One of my peer clients is really giving me a hard time, or rather “I am having a hard time with her”! I get the feeling that she tries to get to the limit as much as she can. What do I mean by this? For instance, she tries to hang up without agreeing to a next session, saying that she does not know her schedule, and then does not call or write for a week, when I email her she says, “sorry” I forgot, or I was busy and did not do my homework, then she says “can we do it this evening?”. She also says that she would rather not use email, but call (but since we are using Skype, we need to be connected at the same time). She just said that she did not know her schedule and that there was someone very important that she had to attend to, so she had to hang up.
During the sessions, also, she seems to be a little bit “all over the place”. She never yet has brought the “homework” done, and she always has reasons, like “I was doing it, but I am very practical and I can’t decide how my business will be if I don’t know if my employees will be on salary or on commision”. Or “I am not really practical and can’t concentrate on this sort of thing”.
Lately, she has decided that she really did not want, or need, a business coach. She really has difficulty focusing on what she wants to achieve, from my point of view. But really that is not the issue, or where I perceive the difficulty.
I perceive it mostly in the way she seems to resist commiting to specific homework, agreeing to write down what she understands she is supposed to do, showing up for most of the sessions (on one occasion she did not answer emails for about two weeks, while I was waiting to arrange the next session, and then it turned out that she had gone on holiday without warning… and without much apology for not letting me know when she returned)… Last week she missed her session, and eventually — two hours late – she sent an email with the text: “sorry I just got home, what about tomorrow, are you available?”. When I answered back for her to please confirm next day at 6 p.m. she did not answer until the next day! Actually, anything that smells of committing to something, or being precise, seems to really put her off, and she starts to squirm.
During one of my ICA classes, I brought up the issue, and one of my peer students seemed to recognize the peer client and said that she had had a similar problem. We exchanged notes, and it turned out that it was the same client. I think she’s going to drop her, but I am already at session 9 and I am hanging on to get my 12 sessions… So, there is a sense of incongruency: if this was a paying client I would certainly have dropped her by now, but since I have an interest beyond the client’s advancement (my graduation requirements) I am putting up with situations that I would not normally admit.
And, worse, I am perhaps not modelling being a coach, or coaching, in a way that could be of benefit both to her and to me. My personal view is that there are other types of psychological problems at play, and I can’t really do very much with this. I am afraid that, no matter how it ends, the resulting sensation will not turn out to be very positive.
