The Cruel Optimism of Coaching
In the world of modern coaching, especially where NLP, Neuro-Semantics, and Law of Attraction thinking collide, there’s a seductive message:
“You are the author of your emotional experience.”
This framing is pushed as self-empowerment. But for those living with anhedonia, the inability to feel pleasure, it can be anything but empowering. It becomes a form of emotional blame, where your suffering is seen not as a signal of injury, but as a failure of mindset.
This article examines what anhedonia is, how it’s dismissed or pathologised by coaching ideology, and why that dismissal can deepen the very suffering it claims to fix.
What Is Anhedonia?
Anhedonia is a core symptom of major depressive disorder, PTSD, trauma, and sometimes neurological disorders like Parkinson’s or schizophrenia. It is defined by:
- The inability to experience pleasure or interest.
- Disconnection from previously enjoyed activities.
- Emotional flatness or numbness.
- Social withdrawal and a sense of detachment from others.
It’s not about being sad.
It’s about feeling nothing, a kind of emotional amputation.
This condition is deeply tied to neurochemistry, particularly disruptions in dopamine pathways, and is well-documented in psychiatric and neurological literature. It’s not a belief, not a frame, and not a choice.
How Coaching Culture Misunderstands It
Within coaching, especially frameworks like NLP-based models, anhedonia would not be treated as a medical or relational condition. It would be interpreted as:
- A “low-level frame” the client is stuck in.
- A result of poor internal representations.
- A symptom of resisting change, being “out of alignment,” or not “choosing growth.”
- Evidence that the person is not taking responsibility for their “response zone.”
In this frame, you are not suffering because something happened.
You are suffering because you refuse to update your narrative.
This is not support. It is ideological erasure.
Coaching’s Obsession With Framing
NLP teaches that emotions are created by how you code meaning, not by external events themselves. The implication is clear:
- You’re not numb because of what was done to you.
- You’re numb because you keep replaying the wrong “meaning.”
In this worldview, anhedonia becomes your fault.
It’s what happens when you “live in your own misery.”
Not because you’ve been hurt, betrayed, or traumatised.
But because you’ve “chosen to stay there.”
This is a dangerous distortion. It bypasses all clinical understanding of depression and mental health. It ignores biology, context, relationships, and trauma, and replaces them with pseudo-control and the illusion of agency.
The Harm of Magical Thinking
The coaching approach doesn’t stand alone. It dovetails neatly with Law of Attraction thinking, the belief that your thoughts shape your reality. This was most notoriously pushed by Esther Hicks, where rape survivors were told they “attracted” their assault through their energetic frequency.
This same logic now lives in more “professional” clothing:
- “You create your emotional experience.”
- “You’re responsible for your joy.”
- “Pain is just a signal to shift your mindset.”
When applied to someone living with anhedonia, this becomes victim-blaming disguised as spiritual evolution.
A Personalised Case Study
Four years on, I still struggle to feel joy, not because I haven’t reframed things, but because something broke. I was betrayed, blindsided, rewritten. Coaching didn’t help. It gave her permission, and gave me responsibility for the aftermath.
When she said, “It’s his problem how he deals with it,” it wasn’t just cruel. It was coached.
According to that ideology, my numbness, my grief, my inability to feel pleasure in the things we once shared, that’s all on me.
This is what coaching does when it lacks clinical grounding:
It reframes human suffering as a sign of failure, and calls it empowerment.
What Anhedonia Actually Needs
People living with anhedonia don’t need to be told they’re “choosing misery.”
They need:
- Compassion, not correction.
- Support, not spiritual bypassing.
- Connection, not “detachment for your own good.”
- Therapy and clinical care, not “state-change” gimmicks.
Anhedonia is not a glitch in your narrative.
It is a wound.
And healing it requires acknowledging the source, not reframing it out of existence.
Why Coaching Culture Gets It So Wrong
The coaching world sells emotional control as moral superiority.
If you can control your reaction, you’re “evolved.”
If you can detach from pain, you’re “mature.”
If you still feel broken, you’re “not doing the work.”
But here’s the truth:
- Coaching frameworks are not trauma-informed.
- Most coaches are not qualified to recognise anhedonia, depression, or trauma.
- And yet, they’re offering advice with clinical consequences.
This isn’t harmless. It’s reckless.
You Didn’t Choose This
If you’re living with anhedonia, or have survived betrayal, grief, or trauma, and find yourself feeling nothing where joy once lived, you are not broken.
You are not “choosing misery.”
You are not “stuck in your story.”
You are human, dealing with something real.
And anyone who tells you otherwise, especially from a position of unqualified “coaching wisdom,” is not offering insight.
They’re offering avoidance.
And calling it mastery.