Crisis resolved.
They’re functional now. They came back to themselves. And the work could stop here.
That is when coaching actually starts.
They came back to the same self that created the conditions for the collapse a few months before…
And if we leave it there, chances are that patterns will come back and the situation will repeat with similar challenges a few month down the line.
If we stay in healing mode, I’ll keep reflecting, validating, holding. It’ll feel supportive. Forgettable. Safe.
But safe is no longer what they need.
What is needed now is another conversation.
”What brought you here today?”
“Well, what do you mean?”
”I mean what do you truly want from this call?”
Pause. ”Well, maybe figuring out what’s next?”
”What is next, or what’s truly stoping you? What you are avoiding? What is it costing you?”
Kind vs True
There’s an NVC framework I use: kind versus true.
Kind restores. It brings you back. Creates safety, stability, coherence. Healing is fundamentally kind work.
True disrupts. It removes comfort, exposes strategy, introduces friction. Coaching is fundamentally true work.
We want both true AND kind.
It is easy to default to kind. Easier to hold, reassure, validate. Harder to challenge, confront, tell the truth that might destabilize someone I’ve worked to help stabilize.
There’s an Indian saying: no white lies, no harsh truth.
Staying too long in the healing position is a blind spot. Being kind feels safer than risking harm by being true. But past a certain point, kindness becomes its own white lie. You’re protecting them from the disruption they’re actually ready for.
The Difference
Healing asks: what brings you back to yourself?
Coaching asks: what takes you beyond yourself?
Healing cultivates coherence. You’re fragmented, dysregulated, barely holding it together. The work is integration. Steadiness. Learning to feel safe in your own system again.
Coaching cultivates disruption. You’re stable now. Coherent. The ground is solid. But you’re playing it safe, staying small, running the same patterns on repeat. The work is friction. Movement. Freedom.
Healing sessions are easily forgettable. You leave feeling held, seen, a little more whole. The experience blends into the larger arc of coming back to yourself. And yourself is something you likely already know. A familiar home.
Coaching sessions are unforgettable. Something shifts. A belief cracks open. You see the game you’ve been running. You can’t unsee it. This is building a new and better home.
Healing needs empathy, presence, someone friendly enough to make it safe to feel.
Coaching needs challenge. Someone willing to ask:
What are you protecting by staying small?
What do you pretend not to know?
What would it cost you to stay stuck like this for another ten years?
What would happen if you actually changed?
How much longer are we willing to pay the price of being in our story?
Life Coaches All of Us
Life coaches us all the time. Yet unless we understand it and have become expert at reading its lessons, we miss what it’s trying to teach.
Coaching asks challenging questions before life forces the answer. It’s preventive. We move before life kicks in hard.
Waiting for life to coach us is like curative medicine. Disruption, heartbreak, loss, grief, disease, accident. Life whisper first of course, yet if we’re honest, most of us wait until the last moment to change. We fall, pick ourselves up, learn or don’t, and either start again or move on.
The difference: coaching interrupts the pattern before it costs you another decade.
Life will not give you choice if you don’t listen to the whispers.
The Transition
I have held many people through challenges. Sometime months in pure healing mode. You name it: health, love, money, career…
Foundation work. Essential. we all need someone at time to stay steady while everything else fell apart.
But now that foundation’s laid. The question becomes: do I keep holding space, or do I start introducing friction?
For years I would have stayed in healing mode. Kept it gentle, receptive, safe. But I have learned to recognize when someone’s ready for the next phase.
When they need me to stop being kind only and start being true.
Who This Is For
If you’re in crisis, health breaking down, relationship ending, money unstable, work losing meaning, you probably need healing first. Someone to help you stabilize. Feel safe enough to stop bracing.
If you’re functional but restless, stable but stuck, coherent but playing small, safe but secretly bored, you might be ready for coaching. Someone to disrupt the pattern. Challenge the story. Introduce the friction that creates movement.
Both are necessary. Different populations. Different timing. Different skills.
I’m still learning when to shift between them. When to stop restoring and start disrupting. When kindness becomes limiting and truth becomes necessary.
But I know this: the art of the work isn’t the technique. It’s recognizing what someone actually needs, even when it’s not what they’re asking for.
And having the courage to meet them there.
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PS: “Change Your Story, Change The World” is a storytelling endeavor that looks deeply into the psyche that creates the stories we live by—with the intention to help us shape better stories, both personally and collectively.
Because the stories we tell are the reality we live.