“I Feel Like I’ve Lost Everything!!” Isn’t Going To Get You Through The Night.

How A Coach Can Help You PERMANENTLY Mend Your Broken Heart!  

(PART 1 OF SERIES)

As a life coach, I have the best job in the world.  I love my clients, and it’s so exciting to see the ways in which our work together can lead to increased confidence, success in work and relationships, hitting big goals and charting out a clear path toward a beautiful future.  

I’ve created a series of posts to share some of the many ways in which a focused, insightful coach can offer support and accountability in tricky situations. 

Today in Part I of this series about life coaching, I’ll share “Getting Through A Broken Heart,” loosely based on the collective experiences of a few clients.  I’ve merged their stories to show readers how coaching works! Names and details of this story have been altered to protect their anonymity.  

Stuck In Heartbreak 

Aka NAVIGATING PAINFUL TRANSITIONS

“He broke my heart,” Imogen* weeps, halfway through our session.  “I just don’t see how anything in my life will ever be the same now.  We’d talked about getting married; about having kids. I thought he was the one for me. How could I be so wrong?”

She twists a silver band around her ring finger, as though imagining an engagement ring there that will now not exist.

“If we’d had kids, I was going to name one of them Thomas and the other one Charlie.  Charlie’s a name that can work for a boy or a girl,” she explains to me, as though I should understand that this makes her situation much worse.  “Now I may never be a mother!”

Imogen cries even harder, blowing her nose into a Kleenex.

Imogen is suffering because she thinks she has lost not just a boyfriend but also an entire future she had imagined for herself: the fiance and husband she had expected him to become… the children she had imagined they would create together… and even her opportunity to experience motherhood at all. 

She had created a world of beautiful-sounding, lovely-feeling thoughts.  They are now crashing down rather unceremoniously, because her boyfriend Tony has just broken up with her.  Imogen shares with me that she feels terrible and devastated. 

As Imogen’s coach, it is my job to stay neutral.  I can’t help her if I am emotional too. Instead, I get to show her that her thoughts are optional.

“Have you ever considered,” I ask her, “That the beautiful story you are telling me was just a hypothetical?  Sure, maybe you and Tony could have gotten married and had one boy and one girl and lived happily ever after… but isn’t it equally likely that there are plenty of other futures out there where things wouldn’t have gone as perfectly as in this version?”

Imogen frowns, but stops sobbing.  “What?” she asks, looking confused.

“Has it occurred to you that none of us actually know what the future holds?  You think you’ve lost something amazing and important.  However, who’s to say that a life with Tony would have been happy and perfect?  What if he turned out to be a liar or a cheat? What if one or both of you developed a drinking problem?  What if you’d had those 2 kids, Maxwell and Charlie, and then Tony had taken off and left you raising them by yourself?  The truth is, we don’t actually know the future. It lives only in our imagination. We just know what actually DID happen.”

Imogen stares at me through red-rimmed eyes; but I can see that she is thinking hard about what I have said.  Now she has completely stopped crying, and she has a lot of questions for me.

As Imogen’s coach, I get to help her recognize that her thoughts about Tony (along with her thoughts about their breakup) are causing her to feel tremendous pain.  

Once Imogen really understands that her heartbreak is not caused by the fact that Tony broke up with her; but instead comes from what she is making it mean inside of her brain (TRAGEDY: MASSIVE, UNREMITTING, ETERNAL LOSS)… she will be able finally to dry her tears and then take her power back - for good.

I can show her that another woman who didn’t like Tony much or wasn’t attracted to him would have totally different thoughts about the exact same situation. 

This is just the beginning of our work together, but we are off to a great start!  

I am blessed to help clients like Imogen navigate through painful life transitions and rediscover what makes them special; reconnect with what lights them up and inspires them; create new goals and redefine who they are in the wake of a profound loss.  Together we can chart a course forward that makes sense to each client and feels authentic and achievable.  

Although it doesn’t happen overnight, real healing and even thriving after loss is not just possible - it’s very likely!

When I hear the words, “I’m starting to feel hope again,” or “I’m starting to believe that love can still happen for me,” I know that clients like Imogen are beginning to understand the extent to which their mindset can make a profound and lasting impact on how they will rebuild after losses for the rest of their lives.

It’s so exciting, and I’m so grateful to do this work! 

To learn more about more ways in which having a life coach on your team can tremendously improve the quality of your life and relationships, check back soon to read Part 2 of this series! 

Interested in being coached by Andrea or asking questions about coaching?  Click here or send a message to: hello@thinktothrivecoaching.com.

*Name and details of story altered to protect client anonymity.