Your clients don't need you to make everything feel better. They need you to help them trust themselves while feeling uncertain.
This is the line between emotional over-holding and confidence building. It's subtle. And if you're a coach who cares deeply about your clients, you've probably crossed it without realizing.
Emotional over-holding looks like carrying more of the emotional weight than the client needs. It looks like reassuring excessively, pre-processing their feelings before a session even starts, and softening reality because you're worried about how it will land. It comes from good intentions, but over time, it doesn't build confidence. It can actually erode it.
This week, we’re sharing six specific patterns that show you where this happens most often. Once you can spot them, you can shift how you guide without becoming cold, disconnected, or less compassionate.
Because the goal isn't to care less. It's to help your clients build capacity instead of borrowing yours.
Links & Resources:
Key Takeaways:
- Your job is to present reality clearly, not make it feel better. Emotional over-holding happens when we soften reality or avoid naming the gap because we're worried about how it will land.
- Hesitation is not the same thing as refusal. Sometimes the most confidence-building thing you can do is guide the direction while allowing space for uncertainty.
- Buy-in doesn't always look like enthusiasm. Sometimes it's reserved, calm, or cautious. That's okay too.
- Reassurance should reinforce capability, not certainty. If reassurance helps someone see how far they've come, it builds confidence. If it's used to control what they do next, it starts to feel manipulative.
- Confidence isn't avoiding struggle. It's the ability to reflect on it without collapsing or indicting yourself when things are hard.
- Ask yourself: Is this mine to carry or is it theirs to work through? You are there as they work through it, but you are not there to carry it for them.
- Passion needs guardrails and creativity needs discipline. Without guardrails, everything feels urgent, rest feels irresponsible, and slowing down feels like risk.
