In the final episode before a self-care break, Candice is thrilled to sit down with Kathleen Oh, a fellow writer, coach, and new-age wellness survivor. Kathleen lays the foundation for her cult-like experiences, sharing how she was born into high-control environments. She opens up about how the resulting black&white thinking shaped her choices at home as a young mother, and as in her work as a coach. Kathleen expresses her regret and speaks openly about how she is still coming to terms with the ways in which she spread misinformation and unknowingly used coercive sales tactics. She and Candice trade stories about the love&light ‘cult’ures they occupied, underscoring just how much the lies they learned - and helped to perpetuate through their work - are really just a byproduct of capitalist-cult, supremacist self-help rhetoric. Kathleen breaks down the real differences between therapy and coaching and shares how she learned (the hard way) what can happen when coaches are not, in fact, trauma-informed. Candice shares about the boss-babe business training she invested in, and Kathleen has an even more humbling story to share when it comes to predatory sales practices. The episode wraps with a variety of resources for folks who want to learn more about a small-yet-growing counterculture of coaches who are calling themselves, and one another, ‘out’… with the hope of mitigating the culty and harmful business practices that run rampant in the coaching industry.

Kathleen Oh (she/her) is a Coach, writer, and safe drug use advocate and educator specializing in psychedelic integration. She offers coaching services focusing on the continued care and well-being of clients from high-stress, high-performance careers as the center of their work. She practices trauma-informed and integrative, positive psychology, solution-focused coaching and Internal Family Systems Informed approaches informed by an anti-oppressive framework. Kathleen openly practices as a learner and student of cultic studies. She is continuing to decondition and recover from systems of cultic indoctrination. This combination of skills is uncommon in coaching communities. She has lost close friends and relationships with her community members to controversial conspiracy groups.

ohmyheart.substack.com | coachkathleenoh.com | IG: @therealcoachoh

Referenced In This Episode:

• Lalich Center on Cults & Coercion
• Gerette Buglion, Writing to Reckon
• Maggie Patterson on IG @smallbusiness boss

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The stories and opinions shared in this episode are based on personal experience and are not intended to malign any individual, group, or organization.

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