Bonus 2: Caller Episode

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Speaker 2 Pushkin.

Speaker 1 Hey, dream listeners. if you like this podcast, you're gonna love the book.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I wrote a book.

Speaker 1 It's called Selling the Dream, and it's coming out March 12th, 2024 on Atria. It's about all of your favorite characters from MLMs and some that you've never even heard of, I hope.
Check it out.

Speaker 1 Welcome to The Dream. You're about to hear one of my favorite kinds of episodes that we like to do every season on this show.
It's the episode you made.

Speaker 1 And I'm not just saying that because it gives me a week off, because it doesn't actually, but it is fun to hear your stories.

Speaker 1 So, we put out a call a few months ago for your life coaching stories, and boy, did you deliver!

Speaker 1 Here's a selection of the voicemails you left us and a little interview at the end. Enjoy.

Speaker 6 I stopped being

Speaker 6 really close friends with a long friend because she became a life coach. It happened over the pandemic.
We had already both graduated from college.

Speaker 6 We went together and she started following this TikTok life coach who is mostly selling a lifestyle rather than actual coaching materials, but she kept talking to me about how

Speaker 6 she paid $3,000 to this woman who was then going to teach her how to become a mindset spiritual business coach.

Speaker 6 And my friend kept saying that she thought this was better than going to college because it's only $3,000

Speaker 6 and she's going to learn how to create a business online. And when I was asking her, like what this woman's credentials were or what the tangible guaranteed outcome was,

Speaker 6 she would get really, really defensive and say that I was not supporting her in her new career. I was like, well, what credentials do you have to be a life coach?

Speaker 6 Like who are you to be charging people for advice? Especially since the structural setup of this woman's coaching business that she was advertising advertising was very much like an MLM.

Speaker 6 I went to her website. This woman's not licensed.
She just advertises being sexy and traveling the world, which of course everyone would like to be doing or be.

Speaker 6 I felt like she was advertising a lot of really unhealthy lifestyle choices of, yeah, you know, drop everything you're doing and spend all of your money on coaching.

Speaker 6 And if you give me money to be a coach, then you can also start being a coach. And that will give you fulfillment and happiness and everything like that.
So basically we stopped being friends

Speaker 6 especially when I was dealing with some of my own things and mentioned to her in passing that I was having a rough time and her advice to me you know as a coach now was well maybe you should go climb a tree.

Speaker 8 Hello, my name is Liam and I'm going to share an instance of where life life coaching kind of snuck into my health clinic.

Speaker 8 So I'm a trans man, and I had a really hard time after I graduated from college because my family cut me off financially, emotionally, all that stuff.

Speaker 8 And I went to a job training program that they put on and essentially the person there just did like a life coach thing and said, oh, you guys just got to be happy and got to wake up in the morning and put a smile on your face and believe in yourself.

Speaker 8 And it was so useless, I just stopped going, especially considering most of us there were trans and most of us were people of color, including myself.

Speaker 9 So

Speaker 8 I'm not too fond of life coaching because I often feel that it overlooks the circumstances that people are going through. We live in an unequal society.
I love the show.

Speaker 8 Also chronically ill microneur here, so I can relate to a lot of your experiences. Thank you so much.

Speaker 6 Bye-bye.

Speaker 6 Hi, my name is Sarah. I have a PhD in sociology, and when I was in my first year on the tenure track, I hired an academic coach.
I absolutely loved my coach. Her name was Moira.

Speaker 6 I think she's still in the coaching industry. She helped me create a five-year plan to go up for tenure.

Speaker 6 She helped me see that I wasn't working hard enough, which now I look back on and think, hmm, I wonder about that. But

Speaker 6 she gave me some great tools to help me plan out my time and tried to help me figure out work-life balance. So I was spending time with my two kids as well.
I ended up getting tenure.

Speaker 6 I think I hired her for a couple of years. So that's my experience.
I have loved your show all three seasons and I was really, really happy to see the new seasons. So keep making them and thanks.

Speaker 10 A few years back my employer flagged me as a high potential colleague and that meant that I got perks.

Speaker 10 The main perk was one-on-one career coaching with a professional who had actually worked in my field. And to be honest, it was one of the best things that my job has ever given me.

Speaker 10 It was basically like a work therapist. We laid laid out my situation, which frankly was pretty challenging at the time.

Speaker 10 And we just talked through situations that I faced and what I could be doing and what my ultimate goals were. And it was awesome.

Speaker 6 I felt like I took a step back.

Speaker 10 I thought about the really important stuff.

Speaker 10 And I had someone in my corner who understood the situation. So they helped me through a really tricky professional time period.
And hey, I've been promoted like a bunch of times since then.

Speaker 10 so it was awesome

Speaker 12 I just want to say I'm absolutely loving the podcast so far and

Speaker 11 really

Speaker 12 resonating with

Speaker 12 where Jane is in her life and feeling a lot of compassion and love for her because I have been in a similar position for the past several years

Speaker 12 just not being able to find happiness and I have actually had a very positive relationship with a life coach over the last two years.

Speaker 12 She kind of recruited me. I met her through a workshop I did at work and she helped me to identify just like really what is next for me, like what is the next move I should make.

Speaker 11 And most importantly, she helped me get out of a very toxic relationship with

Speaker 12 a

Speaker 12 narcissist who was emotionally abusing me for years.

Speaker 12 And while most of my work with her is really focused on my professional life, when I finally opened up to her about my personal life, she just really helped me see so much that I was choosing not to see.

Speaker 12 So I have great things to say about my life coach, and I recommend it to anyone who needs support. I think life coaching is so much more beneficial than talk therapy.

Speaker 12 It is very action-oriented and I've been in talk therapy for years and haven't really gotten much out of it, but just in the short time that I've been working with this coach, like I've just really made some positive changes in my life and reflected on my patterns and thoughts and behaviors.

Speaker 12 And so yeah.

Speaker 12 Thank you so much for the work that you all do. This is a really wonderful podcast.

Speaker 6 Hi, Jay-Marie. My name is Sarah.
I live here in Mosul East, and I've done coaching two ways. One, forced through work.
I do not recommend that at all, miserable.

Speaker 6 But also, I chose to do life coaching last year coming out of the pandemic, depressed with little to no self-confidence. It was

Speaker 6 something that I probably would have made fun of for a long time doing life coaching. And then I realized I felt sad, lonely.
I'm single, getting older, getting fatter,

Speaker 6 and

Speaker 6 felt like life was terrible.

Speaker 6 I saw somebody on Twitter who said they were a life coach and thought they were saying it as a joke and then I realized they weren't joking and I made fun of it for a second until I thought, well, maybe it'll work.

Speaker 6 I did 12 sessions to start feeling better about myself. They talked with me for an hour, you know, each time, gave me homework to do at home.
And I have to say, it worked.

Speaker 6 It was just little exercises to get me out of my brain and my way of thinking. Anyway, after about 12 sessions, I did start feeling better and I got out of the house and started volunteering.

Speaker 6 And now I am in actual therapy working on the same thing. probably in a more informed way than the life coach has.

Speaker 6 But, you know, it's now a year or two later. I'm still 46, 50 pounds heavier than I want to be and single, but I'm feeling in a much better place about it and getting much better help.

Speaker 6 Anyway, I'm loving the new series. Thank you.
Bye.

Speaker 14 Hi, my name is Emily and I am a licensed mental health counselor in the state of Washington in the United States. I don't have a lot of experience with coaching.

Speaker 14 However, as a mental health counselor, I can tell you that coaching

Speaker 14 definitely has got this weird overlap that makes me very concerned.

Speaker 14 Mostly I'm concerned about people who go straight into coaching programs and then they advertise as if they are qualified to do the kind of work

Speaker 14 that I end up doing on a daily basis that I have a lot of training to do.

Speaker 14 And one of the things that is especially upsetting to me lately are health coaches because they essentially just repackage diet culture in a way that seems sort of like it's healthy and therapeutic.

Speaker 14 And I actually ended up, out of curiosity, doing some sessions with an acquaintance of mine that I know in the community who was getting hours for her coaching certificate.

Speaker 14 And I can tell you that basically every session was just trying to check in to see if I had exercised.

Speaker 14 And there was no skill or ability that she had, or at least maybe wasn't allowed to, to address the fact that like exercise to me was trauma.

Speaker 14 I didn't necessarily need to work through my trauma with her, but it makes me very nervous.

Speaker 14 So the type of clients that I see, if they're going to go to like a health coach, for example, or a life coach that's going to coach them on any element of their like health,

Speaker 14 it's just not sufficient. So anyway, those are my thoughts.
And if you can use them great.

Speaker 17 Hi, my name is Lori. And to answer the question, I have taken coaching classes myself.
I have called myself a pragmatic and resiliency coach. I have been coached.

Speaker 17 At certain points in my life, it's been really helpful.

Speaker 11 Some of it has been bullshit.

Speaker 13 Some of it I really question.

Speaker 17 And these days, I don't really call myself anything. I do have clients that I see.

Speaker 17 And if anything, I sit and I listen really deeply to people and do my best to just I'm a yoga and meditation teacher at heart.

Speaker 13 I don't know.

Speaker 17 Being human is really difficult and challenging.

Speaker 9 And at the end of the day, if there's some certain tools that help you feel a little bit more peaceful and content inside yourself,

Speaker 18 then

Speaker 11 choose wisely.

Speaker 17 Life is complex. That's all I need to say.
Thank you so much for your show.

Speaker 12 Have a great day.

Speaker 11 Hey, so I'm calling because I'm in the hate life coach of camp.

Speaker 18 And

Speaker 7 the main thing that I think really bothers me about the life coaching industry is that there's absolutely no entrance costs.

Speaker 11 There's none whatsoever.

Speaker 17 And I've known multiple people who go into life coaching. When I talk to them, I'm like, I don't really think that you have life figured out.

Speaker 17 The last person who I knew who went into life coaching, she went to a synagogue that I attended for a while.

Speaker 15 She had a daughter who was born severely disabled,

Speaker 18 and

Speaker 17 she just like sent her away like sent her to an institution because she was so horrified by the idea of taking care of her her other children were adopted because she didn't want to run the risk she wanted to pick basically what babies she had in the future I didn't even know of the existence of her first daughter for years because she didn't even live in the same state.

Speaker 17 And then next thing I know, this woman is becoming a life coach.

Speaker 18 And I'm just like,

Speaker 9 girl, you

Speaker 17 do not have your deals figured out at all.

Speaker 17 Maybe you need a life coach.

Speaker 17 All the life coaches who I know seem to follow that pattern of just having the

Speaker 17 audacity, it feels like, to think that they can tell other people how to live.

Speaker 16 Hey there. I've been a fan of the podcast for a few years now and really appreciate the light that you're shining on

Speaker 16 these different kinds of MLMs and coaches and things like that.

Speaker 16 I have been a mentor to a lot of young entrepreneurs. So I would say a mentor is life coach adjacent, right?

Speaker 16 But it's really challenging for me because there's a lot of coaching in the space. There's a lot of mentors.
There are people who I look up to in some ways and yet feel this simmering rage because

Speaker 16 a little over a decade ago, my mother,

Speaker 16 who is,

Speaker 16 you know, in her 70s,

Speaker 16 was groomed by Bob Proctor before he passed

Speaker 16 and spent

Speaker 16 close to $200,000 on product

Speaker 16 that she was convinced by these coaches she could sell.

Speaker 16 So she got caught up purchasing all this inventory that she couldn't sell, squandering her retirement. You know, now I spend her money to help her just straight by.

Speaker 16 And then I look at people who I want to look up to who have successful businesses, talk about mindset and positivity, and cutting out negative words and, you know, always reframing problems as challenges or opportunities.

Speaker 16 And they're promoting and sharing videos from your Bob Practice of the world.

Speaker 16 Life coaches, can they be valuable? Yes.

Speaker 16 Can they really take advantage of people and are there nasty ones out there who will groom people and

Speaker 16 basically swindle them out of money? Yes.

Speaker 16 And as with most things,

Speaker 16 a lot of it can be what you make out of it.

Speaker 16 And you just have to be really careful. So excited to see where the rest of the pod goes and take care.

Speaker 14 Hi, my name is Nikki and I'll be up front.

Speaker 14 I'm a licensed mental health counselor and so when it comes to life coaching I am inherently biased but I think episode five really solidified why I am so biased against life coaching is that there is an innate vulnerability that comes with sharing yourself and your struggles with another person.

Speaker 14 And without the boundaries that therapy or counseling has, or at the very least the lack of boundaries that life coaching has is that people are really set up to get hurt.

Speaker 14 You know, I hope your experience with your life coach went well, but when I hear her say we're going to be friends at the end of this, my red flag goes up inside of how can you say that and how can you build authenticity into a real friendship when you are

Speaker 14 shaking money off of somebody's pain and vulnerability. Yes, you pay a therapist, but a therapist isn't your friend, and we're very upfront about that.

Speaker 14 I just have such an ick when it comes to life coaching.

Speaker 14 Honestly, when someone tells me that they want to do it, I really instead try to find out why and refer them to do health coaching instead if it's appropriate, because health coaching at least has boards you have to set for.

Speaker 14 They have guidance of what to do when something's out of scope and referring on.

Speaker 14 And so, yeah, I think there's so many other avenues that are so much safer for people in their emotions and their journeys. But I love your show and I really hope you're doing well.
Bye.

Speaker 16 When I was younger, much earlier, like in my teens, my mother bought, she and I, a three-day, like a thingy for this guy named Marshall Silver, who is a vagus hypnotist who had like a spot on Letterman.

Speaker 16 And it's, you know, like he's around.

Speaker 16 And I remember the three days was, you know, big hype sales. We're all in a room with the Orlando airport, big room.

Speaker 16 And they're coming up and telling us that we're going to change our futures and all the stuff that I've been hearing on the show.

Speaker 16 And then on day two of it, I remember it was just people coming up and selling their little product. Like, here's a way to win on the stock market or things like that.

Speaker 16 And I was supposed to have individualized coaching, but every time I did it, it made me feel uncomfortable. This wasn't like a cohesive program.
It was just some bullshit.

Speaker 16 But even to this day, a bunch of stuff that they said still worked for me. Like he would say that, you know, value is what you create.
Or like instead of saying but, say, and.

Speaker 16 So even though I was only there for three days as a teenager, it's really pervasive and it still stuck with me.

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Speaker 16 It's just these people are very good at being salespeople, and so much of what I experienced that weekend is what you guys have been talking about for the last three seasons.

Speaker 19 Hi, I am not entirely sure how to condense my experience into one voicemail.

Speaker 7 I

Speaker 19 do have a story regarding coaching and how it affected my partner, former partner at this point,

Speaker 19 the stress that it created in our relationship, and

Speaker 19 the very,

Speaker 6 in my opinion, fleazy world of coaches who coach coaches for big dollars.

Speaker 19 This story involves

Speaker 19 a particular coach named

Speaker 19 and how her teachings and influence affected my partner in her coaching business and $50,000 of credit card debt. My phone number is.

Speaker 19 I'm a huge fan of the show. I really appreciate the information that's being brought to light.
And I would really love to have a conversation with you all one-on-one and tell you a little bit more.

Speaker 19 Thanks.

Speaker 1 We called Alex to give her the chance to tell the uncondensed version of her life coach story that effectively broke up her relationship.

Speaker 2 My name is Alex, and I am a former nurse. I spent 12 years working as a registered nurse in critical care, trauma, emergency medicine, and I spent 11 years in the military.

Speaker 2 And I currently pivoted to small business owner and I live on the East Coast.

Speaker 1 You called and left us a voicemail about

Speaker 1 a life coach who

Speaker 2 you kind of believe maybe ruined your relationship.

Speaker 1 Will you tell me what happened?

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 2 I met my partner when she was a

Speaker 2 marriage and family therapist, and she had talked about wanting to get out of marriage and family therapy and just leave therapy all you know altogether and she was very interested in becoming a coach and I was fully supportive of that and I really wanted to encourage her in that quest because I understood what it was like to

Speaker 2 be in a place, be in a profession that you felt exhausted by.

Speaker 2 So I, you know, I fully supported her and

Speaker 2 she attended a training. It was at the very early onset of her transition to the coaching world by

Speaker 2 a big name coach and

Speaker 2 that kind of set the ball in motion and, you know, she eventually resigned her license and transitioned fully to coaching. She

Speaker 2 then

Speaker 2 was looking for a coach

Speaker 2 to work with to kind of help her in this transition and

Speaker 2 this particular coach that she ended up working with was billing herself as a business coach.

Speaker 2 I really was concerned about like the tone that this coach was providing and I raised a lot of questions.

Speaker 2 It created quite a bit of tension between my partner and I because she really believed in what this particular coach was saying.

Speaker 2 Like the overall tone of

Speaker 2 just charge what you're worth. And I remember hearing that all the time.
And, you know, I kept thinking, well, what is, you know, how do you

Speaker 2 put a value on this quote-unquote worth and then decide that other people... you know, you need to sell this to other people.

Speaker 2 And this coach was very, very much pushy on the sales side and just, you know, teaching this really aggressive sales tactic.

Speaker 2 and like you know it doesn't matter if somebody says they don't have a thousand dollars to work with you for two weeks like you can get them to do it it was that kind of thought process yeah

Speaker 2 icky and I I really didn't feel like I could support something like that and so I really wanted you know to have these conversations with my partner to kind of get her to see things from my perspective and why as just a regular layperson it felt really gross.

Speaker 2 I had seen her as a therapist and I had seen her in the coaching realm and she's very good. She had a way to communicate with people that really made them feel comfortable and confident and

Speaker 2 she was great, absolutely fantastic at asking really pointed questions that were not like poking at people, but actually helping them rethink their concerns or or their hang-ups about whatever it is they might be working on.

Speaker 2 Eventually my partner did

Speaker 2 end the working relationship with that coach and she

Speaker 2 had

Speaker 2 started to ask some of her own questions and

Speaker 2 the coach actually ended up calling her out almost publicly online.

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 it was not a very tactful

Speaker 2 way way of of dealing with the situation did not use her name but definitely alluded in details to who this person was

Speaker 2 wow

Speaker 2 my partner started talking about this really awesome coach she like had these great results from

Speaker 2 you know all listed on her website like clients that were making millions of dollars and

Speaker 2 You know, I didn't think too much about it. I was like, okay, you know, I'd seen her get excited about other things.
And

Speaker 2 then

Speaker 2 she mentioned the price tag for working with this particular coach. And the price tag was $25,000 for six months.
Oh, my God.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I

Speaker 2 thought, okay, wow, this is a lot for me to wrap my head around.

Speaker 1 Is that like that for six months, that sounds like maybe like a very intensive university-style education and coaching. Is that what it was?

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 it was actually a group call a week,

Speaker 2 and then you could request peer coaching, which comes from inside the group, from the other peers, the other coaches in that group, or you can sign up for a session with one of the paid coaches that this

Speaker 2 business coach that runs this $25,000 for a six-month program was paying to be on her staff. Okay.

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Speaker 2 How this whole thing kicks off is they have a get-together at some destination. One of the locations was Baja.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 they'd go to this destination, whichever you know was chosen, and then they have like a three-day event in this just like almost like eight hours of non-stop what's billed as coaching, but it's really like sales and marketing

Speaker 2 teaching, which if you listen to the podcasts that this particular coach put out or you watch the videos,

Speaker 2 it has a very multi-level marketing theme to it.

Speaker 2 There's no real way that you can actually put your finger on it and say, yep, this is multi-level marketing because there's only really one person at the top. And, but the thing, the thing that feels

Speaker 2 like a pyramid about it all is that you get to the end of one of these, you know, six-month sessions, there's no certification,

Speaker 2 there's nothing that you walk away with, and people repeatedly sign up over and over and over again. And I know my partner told me of people who had signed up, you know, four, six times in a row.

Speaker 2 Wow.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 membership. Yes.

Speaker 2 And technically it's not mandatory, but it's kind of like you get into this group and you don't want to get out because you know the vibe is so energized and you know it's it's a high energy quote unquote high impact environment.

Speaker 2 That ultimate led me to coming back to my partner and saying, you know, I really don't understand. Like

Speaker 2 if you're paying $25,000 to go to this program and it's so great, why are you having to do it over again?

Speaker 2 You know, what else? It didn't make sense to me. It was,

Speaker 2 I don't like this word. It was almost cult-like because everything was like

Speaker 2 all about the leader of this, you know, coaching business and how she had provided great coaching and how she had said an amazing thing you know um

Speaker 2 during

Speaker 2 the

Speaker 2 um the group meeting

Speaker 2 and just more and more of the structure that i kept hearing about just kept feeling more and more like a multi-level marketing thing but there was nothing that i could put my finger on i i pleaded with her i was like please you know don't don't do this again like that twenty five thousand dollars is a lot of money and

Speaker 2 I don't understand why you would have to go back into a thing that you've paid so much money.

Speaker 2 It begs the question,

Speaker 2 are you getting your money's worth out of it? Because $25,000 is basically a year's worth of college education.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 I...

Speaker 2 I begged and pleaded with her. It really started to create a lot of tension.
She basically had no friends outside of this group. So everybody

Speaker 2 was inside of this group. Like all of her community was in there.
All of the advice she was getting was coming from inside the group.

Speaker 2 All of the coaching that she was getting was coming from inside the group. And one thing that really started,

Speaker 2 one of the things that really started to bother me was how I was seeing how some of these coaches were selling coaching

Speaker 2 for one thing or another to each other.

Speaker 2 And like my partner partner actually got coaching, participated in this group coaching program for relationships from this other coach that was in the coaching program that she was in.

Speaker 2 And it just really felt like an echo chamber, honestly.

Speaker 2 And that there was. Hang on.

Speaker 1 Okay, let's not move past the relationship coaching thing.

Speaker 1 You're in a relationship with this person at the time. Was it a coaching program to teach them how to be relationship coaches or was it to no?

Speaker 2 It was like

Speaker 2 a coaching program to

Speaker 2 help my partner have a better relationship with me. Oh, wow.

Speaker 2 And so that's

Speaker 2 it was just like this big circle. The coaches all got coaching from each other for their business related to this coaching program.

Speaker 2 And then sometimes they would get coaching from each other for life stuff outside of the reason they were in this group.

Speaker 2 And that's why to me it felt more like an echo chamber, like there was no outside,

Speaker 2 I don't know, thought process, honestly. I struggled with, you know, why? Why can she not see

Speaker 2 the

Speaker 2 strangeness of this whole thing and on top of that

Speaker 2 I was frustrated that a group would have so much influence on her and that I didn't have a way to

Speaker 2 like match that influence as her partner.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I just, I didn't know how to reach her. And I didn't know what to say.
And it really, like,

Speaker 2 I did notice a huge difference by the end of the relationship between the person that I met, you know, five years prior

Speaker 2 and the end result.

Speaker 2 Because by the end, like, there wasn't a single podcast that she listened to other than the podcasts from the people in that group, from the leader of that group, from her friends in that group.

Speaker 2 There wasn't any outside influence that she absorbed. It was all coming from the inside.

Speaker 6 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1 And was she achieving some level of success by doing this?

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 2 This was the second round that she participated in, and she had not signed a client in over a year.

Speaker 2 Whoa.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 She goes away to

Speaker 2 the,

Speaker 2 I don't know, the group rendezvous meeting

Speaker 2 and then signs up for another six months with this coach, the business coach,

Speaker 2 because she was being offered a special deal.

Speaker 2 And it was during this

Speaker 2 second,

Speaker 2 like leading up to the second sign-up, that my partner was coached

Speaker 2 by the coach running the group into using her credit card to pay for the next round.

Speaker 2 In her thought, she was like, I'm stuck because I want to join this next round, but I don't have the finances for it.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 essentially what came out in the conversation with the group leader was, wait a minute, you have a credit card with how much of a credit limit on it?

Speaker 2 And you're saying that's not accessible to your business? Like you should be using your credit card to finance this. So my partner signs up.
She goes through this whole other round.

Speaker 2 Like, my disdain for the whole thing becomes a lot more evident. I have very little positive to say about it all.
I tell her I don't want to listen to the podcasts.

Speaker 2 I really have no interest in being around her friends.

Speaker 2 So, this actually happened within the last month. Oh, my God.

Speaker 2 My partner and I both got sick.

Speaker 2 I

Speaker 2 was woken up one night night in the middle of the night, probably like 4.30 in the morning. My partner shakes me awake and she says, I'm not feeling good.
I'm not feeling good. Something's wrong.

Speaker 2 Something's really wrong. She's panicking.
And

Speaker 2 I get up. I'm groggy.
And I say, well, what happened? She's like, well, I took some over-the-counter medication and now I don't feel good.

Speaker 2 And I sat her down on the couch and, you know, I was like, hey, I need you to take a deep breath, like try to calm down. And she was really panicking.
She started vomiting.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 next thing I know,

Speaker 2 she just has this thousand-yard stare and is just looking off

Speaker 2 insane. I'm going to pass out.
I'm going to pass out.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 she goes unresponsive. She stops breathing.

Speaker 2 She turns like this color of gray that I have only ever seen and witnessed in somebody who has died or is about to die

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 Then starts having a seizure

Speaker 2 and I could not do anything except hold her and prevent her head from snapping around and causing injury and

Speaker 2 Eventually the seizure stopped and I called 911

Speaker 2 EMS shows up to the house and They check her blood pressure. It is ridiculously low.
Like I know as a nurse that she needs, you you know, emergent medical care,

Speaker 2 but she refuses. And she refuses to be taken to the hospital.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I had started to get suspicious

Speaker 2 that something was going on because she had been telling me she didn't have money for different things. And so I was taking on more

Speaker 2 financial responsibility.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I knew that she had signed up for two of these rounds with this coach at $25,000 each. And I also knew that she had not signed a client in

Speaker 2 a year or more.

Speaker 2 And I started to kind of see the dominoes falling. And that's what led me to asking her after the paramedics had left.
I asked her, you know, how much debt are you in?

Speaker 2 She finally told me that she was $50,000 in credit card debt and that it was related to that program. Oh my God.

Speaker 1 How did she explain her refusal to go to the hospital?

Speaker 2 She just said it wasn't necessary.

Speaker 2 She didn't think that she warranted going there.

Speaker 2 And I, again, as a critical care nurse, emergency nurse, having witnessed what I had just seen in her, knowing that she had nearly died right there in our living room,

Speaker 2 I couldn't think of a single reason why you wouldn't go, but I couldn't make her go.

Speaker 2 So I knew it had to have something to do with a financial issue and it felt like a gut punch.

Speaker 2 I

Speaker 2 just, I, again, it was just another moment of shock

Speaker 2 that

Speaker 2 here was this person I had trusted to be open and and honest with me

Speaker 2 and they hadn't been open and honest about the debt and

Speaker 2 Now I'm finding out about it in an emergent situation and I felt like I had been put in this place of

Speaker 2 do I gamble with my partner's life

Speaker 2 and try to mitigate the damage that she has done with her finances or do I go ahead and push for her to go to the hospital? And it still makes me feel ill. Like I,

Speaker 2 right now I feel like I could throw up just talking about it and thinking about it.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 I just sat there and was quiet.

Speaker 2 I did not know what to do or say. And it was just another moment of shock and disbelief that, you know, something like that was happening.

Speaker 2 It took me a few days to kind of gather myself and that's when the anger and frustration really started

Speaker 2 to be something that I could feel. I had moved beyond the moment of shock and terror, and had like progressed to the point of

Speaker 2 being so so

Speaker 2 just angry, not necessarily at my partner, but angry that somebody would have taken advantage of her and her

Speaker 2 desire to have

Speaker 2 you know financial stability and

Speaker 2 do something, you know, greater with her life.

Speaker 2 And,

Speaker 2 you know, part of that responsibility does lie on my former partner, but in the same hand,

Speaker 2 it also lies with the coach that encouraged her to use credit cards.

Speaker 2 And, you know, I told my partner that

Speaker 2 she had to

Speaker 2 take some pretty significant steps to start addressing the debt, such as she needed to move her office back into our home and that she needed to cut off all ties with that group and

Speaker 2 that if she didn't do that, you know, our relationship was going to be on the line and potentially be over that very day.

Speaker 2 She assured me that she was willing to make those changes, but within a few days she came came back to me and told me that she was leaving. Oh my god.

Speaker 4 So this is really recent.

Speaker 1 How are you doing?

Speaker 2 I thought for sure that she would pick us.

Speaker 2 I thought for sure that she would

Speaker 2 finally see my reasoning for concern of participation in this group.

Speaker 2 And,

Speaker 2 you know, I

Speaker 2 felt like out of a sense of desperation, I had given those ultimatums

Speaker 2 and that

Speaker 2 she would understand where those ultimatums were coming from, a deep sense of caring, a deep sense of love, and

Speaker 2 wanting her

Speaker 2 to stay. And

Speaker 2 it just it backfired. And

Speaker 2 I

Speaker 2 you know I had to accept that she she left

Speaker 2 I begged I begged and pleaded for her to understand that

Speaker 2 my

Speaker 2 desire

Speaker 2 to support her was outside of my willingness to support that group and her involvement in that group I very clearly told her that I supported her, that I

Speaker 2 believed in her abilities as a coach and as a professional, that I wanted her to succeed, that I wanted to be there to see her succeed,

Speaker 2 and I could not get her to separate herself

Speaker 2 from this identity of not only being a coach, but a coach in that particular group.

Speaker 1 The Dream is written, hosted, and executive produced by me, Jane Marie. Our producer is Mike Richter, with help from Nancy Golumbiski and Joy Sanford.

Speaker 2 Our editor is Peter Clowny.

Speaker 1 The Dream is a co-production of Little Everywhere and Pushkin Industries.

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