For nearly 15 years, I’ve called myself a coach.

I have trained, taught, and yes, coached coaches.

For the longest time, I had the purest love for it.

And I am leaving this world behind.

I wanted to talk about why.

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Let’s zoom out a little bit.

And take a look at historical context.

The whole field, and construct, of coaching couldn’t exist without psychology and psychotherapy having come first.

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Coaching, like psychotherapy, is a complicated field.

It’s complicated because, in the Western world, these are often the only options someone has to get help when they’re in pain.

This is not a small thing. Because there is a lot of pain in the Western world.

And they couldn’t have survived this far if they didn’t sometimes work, and work vitally and profoundly.

I have said this before, and I am happy to repeat this: I credit people who call themselves coaches with saving my life. They really did. And I know I am far from alone.

Many therapists and coaches do literally life-saving work. (And many others don’t do much, and many others yet do quite the opposite.)

The fields of both therapy and coaching are sometimes self-selected into by people who are selfless, compassionate, and profoundly moved by the suffering of other humans. Other times, not so much.

Sometimes, the practitioners of therapy or coaching are incredibly skilled at their craft. Other times, not so much.

For many who are genuinely skilled, their dedication to it comes way before their desire for money or status, if they care for those things at all. I know both coaches and therapists who basically live like ascetics, and are content with their lives just helping people.

To make black & white generalization about either of these fields is difficult.

These fields do a lot of good. And they do some not-good.

Because I experienced firsthand so much of good in it, and met some of the most generous and kind-hearted people in it (including so many of my teachers, colleagues and clients), I carried the torch for it and defended it for as long as I did.

But over the past few years, it has become increasingly difficult to do so, as I learned more history, reflected on the realities of the world, and delved deeper into my own spiritual roots.

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Doing even the smallest amount of research into the roots of Western psychiatry and psychotherapy is to be horrified by its racism, colonialism, and violence.

Perhaps even more horrifying to contemplate than the violence that is visible for all to see is the violence of what has been cleanly erased, exterminated, wiped off the map, to make for the advancement of these Western institutions.

What has been erased can’t make sounds.

(The sounds of my great-grandmother throwing a knife at the door to cast out wayward spirits. The sounds of grandmother rattling her shaman’s bells.)

It is from the “clean slate” of this erasure that the field of coaching is born, breathless with the promise of 20th century, Cold War-era, American capitalism:

YOU can get rich. YOU can be hot. YOU can be happy. YOU can hack your way out of aging, unhappiness, and loneliness.

All you need to do is to improve yourself. Let us show you how! Here’s where to make the deposit.

Both coaching and therapy were created, popularized, and represented — still — at the highest levels by white people (mostly men), in post-colonial, post-industrial times, growing in conjunction with capitalism, with the centers of intellectual influence coinciding with global centers of economic and military power (e.g.US, Western Europe.)

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In the big scheme of things, I’m small fish, swimming in small waters. And from my view, I have come to see how this shows up in every crevice of what I could observe.

(1) The fact that there is almost no coaching “practice” that hasn’t been appropriated, multiple times over, from an indigenous tradition.

Borrowing and adaption between cultures is entirely normal and healthy.

An utter lack of acknowledgment or crediting because of the enormous power differential between cultures, no sense of right relationship, and no appropriate sense of how to be in relationship with lineage… is another.

Take, for example, the Eastern practice of “mindfulness” — the idea of observing your own thoughts from a neutral place. This was never, ever meant to be in service of individual happiness, productivity, and wealth. And in Eastern traditions, it was always, always grounded in the necessity of moral action and serving the needs of the community.

I could give a hundred other examples.

(2) The way that default coaching “goals” and aspirations fit so snugly with capitalist values that are destroying the Earth

The quickest and easiest possible accumulation of individual wealth, growth at all cost, the celebration of consumerism, individual happiness (an oxymoron), what I call the “Amazon Next Day Delivery” approach to inner peace and contentment…

… a compartmentalized vision of “wellness”, productivity, an ideal of physical beauty that Hitler would salivate over (Aryan-blonde, blue-eyed, slim, youthful and fertile)…

(3) And, as a corollary, a pathological avoidance of things that are decidedly NOT capitalism-friendly

Slowness, aging, pain, illness, decay, illness, loss, darkness, silence, liminality — all things that were honored, and considered to contain inherent value and wisdom by Indigenous traditions.

(4) The fact that the vast majority of coaching businesses do not even make passing references to systemic and collective issues, and, in fact, go out of their way to avoid them.

Because it’s “unprofessional.” “Irrelevant.” “Low vibrations.” “Divisive.”

And, ultimately, “bad for business.”

(5) The dire lack of eldership — despite the overabundance of self-professed “experts.”

All of the above contribute to an environment in which enormous sum of money are always being cycled through while the collective is, somehow, becoming more and more impoverished both materially and spiritually.

There was a moment when I clearly saw that the work of “redeeming” or “changing the system from the inside” was an illusion.

That’s when I knew: I was out.

… human interdependence and cooperation, rather than individualism and commodification must be at the heart of the psychology of liberation, which should be about empowering people to change institutions and radically transform social structures, rather than adjusting and submitting to the status quo while making a profit. — Hamza Hamouchene

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A friend asked me what I would call myself, if I am no longer calling myself a coach of any kind.

My answer was simple; HUMAN.

Because, that, I am.

You may call me teacher, as I intend to go on teaching. Oh, there is so much to teach.

If you still want to call me a coach, that is okay, too. I am not offended. It is a name I was proud to go by for many years, and I am okay to still be called it. It is part of my makeup and lineage.

If you want to know what self-cultivation and healing looks like outside of the broken cultures and institutions of the Western world, read books by people like Malidona Patrice Somé, Jiddu Krishnamurti, Thich Nhat Hanh, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Tyson Yunkaporta, Cole Arthur Riley, Tricia Hersey, Tamela J. Gordon.

The list could be miles and miles long. These are some names I could throw off the top of my head, just the tip of the tip of the tip of the iceberg.

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There’s no moral purity here.

I collude with white supremacy and capitalism by virtue of being alive in 2024, despite ongoing experiments to more responsibly steward what I can.

We’re all wrestling with complicated history and constructs and doing our best.

There are coaches of color doing groundbreaking work, and white coaches who are actually radical activists in disguise, doing some of the most courageous work I know. (I bow down to you.)

Coach, Schmoach, whatever… these are just words.

We will be known by the seeds we sow in the world, not what it says on our business card (or, nowadays, Instagram bio, I guess).

Whatever you call yourself, I don’t care.

If you take the time to hang out with me, read my words, and find my thinking useful, I am grateful to you. And you are warmly welcome in my world, always.