The Haunted Coach: Are You Haunting Your Own Well-Being?
Ever felt a weight in your chest before a client call?
Not dread exactly, but something heavy you cannot quite name. Or maybe it is that moment after saying “yes” when your gut quietly tells you it should have been a “no.”
These are hauntings of a different kind. They do not slam doors or rattle chains. They slip in quietly. The habits we once celebrated, the yes-es that made us look generous, the hustle that once gave us energy, the mask that kept us looking polished, can slowly turn into specters.
They drain presence drop by drop until the work that once lit us up begins to feel thin.
Even the most skilled coach cannot serve from a hollowed-out presence. Technique, credentials, certifications: none of it matters if you are running on fumes.
October feels like the right season to name these ghosts. So let us turn on the flashlight, pull back the curtain, and see what is really lurking.
Naming the Ghosts
We are not talking about burnout. That word has been tossed around so much it has lost its bite. What really haunts coaches is subtler, almost invisible at first.
The Brittle Yes
It is 9:30 p.m. You have finished a full day of sessions. You are sitting in the quiet, finally exhaling.
Ahhhhhhhhhhhh…
*PING*
An email lights up your phone: Can you hop on tomorrow to brainstorm something? Without thinking, you type: “Sure, happy to.” Before your body has a chance to protest.
That is the Brittle Yes. It wears the mask of generosity, but underneath, it's a betrayal of your body's no.
This ghost thrives on people-pleasing. It convinces you that saying no is selfish, that your worth is tied to how much you can carry. But every brittle yes chips away at your presence. By the time you sit with a client, you are stretched so thin that you are practically ghosting yourself.
Reflection prompt: Where in your life are you saying yes faster than your body wants to? What would it mean to pause instead of please?
The Hollow Hustle
Your content calendar could rival a NASA launch schedule. Every square is filled. You are posting, recording, scheduling, showing up everywhere.
On the surface, your life looks fully lived and thriving… but on the inside? It’s vacant.
The Hollow Hustle whispers that visibility equals value. It tempts you to produce without pause, curate without connection, and show up as an image instead of a person.
This ghost feeds on performance. It leaves coaches with highlight reels that look polished but feel hollow. Clients may see activity, but behind the scenes you are chasing a phantom version of success.
At first it feels like strategy, a way to stay visible and keep the business alive. Slowly it mutates into something heavier: an unrelenting push to perform, a treadmill that never stops.
The cost is high. You begin to feel hollow in the very places that once felt alive.
Reflection prompt: Which of your current efforts are feeding your ego but starving your spirit?
The Savior Sway
A client arrives discouraged. Instead of sitting with them in silence, you rush in with solutions. You push, nudge, rescue, carry. By the end of the session, you are drained and they are dependent.
The Savior Sway is a ghost that slips into the space between you and your client. It haunts the session by whispering that your value comes from fixing instead of partnering. Each time you step in, it grows stronger, pulling you further from presence and leaving your client smaller in their own story.
Coaching is not rescuing. Coaching is walking alongside someone as they discover their own strength. The more you sway into savior mode, the more this ghost steals from both of you.
Your job is not to have the answers. It is to help your clients hear their own. That is your shield.
Reflection prompt: Where are you doing your clients’ heavy lifting for them, and how can you step back?
The Scarcity Static
You are in a session, present on the outside, but a corner of your mind is buzzing.
What if the next client does not renew?
Should I discount my package?
I really need to fill those last two slots.
That low hum is the Scarcity Static. It crackles beneath the surface, pulling your attention away from what is in front of you. Even while you are listening, part of you is elsewhere, running numbers and imagining worst-case scenarios.
The Scarcity Static makes the future feel like a void. It tells you that clients will vanish, income will dry up, and opportunities will slip away. It does not shout. It hums. And the hum is constant.
This ghost is sneaky because it can disguise itself as ambition. It insists you are being strategic when in reality you are being haunted. When you let it guide your choices, you start making moves from fear instead of vision. You offer discounts not out of generosity but out of panic. You over-deliver not from presence but from anxiety. And afterward, you feel resentful.
What makes this ghost so draining is that it pulls you half out of the moment. Your clients do not get the fullness of you, and you do not get the fullness of them.
Reflection prompt: If you trusted there would always be enough, what decision would you make differently this week?
The Comparison Fog
You open Instagram to post something quick, maybe part of the Hollow Hustle. Five minutes later, you are knee-deep in another coach’s feed. Their group program is sold out. Yours feels stuck. The Scarcity Static starts to hum in the background.
The Comparison Fog does not arrive with thunder. It drifts in slowly, one scroll at a time. At first it feels harmless. Then it thickens. Soon you cannot see your own path clearly.
To fight the chill, you begin to mimic. You borrow their tone, their style, their glow, hoping it will warm you up. But the more you copy, the more you disappear. Your voice becomes faint. Your uniqueness fades. You start sounding like an echo instead of yourself.
The danger of the fog is not only that it shrinks you. It makes you forget that you ever had your own light to begin with. It distorts your vision until your gifts, your perspective, your aliveness are hidden from view. The longer you stay in the fog, the harder it is to remember what makes you you.
Reflection prompt: Whose voice do you need to mute in order to hear your own again?
Lifting the Mask
October is the month of costumes, which makes it the perfect time to talk about the masks we wear as coaches.
The “I am always centered” mask. Calm voice, steady tone, serene presence, even though your nervous system is running on caffeine and adrenaline.
The “my business is thriving” mask. You say things are growing, but your income report looks more like a haunted house floor plan, full of strange dips and dark corners.
The “I never doubt myself” mask. Spoiler: every skilled coach wrestles with doubt. The difference is whether they admit it.
Masks are not always the enemy. Sometimes they serve a purpose. They can help us get through a tough day, give us polish when we need to be professional, or create a buffer when we are not ready to reveal what feels raw.
The danger is not in wearing a mask. The danger is in forgetting to take it off.
When you forget, the mask starts to merge with your identity. The polished exterior becomes the only thing people see, and you lose sight of the messy, human parts of yourself that make you magnetic in the first place.
Coaching thrives on humanity, not perfection. Clients do not need a flawless coach. They need a real one. Someone who can hold both strength and vulnerability, both clarity and doubt.
Wholeness is not about being polished all the time. It is about being whole. That includes the days when you feel tired, distracted, or unsure. When you can allow those parts of yourself to exist without hiding them, you invite your clients to do the same.
Reflection prompt: Which mask feels hardest to set down, and what would happen if you did?
Breaking the Spell
The good news is that ghosts lose their power once you name them. Naming is the first act of exorcism. It brings what was hiding in the shadows into the light, and in that light the spell begins to break.
Take a quiet moment this season to ask yourself:
Where does my presence feel thinnest, and why?
What am I performing that I am no longer willing to pretend?
If my calendar told the truth about my values, what would change this week?
Breaking the spell is not about adding more. Coaches often imagine the solution is another tool, another training, another strategy. But presence is not built by stacking on more. It is restored by release.
Practice subtraction, not addition. Instead of asking, “What more do I need to do?” ask, “What can I let go of?”
Like the trees in October, you are allowed to shed what no longer feeds you. The tree does not grieve its leaves. It lets them fall, knowing they were beautiful, knowing they served their time, and knowing that letting go is what makes space for new growth in the spring.
Reflection prompt: What is one leaf you are ready to release this season?
Keeping the Ward
Every haunting has its ward, something that protects you from being drained. For coaches, the wards are often simple but sacred.
One clear boundary. No Sunday sessions. No late-night email replies. Just no. Boundaries do not make you less available, they make you more present.
One practice you guard fiercely. Rest, prayer, walking, journaling, silence. Whatever plugs you back into yourself. A ward only works if you honor it, even when everything else clamors for your attention.
One rhythm that reminds you that you are a whole person before you are a coach. Whether it is dinner with your family, a morning walk, or music that lifts your spirit, this rhythm grounds you in who you are beyond the role.
Wholeness does not come from doing more. It comes from remembering who you are beneath all the doing. It is about reclaiming the ground of your being so that your doing flows with lightness and power.
Reflection prompt: What is one ward you can put in place this month that will guard your energy?
Closing the Circle
Mastery in coaching is not just technique.
It is presence.
And presence only thrives when the coach is whole.
Think of Scooby Doo and the gang. Every episode, the ghost is unmasked and revealed for what it really is. Never a spirit, always just someone in disguise. Once named, the power is gone. The haunting dissolves into clarity.
The same is true for us. The Brittle Yes, the Hollow Hustle, the Savior Sway, the Scarcity Static, the Comparison Fog. Once you name them, they lose their grip. They cannot hold power over you when you see them clearly.
This is the heart of our work at MCXI. We are rooted in being before doing. If thin presence, over-giving, or the Hollow Hustle has crept into your practice, this is your place to reset, reconnect, and rise.
Quiz: Which Ghost is Haunting Your Coaching?
Circle the answer that feels most like you. No judgment. Every coach meets a ghost or two along the way.
1. When someone asks for “just one more” favor, you…
A) Say yes before your body can even groan.
B) Immediately start calculating if this makes you look like a “good coach.”
C) Think, “If I do not do it, no one will.”
2. Your relationship with social media is best described as…
A) A low-grade stomach ache.
B) A mirror you secretly wish you could smash.
C) A measuring stick that never bends in your favor.
3. If your calendar were honest, it would say…
A) “Overbooked, under-rested.”
B) “Performing success but not living it.”
C) “Caring for everyone but you.”
Results:
Mostly A’s → The Brittle Yes Ghost is knocking at your door.
Mostly B’s → You are caught in the Hollow Hustle or Comparison Fog.
Mostly C’s → The Savior Sway or Scarcity Static has you on the hook.
Every haunting has an ending. Once named, the ghosts lose their grip. This season, may you reclaim your presence, guard your energy, and remember: you are whole before you are anything else.
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