ENEMY COACHING

enemy coaching, comradely coaching, and meeting The Maker.

the “enemy” idea is drawn from the book enemy feminisms by sophie lewis. she argues that feminism is not inherently positive. that, in fact, we have to wrestle with the reality that there are those who self identify as “feminists,” but whose aims are not ultimately in service of a political project that would liberate people from gender-based oppression. (the most obvious example would be a “TERF,” or someone who identifies as a feminist but displays a clear bias against trans women.)

i have some critiques of this book (not the TERF bit), but they’re not relevant here, and i still think this is a useful framing for writing about what i will call enemy coaching.

while i’ve said before i question even the most foundational assumptions and premises found within coaching, what can clearly be agreed upon is that we, as coaches, are in the business of change. we believe change is not only possible, but unavoidable, and that, with some practice, we can become adept at orienting that change in a direction of our choosing.

this is more or less where the similarities end.

i can’t make a historical claim, that i speak to the “true origins” of coaching, that we can harken back to an era of pure and uncontaminated coaching (and actually to do so would be to dovetail my work neatly with fascism, always leveraging nostalgia in the hopes of resurrecting a “bygone era” that never existed to produce fear and disempowerment in the masses).

if i am participating in any lineage at all, i would say my work has been influenced by mosses and lichens; by airport delays; by the field of critical psychology; by rockhill, lukasz, lenin, gramsci, ho, sankara, and mao; by saïd, habash, nasrallah, and khaled; by rumi, shams of tabriz, and ibn arabi; by the tarot; by saturn; by asana and breathwork; by st. sharbel and st. francis; by siekopai cosmologies; by andean orchids; by barbara kingsolver, elif shafak, and octavia butler; by avatar the last airbender; by florence + the machine and FKA twigs; by the group chat; by the friends we made along the way; by the rise and fall of my own breath.

by anyone and everyone who has looked at the conditions around them, looked at the water they were swimming in, and unflinchingly acknowledged being part of a whole, and those who have bravely embraced the dialectical tension of aliveness.

so no. i am not the arbiter of what is or is not coaching. i am not the gatekeeper. i don’t get to decide. and just as sophie lewis suggests, i have to be willing to wrestle with the reality that there is coaching, and then there is coaching. that coaching as an industry is an enemy industry, and therefore most coaches are enemy coaches.

and what is it to be the enemy or to participate in an enemy industry?

this is to craft, to uphold, to wield the tools of coaching in a way that ensures we are never truly liberated. that we are patched up, soothed, hyped, improved, coddled, shaken up, scolded, sold to, lied to, but never, ever, ever actually encouraged to awaken or to mature. to never become effective in a project that promotes genuine change. to never awaken to the violence of the interlocking systems of oppression that rob us of the fullness of our humanity. to never mature enough to sharpen the tool of our discernment, to never fully understand what is within our control and what is without. to mistake confusion for epiphany. to mistake hoarding for abundance. to mistake fact for fiction. to mistake propaganda for free thinking. to mistake immaturity for boundaries. to mistake harm for help.

and i will try to explain the most common ways this misunderstanding at the root of enemy coaching(s) keeps us small and immature and ineffective. i will also, for the first time, try to articulate an alternative.

enemy coaching: change is only internal and individual

this is the foundation of all enemy coaching, and we cannot understand how violent and pervasive this enemy is without naming and examining this.

liberalism (the dominant cultural ideology) has certain facets that are valuable, even for revolutionaries. it offers certain social developments that are positive. it is a good thing to look for people’s humanity. it is a good thing to embrace change. it is a good thing to develop ourselves as individuals. it is a good thing to be willing to hear and integrate a diversity of views and experiences.

liberalism is hostile, not because of these values, but because its primary commitment is to upholding capitalism (which requires all of the oppression it nominally opposes). so liberalism will continue to uphold your “individual liberties” until it contradicts the demands of capitalism, at which point it will feed all of its mealy-mouthed promises to the fire, along with your body and your future, to keep the machine running. therefore it can never fulfill on its own promises.

this, by the way, is why we see the extremely right-wing attitudes coinciding with stripping back of safety and dignity and the worsening of economic conditions for all but a privileged few without any semblance of opposition. because liberalism’s first commitment is to upholding capitalism, and all other commitments are secondary (at best).

during these heightened waves of increasing fascism, liberalism perverts (or reveals) itself by doubling down on the concept of the individual, and rather than offering a vision of freedom and abundance (the carrot), it offers a carceral and violent logic that blames you for your lot in life and goes so far as to criminalize your existence (the stick). it not so subtly suggests that those who have wealth and privilege and choices earned them and those who don’t earned that too.

from this, the enemy industries surmise that the only way to improve your circumstance is through treating the self as a personal improvement project with the aim of creating enough wealth that you can … idk become one of the violent pedophile elites who have it better than you. or at least that you can become a little girlboss or a little landlord or a little fief, leeching off those less fortunate than you. the future is foregone. the game is rigged. revolution is impossible. and the only hope is to function more “optimally” in a world on fire.

the coaches who promote this worldview, of course, are the worst of it. the baldest attempt to convince you that you’re to blame for everything you don’t like. which is, of course, ridiculous because if you were really that powerful that you were making all of these terrible things happen … wouldn’t you do something cooler with your power?

but not all enemies are evil villains twirling their mustaches.

there are just as many coaches coopting language like “liberation.” talking about “capitalism” and “privilege” and braiding it with “ancestral healing” and “the collective.” and because these words evoke a visceral feeling in most people rather than a critical examination of words and what they mean, there’s no pressure or expectation to be able to analyze or to explain these concepts. it’s just a feeling. and for those who’ve been habituated in wellness spaces to “trust your gut,” a feeling is all that’s required.

but stepping back, for those adept at political analysis, you see a mishmash of ideas lacking any coherent political vision (not inherently wrong, but if you claim that your work is progressive and therefore political, it should be politically cogent). you see a pattern of opportunistically jumping on every new social or cultural bandwagon, motivated less by any project for liberation and more by needing to have a new take on the hottest issue, to perform one’s role as a “leader,” and to ensure more likes and clicks and sales.

and this leads to what i call the work that feels like work but isn’t working.

which is more or less anything that takes up your time, effort, and energy, but (like liberalism) cannot fulfill on its promises because it is, in some way, in contradiction with them.

a small example of this would be always listening to your worst fears and taking action based on them, rather than learning to listen to the part of you capable of orienting yourself toward greater possibilities, and then wondering why your life feels like someone else’s. a more relevant example would be to spend your time and money in a group coaching program with a coach who loves to talk about how you need to keep working through your white supremacy without ever encouraging you to take real action in your community beyond learning and parroting buzzwords and without ever explaining to you that white supremacy is, in fact, more than some bad individuals’ bad ideas.

whether the coach intends this or not, enemy coaching ensures that the client stays dependent on the coach and the coaching, incapable of self-actualization, distracted by “shiny objects,” motivated by guilt, relationally deficient, and ultimately immature and ineffective.

comradely coaching: an alternative

to be clear, i’m not making a pitch to use this expression. 😅 i think it’s pretty cheeseballs. it’s just that comrade is the most suitable antonym of enemy.

first we have to be willing to ask: what is coaching, and what does it do?

coaching employs a broad spectrum of skills and tools for the purpose of encouraging the client to orient themselves toward possibility, to examine whether their desires are a reflection of their integrity, to interrogate why change has been difficult and what beliefs or habituated patterns of relating have contributed to the difficulty, and to take bold and decisive action in the direction of the articulated desire.

this is my definition, by the way, and i know some may disagree.

i have often described the role of coaches (and similarly that of many care providers, mentors, teachers, creatives, and artists) as the one who lives at the blurred margin of the village and the wilds. the one who tends to the realms at the edges. the one who reaches beyond, synthesizes what she has found, and shares it generously with those who are willing to listen and engage.

this is to say it is my (our) responsibility to follow the threads. to learn and understand as much as i can. to challenge every opinion, belief, habit, pattern from which i operate to the best of my ability, and to learn the reasons, the assumptions, and of course, the alternatives.

so if i want my coaching to participate in a broader and truly revolutionary political vision, it is actually my responsibility to have a strong political foundation within myself so that i can correctly and effectively position the tools of coaching within a revolutionary and liberatory framework.

while enemy coaching understands change as only individual and internal and for the purpose of fortifying the exalted self, comradely coaching acknowledges that, because our world is deeply sick and immature, it is extremely difficult to cultivate new possibilities within most of our families and communities of origin. therefore, it can be advantageous to spend time privately with a coach or in a curated small group, not in the hopes of shutting out or cutting off the world, but for the purpose of intentionally cultivating relationships that encourage our process of unlearning and maturation.

unlike enemy coaching, which implies that the individual is the only unit worthy of attention, comradely coaching understands that personal and individual healing and growth are important, but only insofar as one becomes more effective in a relational and community setting.

while many struggle finding financial and emotional stability in this increasingly violent and exploitative world, enemy coaching suggests that things like more money, a hotter body, a lusty and romantic partnership, are legitimate solutions and in fact end goals. comradely coaching, however, acknowledges that living in treacherous precariousness makes growth and development exceedingly difficult. it therefore allows the client to learn skills to achieve more stable living conditions but sees this as a beginning, not an end. a floor, not a ceiling.

enemy coaching rarely stops to question the most basic assumptions of what coaching is or can do. it assumes the “goal” is enhanced wealth, productivity, power, influence, and positive feelings for the individual. it never stops to question, what is abundance? what is manifestation? what is the highest good? where do desires come from, and what purpose (or who) do they serve? it positions the world as billions of segmented, fragmented, individual fixer-upper projects whose biggest and wildest dream is just to reproduce the structures of capitalism, just getting a little higher up the pyramid each time. by contrast, comradely coaching teaches discernment, reflection, and a bone-deep willingness to be wrong. to die to what we think we know in the hopes of a radical rebirth into who we are. it gives us the emotional capacity to admit mistakes, to embrace and even create the new, and to reencounter vulnerability once more. to reclaim the innocence capitalism has robbed from us. to creatively reimagine a more just and beautiful world. not just for ourselves, but for all. and to see ourselves, not as the martyr or master over the change, but an integral and integrated piece of the whole.

enemy coaching encourages the client to see the world as something they are controlling. to see challenges as things the client has controlled poorly. to see positive things as things the client has controlled well. this inflates the immature and wounded ego at the expense of developing the whole, integrated, functional self. comradely coaching encourages the client to think deeply about what is in one’s control and what is beyond it. to find opportunities for genuine, empowered decision-making. to find humility and a willingness to admit one’s limitations. to find one’s appropriately sized place in the human and more than human world.

coaching is powerful. some would even say it’s magic (and while i’m not necessarily a fan of that word, i tend to agree). and we can ask so much more of it than what we’ve seen so far.

acknowledging the enemy within

naming my complicity is paramount.

have i been an enemy coach? surely. have i participated in the industry of enemy coaching? certainly. both as a coach and a client. i don’t say this to beg for absolution, but to overcome the seeds of shame (planted there by the carceral logic of capitalism) that can sprout when we struggle to admit that we were wrong. this is an enormous hinderance that makes it very difficult for people, especially those whose work is related to what we may call wellness or healing, to evolve their worldviews and to embrace ways of thinking and being.

when coaching found me, i operated within what i thought coaching was. as i learned more, i changed. we are, as i said, in the business of change, so this is to be expected.

it is vital to acknowledge that i started where i was, and so did you. and so did everyone who has ever made an impact or encouraged a shift in paradigm. marx started with hegel. radical psychologists started with academic and standard clinical psychology. everyone, everywhere starts where they are with what they have.

and as i became able to think more clearly, to move more effectively, to ask better questions, people (most of whom happened to be outside of coaching or related industries) through space and time, through real life conversations and hundred year old books, shared with me the information i needed to see things differently. and because of coaching, which taught me how to think, i was able to embrace and embody the change.

the agreement and The Maker

i don’t know how it works between you and your process(es). your creativity. your inspiration. for me, i can say honestly, there are very few rules. but i didn’t get to choose any of them, and i have to follow each of them to the letter.

i’ve spent the past several years in genuine agony over this industry. over my participation in it. asking myself (and those i trust), have i fucked up? am i missing something? is there anything here worth saving?

i’ve tried to leave. i deactivated my social media (and only recently brought it back). i stopped writing. i stopped selling offers, only sticking with a few clients who reached out or who were recommended to me. i studied other things. i swear to you, i really, really tried.

but one of the rules The Maker has set — and i heard it loud and clear — is: leave if you want. but it (whatever skill or practice “it” is in the moment) will not leave you until you’ve given everything you can in service to it. you have more to give. you have more to say. and even if you are a tiny little nobody on the internet, the ocean has only ever been made up of drops.

and i live from a deeply held understanding that anything i can do is something that has been gifted to me from that which i call The Maker. and if it has been given, that means it can be taken. which is to say it is my responsibility to steward my skills and insights with reverence and care.

so for now, after a long and extremely uneasy period, i will stay. i will stay to offer the work of coaching for anyone who looks at the enemy industry, confused and afraid, longing for someone who can meet them where they are. longing for someone who can model for them at least an attempt at cracking coaching open to its most radical potentialities.

that all sounds grandiose, and to be honest, i don’t like saying it. i’m just a person at my computer in my living room, and i can’t pretend to be more than that. i don’t want to play into the rampant self-mythologization found in enemy industries. but if i don’t let you know i am here, those who are looking won’t be able to find me.

and also, if i don’t say it with my whole chest, The Maker will not let me get away with it. and that’s a fucking fact.

i want this to be a starting point, a touchstone, a conversation. it is, if i am honest, desperately lonely upholding what i’m tentatively calling comradely coaching (ironically), which is why i’ve been so hesitant to speak on it more. we live in a world where every online post, every email, every essay is supposed to be a finished product, a final idea, perfect in every way. and this inhibits possibility.

because process, imperfection, struggle, these are evidence of our aliveness. and aliveness is evidence of possibility. the cultural disregard for the messy, for the human, for the living and breathing, sentences all of us to death. but the future is not known. the conclusion is not foregone. and the belief in a positive project is essential for both coaching but also very sincerely for the future of all life on this planet.

thank you for being here.

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rae dohar is still a coach. they are also a writer, teacher, and marxist. though the gap between coaching and communism seems extraordinarily wide, rae is doing what she can to bridge it. if you’d like rae to be your coach, you can email her here to see what’s on offer or follow her on instagram where they will continue to tell the truth until The Maker says otherwise.