The majority of my clients come to me with very similar stories: “I have too much work, my boss is either very nice but doesn’t support me or is unpleasant and doesn’t support me. I’m working way over my contracted hours and achieving very little of actual value, but as long as all the boxes are ticked that’s all that matters. I like my work but the kind of stuff I’m expected to do now has really worn me down. I don’t see my family. Secretly, my children have become a burden, they get in the way of my work.”

In some cases coaching helps the client to break down what looks like an enormous pile of never ending demands into smaller, more manageable tasks and attention to relationships, and whilst this can be very valuable it is not the whole answer.

Whether we like it or not the UK is now in the grip of a fantasy approach to life where a lack of hard work is the only thing keeping you from success and the unemployed are all workshy scroungers. I read an article in Forbes yesterday that partly drove me to write this blog entry: “Mentally Strong People: The 13 Things They Avoid.” What really chilled me were the comments, 65 pages of “Thank you so much, this really made my day, this is so amazing and I can see where I need to do more work on myself.”

So many clients are being told that they have ‘the wrong attitude’. Almost always what this means is “You’re not doing what you’re told to do fast enough and you ask too many questions.”

Our concept of success makes us all feel like failures. It may be that a person has to be single-minded to increase their income but the actual facts show us, again and again, that being male, remaining in full time employment and the income of the family you're born into are better determinants of not living in poverty than either hard work or ‘attitude’.

While some of the points in the first article are valid and good advice, for a moment let's turn the rhetoric on its head. Emotionally Damaged People: 5 ways to understand them.

1. Emotionally Damaged People don’t seek insight. They have learned that their feelings – and the feelings of others – are unimportant and they're disinterested in concepts of fairness or integrity. They have been trained to ignore their feelings and to treat harsh life lessons as something to be grateful for, as a matter of personal survival in an incredibly brutal environment. When a situation turns out badly they cannot bear to examine why, or who may have been affected.

2. Emotionally Damaged People don’t care about people who are less powerful than them. They couldn’t care less about criticism or advice from people they perceive to be beneath them. If the criticism comes from people they believe to be more important than them they are trained to be grateful, even if that criticism is persecutory. They can only function in a hierarchy. And they strive to be as high up as possible in that hierarchy, whatever the cost to their family or to themselves.

3. Emotionally Damaged People ignore the costs that instability have on them and on others. Emotionally Damaged people are not interested in how bereavement, low pay, illness, children, elderly parents or anything else affects anyone. They perceive themselves and especially other people as things.

4. Emotionally Damaged People are not interested in the causes of problems or how to alter anything for the better, other than the manner in which their betters perceive them.

5. Emotionally Damaged people are desperately lonely. They've been told from childhood that they are entirely alone in the world. They know that they will not be supported by anyone and they’re not interested in supporting anyone else. If their culture includes being seen to be supporting others via charity or mentoring they will become involved in these activities in order to be seen to be compliant. They have learned that human nature punishes failure and non-compliance, even if that’s the failure to be born in a prosperous family, and the emotionally damaged person is resigned to this situation. They have learned that it is better to stand on other people than to be trodden on.




Genuinely successful people know that relationships are what matter, not status or income. Having enough money to remain healthy, pay the bills, eat and sleep well, spend time outdoors for pleasure and relaxation and with people who contribute positively to their wellbeing is important – having more is nice but not necessary.

Here’s another piece of research: 1 in 5 British workers have taken time off due to stress.

“According to the study difficult deadlines, management pressure and a lack of support are the main reasons for workplace stress and 6% and 3% of stressed workers resort to unhealthy practices to cope, smoking and drinking alcohol respectively.”

Look at your attitude. See who you're trying to please, and why, and what you genuinely want from life.

I work with a lot of Employee Assistance Programme clients, people who refer themselves for support because something is affecting the way they function at work. Before they meet me they go through an assessment that focuses on goals and outcomes but almost every time, when the client comes to their first meeting they forget about them.

When I began EAP work I tried hard to coach and not counsel, to keep the person with their nose to the grindstone but it always felt wrong like whipping an overworked horse, so I soon stopped. People are generally very compliant, they’ll do what they’re told, so it would be easy to force someone to do this and that but it would be entirely counterproductive and unethical.

The group I trained as a coach with is an excellent organisation that was very clear on ethics. This organisation was full of talented people but it was just a bit too full-on for my liking. Everything was wonderful! brilliant! exciting! Anything that wasn’t 100% positive was subtly disapproved of.

Using their techniques I’ve been able to help clients who are totally ready to move on find their own way forward very successfully, it takes a couple of sessions and one or two top-ups a year. This kind of coaching is perfect for people who are just a few moves away from success. They would not approve of me allowing someone to ‘slack off.’ It would not be ‘exciting’ or ‘motivating’. They’re kind and at your service but not really interested anything you’ve got to say that isn’t about how excited you are about working towards your wonderful future.

So it was a real pleasure to spend Saturday with Dr Raj Persaud, Liz Hall, Windy Dryden and Ho Law at the excellent City CBT and Coaching College event Four Perspectives on Coaching.

These four excellent speakers have a different approach to coaching and the lines between coaching and counselling are less clear-cut. They agreed (and so do I) that it’s important to know what the differences are between coaching and counselling but that the relationship between practitioner and client, rather than any technique, is what really moves things on. Coaching requires that the client is facing forward, looking to the future ready to make the next move. Counselling doesn’t require anything other than that the client turns up and therapeutic boundaries are maintained. Coaching focuses on goals and outcomes, counselling on feelings and emotions. Coaching is progress driven, counselling is process driven. But when you come down to it, whether you use counselling or coaching or divination or prayer a client who is able to move forward will do that and a client who can’t, won’t.

There are ways to engage people who are really desperate and exhausted, to move them towards recognising and fulfilling their own goals rather that their employers goals – and you may be surprised how many people need to tease those apart. The person who is going to be made homeless will find little value in spending all the session talking about their childhood, but if they’re not allowed to talk about it they’re less likely to work with a counsellor or coach to find ways of keeping a roof over their head. A good counsellor or coach is responsive to the individual in front of them, both want the best outcome for the client and will want to listen and talk with the authentic you rather than the person you think you should be, and in return if you feel that you're being pushed in a direction you're not comfortable with let your coach or counsellor know.