Karmic Enema and Ending Emotional Bankruptcy

Termination of Free Coaching For Slackers

I’ve been coaching a couple of friends for months, not even sure how these cycles of free coaching began – As they kept reaching for my help, I kept being there. To share what happened, I’ll first admit I let the ‘coaching’ part of the relationships in each of these cases go too far. As another friend recently pointed out to me, free without mutual benefit creates a repetitive pattern that’s hard to break.

One friend in particular has continuously violated our friendship with publicly failing at commitments we made together towards their success. It’s gotten to the point where I was continuously being dragged down with them. The final straw to me was when I recognized this pattern extending to another close friend and had to break it.

When my friend shared financial stress and asked for financial help in terms of customers for his freelance computer repair business, I encouraged close contacts and friends to pay him for services. Two in particular agreed to give him a chance at repairing their computers. To my surprise he blew each and every one of them off repeatedly, with me fielding what seemed like endless complaints and concerns, followed with my friend continuously complaining of challenges financially. What?! Beg me for business and then blow off the people I asked as favors to help him?

After continuously seeing this person screwing up their life, not taking advice, instead returning with excuse after excuse for why they didn’t take easy steps to help themselves. It started getting really ugly with non-stop excuses and was pathetic to watch. I fortunately terminated that part of the relationship. I’m hoping the friendship continues, but if it doesn’t – I’m so glad to have cut this energy drain from my life. I’m thankful for other friends in our circle who helped with this awareness.

I’d asked myself why I invested so much energy into this person, and realized I was subconsciously making up for a friend who reached out similarly about a decade ago and I wasn’t there to answer. My friend reached out while I was on an international trip, and when I returned a few days later I learned the person had committed suicide. I guess when this person asked me repeatedly to help, I believe it was a decade of undeserved guilt driving my mission. It’s been several months of draining time into helping someone who almost seems like he’s addicted to failure.

The other friend, who I’ve been coaching has demonstrated similar behaviors, but not nearly as abusive to my soul & I’ve discussed what happened with the other person (tried encouraging them to coach each other). We had a serious talk with last Friday and I honestly think they better realize the situation they were placing me in professionally in a manipulative abuse of our friendship and has already shown recognized improvement. I’m a believer in 2nd chances, not 222nd!

Now to address my other issues…

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