A man once asked a gardener why his plants grew so beautifully. The gardener replied: “I don’t force them to grow. I remove what stops them.”

I came across this quote recently, and it inspired me to write about Aletheia Coaching, a modality that I’ve been immersed in and exploring from a professional and personal level since 2023.

Society constantly reminds us that we are flawed in one form or another, and transformation requires pushing harder.
But have you ever asked yourself this: What if you don’t need fixing? What if growth isn’t about effort, but about removing the obstacles that keep you from thriving?
Just as a seed is already whole and complete as is, it doesn’t need to be forced to grow, it simply needs the right conditions to reach its full potential. 

The same is true for humans. Believe it or not, wholeness and joy are already within you. The challenge is that cultural conditioning, old patterns, beliefs, and hurtful experiences create protective mechanisms that can act like weeds, preventing you from fully embodying who you deep down know you are (insert your preferred bad-ass adjective here)!

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How Aletheia Coaching Can Help You Overcome Inner Blocks and Thrive

Most coaching out there wants you to believe that you are flawed and need to be fixed or improved. It focuses on goal-setting, discipline, and willpower to push you toward an external outcome, often ignoring the deeper reasons you feel stuck.

Talk therapy, on the other hand, usually explores the past, analyzing why you feel a certain way. While this can provide insight, many people spend years in therapy without feeling different or a sense of closure… that’s because understanding why from a cognitive perspective doesn’t necessarily change how you feel in your body!

Aletheia coaching is different…

Instead of trying to fix or forcing change, Aletheia coaching helps you to remove what’s in the way of your innate wholeness. 
This process, called ‘unfolding,’ allows your true, authentic self to naturally emerge. Just like the quote that opens this blog post, “I don’t force them to grow. I remove what stops them.”

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From Pain to Freedom: A Personal Story

When I was a child, I competed locally in gymnastics and swimming. Competition day was always exciting and dreadful at the same time, because more often than not, my parents were too busy to take time off to come to the gymnasium or the pool to watch me on my big days.

Sometimes, I would stand on the podium with a shiny medal around my neck, looking out at the crowd who was cheering me on, and I’d put on a forced smile, trying hard not to cry because all I felt in that moment was a sense of emptiness and worthlessness, since the people who supposedly loved me were too busy to take time off their day to see their daughter compete and actually win!

That experience played out a few times, and eventually my younger self internalized that:

• Winning feels lonely and empty.
• Achieving something doesn’t mean being seen or celebrated by those I care about.
• Sometimes is better to not finish than to finish and feel the emptiness of it.

Without me realizing this was playing in the background, this pattern followed me well into my late 30s. I started so many projects and more often than not, I didn’t finish them. Whenever I actually completed/achieved something, I’d quickly dismiss my accomplishments and move on to the next thing.

This pattern always frustrated the sh*t out of me, because I could never understand why I’d do that to myself. Many coaches have told me that I had low self-worth and I should try harder… when in reality, the younger version of me was still feeling the emotional pain of not being witnessed in my celebratory moment.

Even while in school, I’d share my report card with my parents only to hear, “You could have done better.” No praise, no recognition, just the message that what I did was never enough… 
These earlier experiences shaped the way I approached success, relationships, and even everyday tasks. For years, I thought this was just how I was. Until I began exploring this through the lens of Aletheia coaching.

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How We’d Explore This in Aletheia Coaching

In Aletheia coaching, unlike other modalities out there, we don’t “push through” patterns like this. We create the right conditions to meet what is arising with curiosity and understanding, since all protective mechanisms have positive intentions, despite what your mind may tell you.

1. Acknowledging & witnessing: Instead of trying to override the part of me that resists completion, we slow down and make contact with it and ask questions, such as:
What is this “resistant part” trying to protect me from?
What would happen if I no longer resisted completion?
How would following through with completion hurt me?

2. Connecting with the younger self: Then we bring awareness and compassion to the younger version of me, who remembers the hurt of feeling unseen, and not celebrated in such an important moment of my life.
The resistant part wasn’t avoiding success, it was avoiding feeling those big feelings all over again.

3. Emotional sequencing completion: In the original experience, my emotions (the disappointment, the longing, the sadness of not being celebrated), were never fully expressed, as I felt I had to pretend I was happy to have won.
In a session, the present-day self becomes a compassionate witness, and the emotional experience has the opportunity to run its course. The original emotional sequencing completes its cycle, creating a sense of closure and emotional resilience.

4. Creating a new experience: The nervous system then feels the safety of the present moment and starts to regulate itself, returning to homeostasis. The younger version of me realizes that things are different in the present moment and the adult version of me has the capacity to be with the emotional discomfort that the “resistant part” was trying to avoid.

5. Harnessing neuroplasticity: Once the above happens, a window of reconsolidation opens in the brain, where the new experience replaces the old one. Instead of the old narrative “winning is painful and nobody cares,” an opportunity to integrate a new way of experiencing completion opens up, one where:

• Completion can feel good.
• I feel seen and celebrated.
• I am reminded that I am actually worthy and whole.

Please note that this isn’t about ‘rewiring your mindset’ with affirmations, using willpower, or pushing through… it’s an embodied experience that integrates the body, mind, and heart, affecting every facet of your being.

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What “Parts” Might Be Holding You Back?

Many of us have inner “parts” that have the best intentions to protect us but end up keeping us stuck:

The perfectionist part: pushing you to achieve more, yet never allowing you to enjoy the wins or take a rest
The inner critic part: constantly judging, pointing out your flaws, making you feel miserable about who you are and what you do
The anxious part: overthinking, worrying, and catastrophizing, robbing you of the present moment joy
The people-pleaser: prioritizing others’ needs at the expense of your own as it is afraid to end up alone
The fearful part: keeping you small because the familiar pain feels safer than the possibilities of the unknown
The needy part: Longing for connection and reassurance and doesn’t allow the need to be met

These are some of the most common active parts, but we all have between 30-50 parts running the show in the background! 
The truth is, friend… all these parts have good intentions and they came to exist as strategies to keep you safe at one point in your life, but they don’t have to define your future any longer… 

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A New Way Forward

Aletheia coaching isn’t about pushing through resistance or forcing change. It’s about creating the right conditions to remove what’s in the way, so your innate wisdom and wholeness can come forth. 

The truth is, you are not broken and you don’t need to fix yourself. You just need to remove the impediments (cultural programming, beliefs, stories) that are in the way. In the end, the story of each person might be different, but what is underneath it all is the same for all of us…

Dear reader, I invite you to take a moment to reflect:

• What is one pattern you notice repeating in your life or relationships that you wish you could overcome?
• Are there old stories or beliefs that keep shaping your life, ones that might not even belong to you?
• What if the change you seek isn’t about trying harder, but about letting go?

If you’d like to explore a new paradigm in coaching, one that I wholeheartedly believe in and personally receive tremendous value from, I invite you to contact me to learn how the Aletheia coaching unfolding way could support you in your unique journey. 

Either way, I invite you to keep tending to your inner garden, because growth happens naturally when we create the right conditions. 🌱