If anything boils my piss – and what a lovely expression that is – it’s the person who calls themself a “wellbeing coach”. Not only does it boil my piss, it gets my goat, hacks me off, it makes me mad. A “wellbeing coach”, a “transformational speaking coach” and an expert on “talking anxiety”. All these “speakers on the lived field of mental health”. Who do you think you are kidding?
Not me and not anyone who has ever had mental health issues. These coaches, wellbeing or transformational speakers, are quacks, frauds if you will. Because here is a simple fact: POOR MENTAL HEALTH IS AN ILLNESS. It is not treated, never mind cured, by someone with not a scintilla of medical training, never mind experience. No matter how convincing a “coach” sounds she or he is not a doctor or a therapist. S/he can’t prescribe antidepressants or any other kind of mental health drugs. All they have is words. Words that might sound nice, but don’t mean anything.
These fraudsters and hucksters would never go round hawking for trade if the illness concerned was, say, cancer and not anxiety. Can you imagine it? “Hello, I’m Ron Fraud. Unique Cancer Engagement is my speciality. I am a Cancer speaker. And by positive engagement your Cancer need not define you.” Putting on my best Billy Connolly angry voice, I say to you, “Just go away. Fuck off.”
I have spent mercifully few occasions having to listen to so called “inspirational speakers” and self-appointed “coaches” but all the ones I have had the misfortune to experience have nothing meaningful to say. It’s all bullshit and business-speak. In short, when I need treatment, whether it’s for my depression, or one day God forbid (please) something awful like cancer, I do not want to have to listen to some egotistical tosspot who knows even less than I do about the subject. These coaches have nothing more to offer than spiritualist mediums, aromatherapists, homeopathy or God.
You can’t coach someone out of anxiety or depression unless you think these are not really illnesses, you are just plain stupid or you are a fraudster. These people are stealing a living from people who are ill. And you never know, if you are one of these hawks I might be coming for you.
I know lots about mental illness, from my own experience and the experiences of others and when I see people claim they can help treat things like anxiety and OCD just by delivering a speech, I want to tell them what absolute shysters they are. No one who has ever been with someone with moderate to severe OCD could possibly suggest the illness could be treated by some twat delivering an “inspirational speech”. And if you do think you can treat some poor unfortunate by talking bollocks, you could be the one who needs treatment.
“The lived experience of mental health” indeed. And you make money from credulous fools and in return you cure no one. There are some evil ways of making a living. You, coach, are part of the evil ways.
