To let my friend’s job come between us.

[Streambeam]

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 🙁

Haha no I did not but I do remember people doing kind of crazy things after it like go to police stations and confess they had driven without insurance 15 years ago....cops did not know how to react they informed us.
I was very indecisive before I did that course and I put myself on a degree course and healed my relationship with my dad, and got out of a relationship that (whilst with someone special), I was able to see was just not compatible. I thought that good value for 300 quid;) I do recall people being evangelical- gawd I can only hope I wasn't....irksome for sure.

Not quite the same but I've definitely had friends who became totally insufferable after they made big life changes and decided that they'd found the meaning of life.

One friend of mine quit a steady, well-paid job to do freelance writing work. I was so incredibly proud of her at the time but, my God, her sanctimonious "I've seen the light and everyone else is in the dark" attitude really got on my tits in the end. She was planning to offer life/ career coaching, the general message of which was going to be that everyone should quit their jobs like her to follow their dreams. The thing is, she never did much freelance work - not for lack of opportunities but she kept losing clients because she thought deadlines were too stressful - and instead mostly dicked around and wrote erotic fan fiction to post online. Which was obviously her business, not mine, and it worked out fine because her husband had a well-paid job. However, not all of us are that lucky - I'm a lone parent who desperately needs a steady income, so I got tired of her acting superior and viewing me as a "sheep" because I worked in an office.