After several episodes of having to go to the hospital to get injections for the debilitating pain I was experiencing when I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, the doctor suggested I go see a psychiatrist. Not wanting to leave a stone unturned, I agreed.
I went to see a psychiatrist at a reputable local hospital in Abu Dhabi. She ran questionnaires. Standard ones. The kind designed so that most people, on most days, would qualify for something.
She prescribed Zoloft. And said not to worry. If it doesn’t work, she has a dozen other prescription options for me.
I was hoping she would get me engaged in a conversation… open up… maybe ask me some questions that would make me do some self-reflection. As we were about to be done, she said she did have one question. I thought: finally, here we go. Her question was about my hair. Obviously she didn’t approve … gray, grown deliberately, on my own terms. Then she proceeded to give me the typical lecture and her wise diagnostic insight: letting your hair go gray means you have stopped caring. Possible clinical depression. Zoloft will take care of it. See her back in six weeks, and that was it. I was left to my own devices out in the world of depressed women with gray hair who are clueless about where to go now and what to do.
I walked out in disbelief.
I had gone looking for someone to sit with me. Someone who would ask what was actually happening in my life. Who would stay in the room long enough to find out.
What I got was a checkbox, a label and a prescription.
That was years ago. I still think about that appointment. About how many women have walked out of something like it with that same look on their face, pill in hand, wondering now what.
That gap… the one between a prescription and a real conversation… is exactly where life coaching vs therapy lives.
Photo by Kira Severinova on Unsplash
The Weight of Alhamdulillah
In Emirati culture — and Arab culture in general — there is a phrase that structures everything: alhamdulillah. Thank God. Always thank God.
It is beautiful. It is also, sometimes, a door that gets quietly shut.
My clients arrive carrying pain. And then, underneath the pain, something worse: guilt. Guilt for struggling in a beautiful home. For crying behind a face that looks perfectly fine. For feeling empty in a life that, by every visible measure, is full. They have all the comforts of life yet inside they feel utter despair. But they say alhamdulillah and keep moving forward, keep going through the motions of the daily grind.
The thought sounds like this: I have everything. So why do I feel like this. Something must be broken in me. But I can’t tell anyone about this, so I’ll just pray and say alhamdulillah for everything.
This is spiritual bypassing.
And when something feels broken here, the familiar path is to go to a doctor — with all the taboo shame around that. Get the prescription, and not let anyone know. Come back in six weeks… only to report that nothing has changed, other than a slight improvement on a few days here or there.
Nobody is teaching you how to think about what you are feeling. Nobody is sitting with you inside the hard emotions. Nobody is asking what is underneath.
Mental health is still taboo. Postpartum depression often goes unnamed… or unnamed out loud. Women arrive having carried something for years before they finally pick up the phone.
The life coaching vs therapist question in the UAE is not just a critical question. It is a cultural one. The answer has to meet people where they actually are. If you are still weighing which kind of support fits your situation, this piece may help you decide.
What Coaching Actually Is
Not a curriculum. Not advice.
Stillness. That is the closest word I have for it.
A space where what needs to surface… can surface. Without judgment. Without the cultural pressure to perform gratitude you do not feel. Without the shame that so often rides alongside pain in this part of the world.
The work is yours. I walk beside you, not ahead. I am not the expert on your life… you are. My job is to help you hear yourself more clearly than you can when you are doing it alone.
And the goal is never dependence. It is always, eventually, to hand you back autonomy over your emotions and your decisions.
“Coaching is not about giving you answers. It is about staying in the room with you long enough that your own answers become audible.”
Where the Line Blurs… and Why I Am Honest About That
I hold a Master’s in Educational Psychology. I trained for a year under Gabor Maté, one of the most rigorous voices working at the intersection of trauma and the body. I am also a certified health coach… because the body keeps the score, and that cannot be separated from any conversation worth having.
My work blurs the line between coaching and therapy. Deliberately.
Not because I am practicing therapy… I am not. But because real human work does not stay inside professional borders. Read more about the path that brought me here.
Here is something worth understanding before you choose a coach: the coaching industry is entirely unregulated. There is no licensing board, no bar exam, no governing body that sets a minimum standard for who is qualified to sit across from someone in pain. A person can complete a weekend course and, perfectly legally, call themselves a life coach on Monday morning. This is not a criticism of any individual practitioner — it is a structural reality. It matters because the gap between a clinical prescription and a real conversation can only be bridged by someone who is actually equipped to hold what that conversation requires. What that preparation looks like, in practice, is a longer story.
Coaching also becomes the right path under specific circumstances. Sometimes a doctor or psychiatrist will recommend talk therapy or coaching as a complement to, or a natural step after, clinical treatment. Sometimes a client arrives having made her own independent decision that she wants a different kind of support — one that goes deeper than a six-week medication check. When a client comes with that clarity, and without a clinical diagnosis that requires medical oversight, coaching can be exactly the right next step. The work is complementary, not competitive.
When a Body Learns It Is Safe
One client came to me barely functional.
Anxiety so severe it had become physical. Panic attacks that stopped him going to work. That made him feel like a failure as a father. He came through a referral, which meant there was a level of trust already at play… and trust is real currency in this work.
We worked together for months. The kind of work that goes into the body, not just the mind.
It just so happened that the ultimate test was just around the corner. He had to appear in court for some work-related matter. Even for a healthy person, that is a stressful day. For someone whose nervous system had been hijacked by panic for years, it could feel like the end of the world.
He called me the next day.
No panic attack. He had gotten through it.
That is what coaching reaches when the block is mind-body and not clinical. Not willpower. Not positive thinking. Something quieter and more durable: a nervous system that has finally learned it is safe. He went to court prepared and was rewarded.
A Different Kind of Appointment
Coaching is not therapy.
But when it is done well, it reaches into territory that the clinical hour often cannot. Not because it is better. Because it is different. The relationship is different. The pace is different. The goal is different.
What I offer is a private, contained space where high-functioning women can stop managing and start moving. No judgment. No cultural pressure to feel grateful when you do not. No clinical questionnaire that only wants to slap a label on you.
Just the conversation you have been waiting to have. The one where you finally feel heard and seen.
Learn more about how this work is structured.
When you are ready: let’s have a conversation.
