Please or to access all these features

Add post

Watch this thread

Save thread

Start a new thread

Flip thread

Hide thread

My feed

Active Unanswered threads

Getting started FAQ's

Unanswered threads Acronyms Talk guidelines

Hide shortcut buttons

Talk

AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Flip

1 2 3

Original poster

To let my friend’s job come between us.

52 replies

Streambeam · 29/10/2018 10:28

One of my dearest friends is now a life coach. She takes it very seriously and attends lots of classes on subjects ranging from the healing power of the mind to quantum physics and innumerable angles on psychology etc.

I am genuinely happy that she has found meaning and positivity in her life. But I do get the sense that she now sees herself as ‘enlightened’ which I do find pretty annoying. We don’t live near each other, so every time we catch up I feel like I’m getting lectured / drip-fed by her about what is ‘really going on in life’ and what I ‘really need to be happy’.

There’s no debate or conversation about this, she has decided what is true and who is right. I am genuinely interested in some of it, but I like to think critically and debate ideas, I have a phd in a social science sibject, I am interested in discussing human nature but she bristles or looks on sadly if I offer any sort of challenge or counterpoint to her philosophy on life.
Times spent with her are no longer fun but frustrating! What can I do?! I don’t want to lose her, for the 15 years before she moved away we had a brilliant friendship. But I don’t know how to get that back 🙁

OP posts:

wrongendofthestick · 29/10/2018 10:39

These types are insufferable.

It probably will put a wedge in your friendship that it won't recover from, sadly.

Might be time to expand your social circle.

You've lost your friend to the "holier than thou" attitude of the recently enlightened, I'm afraid!

HouseOnTheLake · 29/10/2018 10:58

Urgh, I was in exactly the same situation as you and I ended up ditching the friend as he wasn't a very good friend anyway. He lived abroad and I only saw him once a year but I realised that after our meetings/messages I felt quite irritated!

Once he became a life coach he just became so judgemental and, as you said, it was all about him being enlightened and "right" and giving me unsolicited advice. He may have calmed down now but his FB posts and videos show the opposite.

WithAFaeryHandInHand · 29/10/2018 11:00

Sounds dreadful. Yanbu.

CuriousaboutSamphire · 29/10/2018 11:10

I have 2 friends who did this.

One told me that her Life Coaching was the same as mine (I ran a wide range of exercise classes and 1-2-1 sessions, focussing on people with various physical limitations, usually with a referral from NHS physios). She was working with the whole person, was wholly holistic! I got fed up with her trying to tell me that the person is not just the physical being and that my 20 years of experience, post graduate degrees etc were nothing compared to her workshop on how to sound positively positive all the bloody time!

The other ran through a range of MLMs before settling on Neals Yard (I think) and setting out her stall as a wondrously healing guru of everything!

I now know to run for the hills whenever any similar lifer change is mentioned!

JheronimusBosch · 29/10/2018 11:37

It's not really her job coming between you, is it? It's her joining a cult and acting weird.

thatmustbenigelwiththebrie · 29/10/2018 11:39

She sounds like a nightmare.

Theknacktoflying · 29/10/2018 11:41

You have both moved on in different directions. Why persist in doing something that is making you unhappy ? Don’t slam the door to this friendship, but don’t pursue it ...

ittakes2 · 29/10/2018 11:44

Have you told her this? Its a shame to throw a friendship away without talking about the problem. She may also be in a phase - the shininess of it all may wear off for her if you give her some time.

PiperPublickOccurrences · 29/10/2018 12:11

I had a really good friend through Uni and the few years after. Then she hooked up with a guy with loads of dippy hippy ideas and she trained as a homeopath.

We aren't friends any more.

Pfingstrose · 29/10/2018 12:11

Ha! I can relate to this as I have a few similar friends!

It's deeply annoying when the life coaching spills into everyday life. I mean, I think it's great that they are helping other people, but I don't want unsolicited advice about my own life thanks.

FB is the worst, when their personal profiles blend into business ones. Status updates with probing questions about whether people are achieving their goals and spouting sanctimonious quotes...

Nothing against life coaches at all (I actually had a session with one earlier this year- it was useful), but it needs to be on the client's own terms.

YANBU

Poloshot · 29/10/2018 12:12

Sounds like an oddball, it's a shame but distance yourself from the weirdo

JheronimusBosch · 29/10/2018 12:21

My OH has a close friend who has gotten into all this 'life coach' stuff. She did a 2 week course in the US and is now apparently qualified to coach others, charging hundreds of pounds for seminars and other such nonsense. It reminds me of MLM or a pyramid scheme or something like that. It's a con, basically.

MrsSpenserGregson · 29/10/2018 12:26

Yes, Ive lost a friend to life coaching too. Ironic really, as her life is seriously messed up in certain respects and she certainly doesn't take her own advice . I miss her and really hope we can rekindle our friendship some day, but all the "love and light" bollocks and passive-aggressive judgmental sh*t she was spouting was so insincere and meaningless that I had to distance myself for my own sanity.

JheronimusBosch · 29/10/2018 12:28

Ironic really, as her life is seriously messed up in certain respects and she certainly doesn't take her own advice

That's usually the case (and was with my OH's friend too) because people with problems are more likely to get sucked into it in the first place. Trying to sort their life out, get brainwashed, see dollar signs, etc.

ElspethFlashman · 29/10/2018 12:29

I lose a friend to Bio-Energy. She just got so immersed in it that she started to believe she could "help" with cancer, and told her clients as much. And charging a fortune per hour.

I'm a nurse, BTW, who has worked on cancer wards in my time. I couldn't listen to it anymore.

VenusInSpurs · 29/10/2018 12:30

Oh, god, I feel your pain! Ihad a friend who was always doing courses called things like The Mastery and one might have been called Quantum? And The Lighthouse (? Or was it Landmark? Something beginning with L).

It caused havoc - There were always things like 'needing' to talk about things that happened years ago - several friendships and one marriage foundered as a result of things that just HAD to be said, confessions, allegations, accusations....

I used to get earnest lectures. I discovered that she was keeping a log of how many times I called her and vice versa to see if I was a true friend.

In the end I laughed and said 'I am not into this stuff, and you are really hard to talk to because you are so deep in the groove...can we just behave as friends like we used to?'

And after a bit, she did.

She is back to normal now.

CocoLoco87 · 29/10/2018 12:31

It's not really her job coming between you, is it? It's her joining a cult and acting weird.

ushuaiamonamour · 29/10/2018 12:38

Personally I wouldn't see breaking away from this person as losing a someone who's been a brilliant friend for 15 years but as breaking off dealings with a person who was once upon a time a brilliant friend--you wouldn't be losing a friend but only a former friend whose behaviour has become stress-inducing if not intolerable. Unless you're on the sort of terms allowing you to ask her 'why have you become such a bore?' in hopes of shocking her out of it there's little you can do other than wait to see does she outgrow this born-again zealotry.

sollyfromsurrey · 29/10/2018 12:44

remind your friend that as a life coach, it is imperative that she remains open and non-judgemental and definitely not prescriptive. If she really gets on your wick, tell her that she is failing these very basic aspects of being a life coach and that perhaps she ought to rethink her career choice...then block her!

Original poster

Streambeam · 29/10/2018 12:48

It’s comforting but sad that so many of you have had similar experiences. She used to be so sensible. She’s just seems convinced that she knows better than just about anyone. I don’t think she’d listen if I brought it up with her, she’d see it as me aligning myself with the mainstream system against her (or something).Cheered to hear that a few of your friends snapped out of it.
It really does have an mlm ‘feel’ to it but it isn’t an mlm, she isn’t selling any products and there’s no recruitment (as such).

OP posts:

Gabilan · 29/10/2018 12:51

she bristles or looks on sadly if I offer any sort of challenge or counterpoint to her philosophy on life.

That doesn't sound like a great quality in a life coach. Then again, one of the most self-absorbed and unaware people I know is a Reiki master. She is totally unable to pick up on my "I'm seriously pissed off now" energy, that I send out in waves to her.

I'd just go low-contact and ride it out for a bit. She may come back to you, she may remain in the cult.

TryingToBeAGoodDaughter · 29/10/2018 12:57

@VenusinSpurs probably Landmark? A couple of people I knew did a Landmark course and kept trying to convince DH and I to join. Then they split up and now one of them is writing a book about how to be successful in life, spinning his rapid decision to split up with his wife (and informing her over the phone while he was away visiting family) as a positive thing, while his ex-wife is taking classes in how to be a better lover because he told her she wasn't good enough in bed for him.

DishingOutDone · 29/10/2018 13:03

Yep, me too, sounds like the same friend. She started to look on me with undisguised contempt as she felt she had superior abilities to deal with the crap that life throws at you. Although life had never thrown much crap at her at all so she was finding it fairly easy to handle. Our 20 year friendship finished this Summer, it all got too weird.

DishingOutDone · 29/10/2018 13:05

Is this in the same vein as friends who train to become counsellors who have either had a brilliant life with plenty of money and loads of family support, never even lost so much as a goldfish, then offer couples counselling and bereavement support?!

DishingOutDone · 29/10/2018 13:06

... or have the most chaotic and self indulgent lives but that's "different"?

Flip

1 2 3

Swipe left for the next trending thread