There are times in life when ongoing support makes sense. You’re in the middle of something big, things are shifting, and frankly, it would be nice to have someone in your corner while you figure out what the hell you’re doing.

And then there are times when you’ve been thinking about the same damn thing for three months and just need to talk it through.

I’ve been coaching women for 15 years, and one thing I know for sure is that not every problem requires a three-month plan. Sometimes you don’t need to reinvent your life or unpack your entire childhood. You don’t even necessarily need to know exactly what you need when you show up.

You just need a really good conversation.

This is one of the things I love most about personal coaching. We can take the thing that’s been rattling around in your head—the decision, the frustration, the I know something needs to change, but I’m not entirely sure what, and give it our full attention for 90 minutes.

Because there’s something remarkably clarifying about saying the whole thing out loud to someone who isn’t your husband, best friend, Mother, business partner or otherwise personally invested in what you decide.

Sometimes that’s enough to see what you couldn’t see before.

Sometimes You’re Just Too Close to It

Have you ever listened to a friend explain a problem and thought, Oh honey, this is so obvious, only to find yourself six months later completely tortured by a decision in your own life?

Of course you have. We all have!

It’s remarkably difficult to see clearly when you’re standing smack in the middle of your own stuff. Add fear, history, other people’s opinions and whatever you decided at age twelve about what makes you a good person, and suddenly a relatively straightforward decision has become a full-blown existential crisis.

I see this all the time with smart, capable women. And frankly, I’ve done it myself. We can think the living daylights out of something. We examine it from every angle, make a decision, reconsider said decision, discuss it with a friend, feel better for approximately 24 hours and then wake up at 3:00 a.m. wondering if we’ve made a terrible mistake. Add a healthy dose of decision fatigue, and suddenly even the smallest choice can feel remarkably complicated. And there’s good reason for this. Research on stress and decision-making shows that when our mental resources are depleted, making even relatively ordinary choices can become more difficult.

This is one of the things I love about personal coaching. You get to bring the whole tangled mess into the room without first needing to organize it into something sensible. Together, we can start pulling at the threads and figure out what’s actually bothering you.

Because underneath all that thinking, there’s usually something you know.

The work is getting quiet enough to hear it.

What Can You Bring to a 90-Minute Coaching Session?

Honestly? Almost anything that’s taking up entirely too much real estate in your head.

I’ve talked with women about careers they’re not sure they want anymore, relationships that feel off, creative ideas they can’t stop thinking about, and decisions they’ve analyzed so thoroughly they no longer have any idea what they actually think. Sometimes you know something needs to change but can’t quite put your finger on what. Other times, you know exactly what you want and are scared shitless to do anything about it.

Both are excellent reasons to talk.

And then there’s Motherhood, which has a rather extraordinary way of filling every available inch of mental and emotional space. You may be a Mom overwhelmed by how much everyone seems to need from you, carrying around a hefty dose of Mom guilt, or realizing what you’ve been calling “just tired” is starting to look a whole lot more like Mom burnout. You might even be experiencing Mom rage—those flashes of anger that can feel wildly disproportionate until you consider the 4,000 things that happened before you lost it over a wet towel on the bathroom floor.

This is one reason I believe coaching for Moms can be so valuable. We’re very quick to assume the solution is becoming more patient, organized, grateful or efficient. Essentially, How can I get better at handling all of this?

But I’m often interested in a different question:

Should you be handling all of this in the first place?

Because sometimes the problem isn’t your inability to gracefully carry the load.

It’s the load.

When You Start Assuming You’re the Problem

This is something I think about a lot in my work around Motherhood: Why do so many Mothers experience genuinely overwhelming conditions and then interpret their perfectly understandable response to those conditions as evidence that they’re personally failing?

We rarely question the conditions instead we question ourselves. And these conditions aren’t exactly imaginary….the U.S. Surgeon General’s advisory on parental stress found that parents consistently report significantly higher levels of stress than other adults.

I call this The Motherhood Setup—the collision between what women are taught to expect of Motherhood, what we’re taught to expect of ourselves, and the largely invisible labor required to raise a family. When reality inevitably fails to resemble the picture we had in our heads, we don’t tend to think, Huh, perhaps the expectations were wildly unrealistic.

We think, What’s wrong with me?

And boy-oh-boy can we build a case. We should be more patient. We shouldn’t be so tired. We definitely shouldn’t resent our partners or fantasize about checking into a lovely hotel, ordering room service, and telling absolutely no one the room number.

After all, we wanted these children. We love them. We’re grateful.

All true.

But gratitude doesn’t cancel out exhaustion, and love doesn’t magically make labor disappear. You can adore your children and miss yourself. You can love your family fiercely and still want more help. Motherhood can be one of the great joys of your life and also an enormous amount of work. In fact, I’d argue that for many of us, both are true at exactly the same time.

This is one of the central ideas I explore in The Motherhood Setup and in my book, Good Girl, Bad Mom. Sometimes feeling better doesn’t begin with figuring out how to become more efficient at doing everything.

Sometimes it begins with questioning why on earth you decided you were supposed to be able to do everything in the first place.

What Can Actually Happen in 90 Minutes?

Quite a lot, actually.

Ninety minutes gives us enough room to slow everything down and look at what’s really going on. What have you tried? What are you afraid of? What do you actually want? And perhaps most importantly, which parts of this situation are yours to carry in the first place?

This is where my background in psychology inevitably finds its way into personal coaching. I’m interested in the decision in front of you, of course, but I’m also curious about why this particular thing has become so sticky. Sometimes guilt is masquerading as responsibility. Sometimes fear has convinced you that you’re confused. And sometimes you already know the answer but need a little help trusting yourself.

We’re not going to solve your entire life in 90 minutes. Good Lord, that sounds exhausting.

The goal is much simpler: leave clearer than you arrived.

Do You Need Ongoing Coaching?

Maybe. There are absolutely times when three or six months of coaching makes more sense, particularly when you’re working through something that will benefit from continued attention and support.

But not everything does.

Sometimes there’s one decision you can’t make, one conversation you keep rehearsing in the shower, or one part of your life that hasn’t felt right for a while. You don’t necessarily need to turn it into a six-month personal development project.

You can just start there.

Maybe You Don’t Need Six Months. Maybe You Need 90 Minutes.

My 90-Minute Private Coaching Session is one private session with no package and no ongoing commitment. We’ll spend our time on whatever feels most important right now, personally or professionally, and figure out what’s actually going on and what you want to do next.

And because I also work as an online life coach, you don’t need to live in Los Angeles to work with me. We can meet virtually from wherever you happen to be.

You also don’t need to arrive with a beautifully articulated problem. Bring the messy version. The thing you’ve changed your mind about six times. The I don’t even know what I need, but something has to change version is perfectly welcome, too.

Because sometimes meaningful change takes months…..and sometimes it starts with one really good conversation.

Ready to talk? Explore my 90-Minute Private Coaching Session and book your session here.