I Wanted a Boyfriend. My Life Coach Told Me to Become a Commodity.

Themes

Section titled “Themes”

  • profiting from others’ misfortunes

  • life coaching and its ethics

  • what is love (baby don’t hurt me)

  • Extracts

    Section titled “Extracts”

  • “the wrong thoughts, not circumstances, lead to depressive feelings risks absolving society of any wrongdoing that might have caused our depression to begin with”

  • “The crucial difference between AA and life coaching is that in the former, recovery is necessarily communal”

  • “Another important difference is that AA is free. While life coaching as a therapeutic model may not be inherently harmful, it reproduces the ideology of the profit motive.”

  • “Promoting myself as competitive and attractive “on the market” seemed anathema to my conception of love as an understanding of mutual brokenness.”

  • “love is a gift economy: It gives without expecting a return on investment. Inefficient, interdependent, pointless, patient, kind.”