Inside a Coaching Conversation: Facing Your Truth

One of my clients came into coaching shortly after ending a long-term relationship. At the beginning, she was very clear: she didn’t want to talk about it. It was done, and she wanted to move forward. As coaching is a client-led conversation, we therefore didn't discuss it at all during our sessions. Instead, we focused on other areas of her life: her work, her day-to-day interactions, the small moments where she felt tension or discomfort.

After few sessions, a pattern began to emerge. She noticed that she often held back from saying what she really thought or felt, especially if she assumed the other person might not like it. Being “nice” was important to her, it is one of her life value: Keeping things smooth, avoiding conflict, maintaining a sense of harmony. She started with examples on how this showed up in small ways. With colleagues at work, in conversations with people on the street, and in everyday decisions. But slowly, the conversation started to get deeper, and it naturally returned to her past relationship.

This time, she was ready to look at it differently. What she began to realise was difficult to face: She had never really been in love with her partner.

She reflected that, when he asked her to be in a relationship, she said yes, not because it felt fully true to her, but because she believed it was the “nice” thing to do. He was a good person. She thought she could grow into loving him over time. So, she ignored her own uncertainty, she brushed aside her feelings, and she started a relationship with him. Until, eventually, the relationship ended anyway.

In that moment of reflection, after a long silence, I noticed that something shifted. What is on your mind, I asked. She then reflected that, what she had always framed as “being nice” started to look different for her. By not being honest, she hadn’t protected him. By going along with something that wasn’t true for her, she hadn’t created harmony. If anything, she had delayed something that was already there, and in doing so, “being nice” caused more pain in the long run. And she saw something else too: In trying to be nice to others, she had not been kind to herself as well.

Facing your truth isn’t easy. It challenges how we see ourselves. It can bring up discomfort, guilt, even a sense of contradiction: I thought I was a nice person, so how could I have done something that wasn’t kind? But this is often where something important begins. Not in avoiding the truth, but in being willing to look at it.

In coaching, part of the work is creating a space where that becomes possible. A space where you don’t have to rush past what feels uncomfortable. A space where you can take a step back, look inward, and stay with what you find, even when it’s not what you expected. Because from there, something can shift. You begin to see more clearly what your actions are actually creating, for yourself and for others. And from that clarity, you can start to choose differently. The question is not anymore “what should I do?” Rather, it becomes: Who do I want to be, moving forward?