What Happens When the Helper Can't Handle You

There is a systemic failure happening in the helping industry — and nobody is talking about it.

Coaches and therapists are opening emotional doors they are completely unprepared to sit in. And when you show up authentically — crying, angry, overwhelmed, resistant — instead of being held, you get shut down. Pathologized. Shamed into getting small.

I'm recording this one hot, because it happened to me today. And I need you to hear it.

What I cover in this episode:

1. The $25,000 business mastermind where I was told they'd "move on" while I cried — and how it took me months to recover my confidence
2. Being interrupted mid-share and told to mute myself and come back with a "more appropriate" share
3. Being told by a business coach — twice — that I needed therapy, not coaching
4. Why this isn't a you problem — it's a capacity problem on their end
5. Why shutting down emotion doesn't protect the client — it retraumatizes them
6. What trauma-aware support actually looks like in practice
7. Clients who've been fired by therapists for being "too emotional" — and why that's an industry failure, not a client failure
8. What it looks like when all of it is welcome: crying, anger, resistance, circling, even lying — none of it pathologized

The truth I keep coming back to:

Shame is the mechanism used to make you small. When someone in authority responds to your emotion with dismissal or redirection, the message that lands is: what you just did was wrong. And you shrink. You manage yourself. You stop showing up fully.

That was never your shame to hold.

You are allowed to show up as the fullest, most authentic version of yourself. There are helpers — coaches, therapists, friends, partners — who won't reject that. Your job is to find them.

If this resonated:

Book a free discovery call with me: amandahess.ca/bookacall

Connect on Instagram: @theamandahess

Hey, I'm Amanda Hess. I'm a certified life coach.

But what you need to know is I'm a sensitive woman just like you, and I'm going to help you understand yourself better so that you can approach your life differently and feel really good about it. Let's go. What happens when the helper can't handle you? Today I got triggered on a business call, and I'm recording this hot because this matters.

The problem that I'm seeing in the world right now is that there is a systemic failure in the helping industry. Coaches and therapists are opening emotional doors that they are completely unprepared to sit in.

I have just seen again and again where when somebody arrives to an environment where they require assistance, rather than being seen in the moment, rather than being given space to really just move through what you're feeling, if somebody else decides that how you're reacting is an overreaction, then in a professional space, it gets pathologized. And I have seen this happen over and over again.

And I'm going to talk about three different experiences that I've had personally to try and help you see what happens. So there was a time early on in my business where I had joined a business mastermind. It was a very large investment.

It was, I think, $25,000 for a full year of coaching.

We met in person several times, and in many ways, there were great things about this business mastermind, but there were things about this business mastermind that were not so great.

There was a day we were doing open coaching, and we would sit in a semicircle in a conference room, and every single person would be asked to about their coaching business, what they were looking for, the coaching they required.

Now, something you need to know about me is that if you ask me to talk about things that are deeply important to me, no matter what they are, no matter if they create happy emotions or sad emotions or frustrated emotions or overwhelmed emotions, I am the kind of person that will cry. There is a buildup of emotional pressure that goes on for me in an experience where I'm put on the spot where this happens.

And so in this business mastermind, I was, first of all getting coaching that I, years later, don't fully agree with. Okay, at the time, it was very confrontational. Now, coaching can be confrontational. That in itself is not a problem.

But what happened was I started crying, and I was trying to plant myself and be present. And granted, there were, you know, 25 other business owners in the room, and they were all looking at me.

But in that moment, I was told that they were going to move on and they could come back to me when I could get myself back together. Now, I think it's important to understand that when you are building a business, it is an emotional venture. It comes from your heart and soul.

It comes from your lived experience. You are bringing everything to it. I always say to my clients that are entrepreneurs, entrepreneurship will bring out every emotion.

It will show all your cracks, it will show all your insecurities. It will all become really present for you. And that doesn't mean that anything's gone wrong. But in this experience, what I was, was very unseen.

And how it felt for me was, I can't show up as myself here.

I can't be real here, where I invested $25,000, where I had flown from Canada to California to be a part of this business mastermind, I was not able to bring what was real and true for me, and it was very damaging. It took me months to work through that coaching. It took me months to get to a place where I felt more secure in myself again, and it was damaging.

Now what I've learned is that I am very careful who I allow to coach me. I am very careful how I decide to present myself to somebody that is there to help me.

And there are really a lot of different service providers out there, and they offer different levels of support.

And so what I realize is in business, a lot of times there are coaches and therapists alike that do not have the capacity for the emotional experience that I'm having. That this is actually a them problem and not a me problem. That I personalized that. And it makes sense because it knocked on all my trauma, right?

It brought up all of those really yucky feelings of insecurity, not belonging, being able to do this, doing this wrong. All the things that come up for all of you when I talk to you about any area in your life, it brought it all up.

But what I learned is that this had nothing to do with me and everything to do with her. And it took a long time for me to roll that around.

And I want to talk about it because I know that it's something that is happening for so many of you out there in your lives. You're trying to go out there and get help.

But then what happens is when you are in the middle of trying to get support and you're sharing what's happening for you, whether be crying, anger, resistance, frustration, overwhelm, whatever it is, you will be in environments sometimes where this industry where the people Helping you, the people you pay to help you will unwittingly, I don't think it's purposefully not be trauma aware, not be emotion aware, and not have the capacity to sit with you with all that you're going through. But that says everything about them and nothing about you. Because you can't do your own feelings wrong. You don't need to become a robot.

You don't need your emotions to go away. That's not required. And other people, other service providers may tell you that. And you might find that shame coming in.

What I need you to understand is, and that was never your shame to hold. It was never your shame to hold. This is 100% a capacity problem on their end. And I just need to shout that to you from the rooftops today.

I'm going to give you some other examples. So I was in another coaching container. This was years prior, before I'd even found life coaching. And I was being coached.

I was in a sort of a group space. And while we were on the call, we all were supposed to share.

And when I came in and shared, now this is a really spiritual kind of business space that I was in, I shared authentically how I was doing and how I was feeling and what I was up to.

And in the middle of talking, my coach interrupted me and said, you know, Amanda, I'm going to get you to meet yourself and you can come back when you have a more appropriate share. Now, my question to you would be, who gets to decide whether or not this is an appropriate share? It was so confrontational. It was so triggering.

And to have a business coach, life coach, who knew me, who understood where my trauma was, understood what my triggers were for her to show up in that space, in that way, in a public space, just the way that it was even said or handled was appalling. I'm still appalled. Looking back, it's completely unprofessional. It's completely not okay. And it devolved from that place.

And what I will tell you is that she never coached me again, not one time. And I'm very proud of myself for putting that boundary down. Even though I had paid her, we just stopped coaching.

I'm not saying that you need to not coach with people that trigger you or that push you. You do want to do that. What I will say, though, is that this, once again, was not trauma aware, was a leadership issue in her group.

She should have been more specific about what would be shared and what wouldn't be shared. It's not like I was Sharing my trauma. I was nothing like that. I think I apologize for not having my hair done. That was the problem.

But it was an emotional space. When we enter these spaces, these are emotional spaces.

And for those of us that are emotional, right, that we are highly sensitive people, we have trauma, we have things that we're bringing with ourselves, does that mean that people need to tiptoe around us? No, I'm not saying that.

But what I am saying is that not all service providers, and a lot of them don't have the capacity for the emotional experience you have. And that does not mean that there is something broken or deficient or shameful about you.

And this is the piece that I really want to bring to the present.

The experience that I had today on a call was listening to a business coach whom I deeply respect and admire, but who definitely does not have comfort or familiarity coaching around allowing emotion. And so when she talks about somebody being dysregulated, her response on this call was that this person needs therapy to get regulated.

And I couldn't disagree more. I have done 20 plus years of therapy, on and off. And what I will tell you is I've never learned better regulation than I have.

When I have participated in a coaching environment with a coach who is trauma aware, with the coach that is familiar and confident with processing and allowing emotion, that to me is actually what's needed.

So what she should have said, in my opinion, is that I'm not skilled in this area to further go down the road of pathologization, of determining what treatment somebody needs. That, to me, is stepping out of your lane and it's damaging, it's problematic.

This same coach had told me on a call when I was mildly emotional that I also should seek therapy. I've done lots of therapy, but coaching is actually what changes for me now. The learning is.

I don't have to internalize that to mean that there's something wrong with me. The shame that comes up, it doesn't mean that's the truth about me. And I want you to know that that is the truth for you too.

It does not need to be the truth about you.

That if somebody, a professional, doesn't have the space or capacity or ability to help you, that that means that you, you are too emotional, too problematic, or you have some sort of pathologized illness that needs to be treated before you can get help from them.

The truth is that I've had many clients that have come to discovery calls who have told me that their therapists have fired them for Being too emotional. I've had many clients come to me and tell me that they have been in a counseling environment where they have been shamed for how they feel.

The truth is this is everywhere. And my problem with it is it's not trauma aware. Shutting down emotion doesn't protect the client. It re traumatizes them.

It confirms the belief that they came to heal, that I am too much and my feelings are a problem. My clients come to me all the time. They are crying, they are angry, they are resistant, they are circling the same thing over and over.

Sometimes they're lying to me. And all of it is welcome. None of it is pathologized. And that's because that is the work. This transforms people. This helps people.

The way that I changed my life was not by hiding how I am doing emotionally, or deciding that it can only be in this very specific therapeutic space that doesn't even work for me. And so if you're in that situation right now, if you're a person that is experiencing this or has experienced this, take a deep breath with me.

We're okay. Nothing has gone wrong. Emotions are welcome. Emotions are welcome in my practice, emotions are welcome when you talk to me.

Emotions are welcome when you're my friend, when you're my family member. I will never shame you for them. And we need more of that in the world, not less.

So if you have been moving around through the treatment space trying to figure out what works for you, what doesn't work for you, how to get through things, and you have had the experience of someone shaming you, dismissing you, shutting you down for how you feel, telling you that it's inappropriate to have this reaction if you have been in that situation. I need you to know you're not the problem. The help is. You need a different form of help. That is the truth, my friend.

You are allowed to show up as the fullest, most authentic version of yourself. It is actually required. It is the thing that will allow you to feel confident. It is the thing that will allow you to feel free.

There are people who won't reject that. There are helpers, coaches, therapists, counselors that won't reject that. There are friends and family members who won't reject that.

There are significant others that won't reject that. Your mission is simply to start approving of yourself, learning how to love yourself and going out in the world and finding them.

If you want some help with that, if you want someone to see you on a call, you can book a discovery call with me. You can go to amandahess Ca bookacall Let's talk about it. You are not too much. It is not too much of a problem. You are not somehow inherently broken.

You do not need years of therapy unless you want to go that route. You can just start coaching and you can start creating some relief. You can start creating some regulation with actual help. This is available to you.

All right, my friends, that's what I've got. Hope you have a beautiful day. I'll talk to you next time. Bye. Thanks so much for listening today.

If this podcast is helping you, please follow wherever you listen and consider leaving a review. It truly helps this community grow and allows me to support more women like you. I'm excited to see you back here next week with a brand new episode.

Until then, take care, friend.