I've checked all the boxes, and something is off.
You did what was needed, and it worked out reasonably well. On paper, everything's in order. And yet you wake up with the distinct sense that this isn't it, without being able to say what's missing or what gives you the right to complain.
You're most likely neither depressed nor ungrateful. It's usually the sign that you need to stop over-adapting: holding yourself inside a frame that isn't yours, and doing it so well that nobody, you included, sees how much you bend to fit.
If you've spent years anticipating, adjusting, and conforming to expectations you never wrote, your nervous system has no reserve left and is asking for safety. Things don't lose their meaning all at once, for no reason. The reason is usually that you've gone too long without listening to yourself.
Why it happens, and why mostly to women
Because you were taught to. Early, and well. Be flawless, but don't take up too much space, and juggle contradictory demands without pause. Out of those expectations comes the good student you probably are, very good at reading other people's needs, and very poorly equipped to understand her own.
Then working life took over, with strict norms and boxes to fit into to count as "professional". Be high-performing and available, ambitious and likeable, solid and light. Faced with all that, the usual solution is perfectionism, not as ego but as a safety strategy. Except that, over time, it's exhausting.
With time, none of this is even conscious anymore. It's a well-integrated way of operating. You wear a mask and, on the whole, it works: people find you easy and reliable, you're useful and, above all, you don't get in the way. What they don't see is what it costs you, not least by keeping you from listening to your own needs.
And the default setting for many women is the fawn response: not fight (fight), not flight (flight), but appeasing under stress: smooth things over and don't make waves. But it's still you that you're not listening to.
All of this works until the day it gives way, and it's often the body that goes first: sleep, aches, fatigue. And you end up, of course, concluding that the problem is you. But there's nothing wrong with you. You've simply listened to everyone except yourself. What you take for weakness is just proof that you learned your lesson too well.
It's when you start listening to yourself, a little more each day, that you end up feeling alive and light. You let yourself shine in your own way.
When everything looks right on paper, but you feel stuck and wonder why you're doing all this. Coaching for the good students who are done over-adapting and want to bring back lightness.
Note: I use "women" as shorthand for people socialised and treated as women. If this space speaks to you, you're welcome here.
Who coaching is for
For very capable, sensitive, perfectionist women who have been running on over-adapting for too long. Most often, they start coaching because what used to hold through willpower no longer holds, and everything feels heavy. They feel stuck because they know something has to change, and they don't know how to find the lightness and the enthusiasm again in their daily life.
This coaching is probably for you if:
You have everything you were supposed to want, and it leaves you cold.
You can't name what's wrong, so you don't dare bring it up.
You hold everything for everyone, and you always come last.
You wonder whether this is it now, for the next twenty years.
You've analysed, read, written and discussed it all, and no amount of effort pays off over time.
You don't want to blow everything up. You want to understand yourself, so you can move what needs to move.
This passage often comes between thirty-five and fifty, sometimes earlier, sometimes later. It can coincide with hormonal changes, a perimenopause that suddenly makes unbearable what you used to absorb. It's part of the picture; it isn't the subject, and I don't make it a specialty.
How we work together
We start by sorting. We look for what has become too heavy, what you never really chose, and that costs you. You define what you want, what you no longer want, and you set goals that look like you.
Then we write your user manual to build your next step from you, rather than from what you're "supposed to do". We look at what motivates you, what animates you and energises you, and also at what drains you. That's the basis of Inside-Out Design: instead of starting from someone else's template, we start from how you actually work, and design your next move from there.
No need to blow everything up. You change small (or large) things, but this time you start from the inside, and no longer from the outside.
You learn to be on your own side. You stop believing you're not enough, and you tell apart what's you from what you were taught. It's the hardest step, and the one that unlocks the rest.
You decide by your own criteria. We go back to what matters to you and test it small, in your real week: a no that holds, hours reclaimed, a conversation finally had.
You find your Shine Zone. Where your safety and what you naturally do well meet. Decisions become obvious there, and often less dramatic than you feared.
You don't need to try harder. You need to stop deciding against yourself.
How a coaching goes
Most clients choose a multi-session programme, spaced two to three weeks apart, so that things move in your life and not only in session. Sessions last 60 or 90 minutes, online or in person in Stuttgart, in English or French.
We work through honest conversation, with body-based and creative practices when they help, because this kind of subject isn't settled by analysis alone, and you've already analysed a great deal. No artistic skill required.
This isn't therapy: I don't diagnose, I don't treat, and if your needs go beyond the scope of coaching, I'll tell you plainly and point you onward. If you're going through depression, care comes first. No formulaic self-help either: no five steps to find your path, no matrix to fill in, no promise of transformation in eight weeks. And you don't need to know what you want in order to start; that's exactly what you're coming to find.
I believe meaningful work doesn't have to be heavy work, and that we can take serious things seriously without taking ourselves seriously.
Who I am
I'm a certified professional coach, holder of a French RNCP level 6 state-recognised title, trained in the ICF ethical framework. Much of the work here is about identifying a need you've never put into words, then finding how to say it.
Before coaching, fifteen years in post, in the public sector then the private, in France then in Germany, up to four years in a tech scale-up. I was the reliable one, the person who held the complicated files calmly. The trade-offs, the load and the unspoken expectations — I know them from the inside, and I've been through that moment when everything was in order without anything feeling like me. The full story is on About me.
Frequently asked questions
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No, and it's almost never what happens. The work is about deciding again, knowingly. Some leave, others stay differently, and staying because you've chosen to stay has nothing to do with staying because you don't dare.
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That's the most common starting point. You don't need to arrive with a clean goal. You arrive with what weighs on you, and we look together for what's going on underneath.
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Not necessarily. What we're talking about here often looks more like an exhaustion of meaning than an exhaustion of load: you're still holding on, but nothing counts anymore. If you're already on leave or close to it, care comes first, and then we can explore the question of returning (or not) together.
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First and foremost, out of a sense of commitment, because there are too few spaces where women can be themselves. And also because the pattern is a classic one, and the pressures placed on women are specific and have very clear repercussions on their lives and their self-perception. I want to help them reconnect with themselves and shine.
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Understanding isn't enough to decide. Many women can explain their situation perfectly and stay still, because clarity alone doesn't replace a frame and a pace. Here we go all the way to the concrete move, and we check that it holds.
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Count three to six months for this kind of subject. A specific point can be worked out in about two months, but misalignment takes time because you first have to separate what you want from what's expected of you.
Shall we talk?
Tell me about what you're going through and what you'd like to feel differently a few months from now. We can have a chat and see if it’s a good fit and how we can work together.
Then, we start with a 90-minute Lantern session to shed some light (yes, I know… but I love this light metaphor, bear with me) on your situation and your goals going forward.