Life Coaching not Life Laundry

by Judy Klipin

I hate it when coaches share the details of their clients’ sessions/conversations/journeys on social media. It doesn’t matter if it’s a celebration of progress, a request for help and support or just plain ‘look at what a great coach I am’ sharing – any online exposure of client details* and process makes me feel deeply uncomfortable.

It feels like I’m being dragged in to help wash some unsuspecting and innocent person’s dirty laundry. The laundry of a life coaching session should be managed privately and with the dignity, compassion and privacy each client deserves. A coaching session – unless explicitly stated and presented as such upfront – is not a public or group activity

I don’t want to be an unwilling witness to something I haven’t signed up for and have no business participating in. I would hate the content or feeling of any coaching conversation I have with a coach to make its way onto a public platform and I can’t imagine that I am different to anyone else.

It upsets me more than I can describe or quantify.

I have thought and expressed this discomfort many times. But expressing it is no longer enough for me. I am now consciously and actively choosing to remove myself from the online Laundromat.

I can’t change the whole face of Facebook and how people choose to use it. But I can change how I use it – by choosing who I do and don’t have on my timeline.

I suspect I’ll have a lot fewer ‘friends’ soon. And that’s OK.
Because I will feel less dirty and icky.

*Full disclosure: I present real-life case studies in my book ‘Life Lessons for the Adult Child’. Every last one of them has been fictionalized and adapted so that, although the message and lessons remain, the privacy of every person I have ever worked with is assured and protected.

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