Daria Ermolenko is a life coach specializing in relationships and happiness. She holds a master’s degree in psychology and manages the quality of teacher training provision at the University of Buckingham. She also writes and speaks on psychology and happiness. In this discussion, she describes her approach to coaching, which is based on reason, free will, and examining one’s ideas, feelings, and premises.
Thomas F. Walker: Thanks for joining me. Why did you decide to get into psychology and coaching?
Daria Ermolenko: Although my qualifications are in psychology, it’s important to stress that I’m a coach, not a professional psychologist. I decided to specialize in coaching because I think it’s important to think about life in ways that have a demonstrable practical benefit for human flourishing.
In psychology, we sometimes present models for people to consider that are oversimplified and out of date. The newest research in neuroscience certainly hasn’t landed in psychology yet. I think a lot of the assumptions psychologists make about the brain are completely mistaken. But if we know that a certain psychological approach leads to flourishing, such as the Positive Emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Achievement (PERMA) approach, why wouldn’t we try to use it to help people? Coaching is a practical way of bringing psychological research into people’s lives.
Walker: Do you have an example of how psychology hasn’t caught up to neuroscience?
Ermolenko: If you read the latest research in neuroscience, the idea that very distinct areas of the brain are responsible for certain functions is essentially untrue. It’s partially true sometimes, but if you read studies on people who have certain areas of the brain removed or damaged and how their brains adapt, and all the research on neuroplasticity, the brain is capable of essentially reassigning other areas to keep certain functions going. But if you open many of the psychology textbooks that people are using today in universities, it won’t reflect that realization. Many of these books are ten or more years old, and a lot of their content simply isn’t accurate anymore because we know so much more about the brain. In many cases, the evidence is accumulating in the opposite direction to the models that were developed by the founding fathers of psychology.
Walker: Psychology is the newest science essentially, and it does seem like it’s still in its infancy. It’s also heavily influenced by philosophy. The philosophic premises you accept, whether you accept a deterministic premise or a behaviorist premise affect your approach to it. How much would you say your philosophic ideas influence how you approach coaching and training?
Ermolenko: Well, if I were in a university exam, I would say that my philosophic approaches aren’t influencing the way that I coach clients at all, because the established thinking is that they shouldn’t affect my choice of approach. The idea is that you want to be as curious as possible—you want to study all the different fields of psychology in as much depth as you can because you want to have the choice when working with a client as to what might help him or her best. I might think that cognitive behavioral therapy approaches are too rigid, but if I’m working with someone who prefers that rigidity, who’s asking for it essentially, then that’s what I might use. Other people are more artistically inclined, more curious, more philosophic, so with them you might apply a bit more of a mix of things—you might invite them to consider a character from a novel or something abstract as a model for habit formation or behavior change. I think the idea is to know as much as you can and to be creative.
I would say that my philosophic beliefs do influence my coaching where that’s in the best interest of the client—for example, my belief in free will. That’s very controversial. But also my beliefs more specifically on the matters at hand in a particular client’s scenario do influence how I coach. That’s why we have what’s called the “chemistry session” at the start of the coaching relationship, in which we ask ourselves, “Do I have beliefs that would prevent me from working with this client with integrity?” If yes, I say, “I’m not the best person to help you. I’ll refer you to a colleague because I don’t believe that the outcome you want is in your best interest, and I can’t in good conscience help you achieve it.”
Walker: It seems to me that without free will, coaching and psychology become meaningless anyway because you can’t change anything.
I saw a psychodynamic therapist for a while, and I eventually noticed that we had a fundamental incompatibility because he had this nonjudgmental attitude almost as an axiom wherein psychology is only about understanding who you are without judgment. He would resist my efforts to try to judge and change my own behavior, ideas, and feelings. Would you say you encourage clients to question and judge themselves and treat ideas, emotions, and premises as things that can be actively shaped and controlled by people making choices?
Ermolenko: Absolutely, I believe that wholeheartedly. I wish people believed that if you don’t believe in free will, why engage in the process of therapy or coaching?
I definitely think that people can shape their feelings. People can shape how their feelings develop in response to certain stimuli and triggers, which is essentially one of the biggest parts of coaching. This is another area wherein the latest research doesn’t map on to certain schools of thought in psychology. For example, people who believe that we shouldn’t challenge feelings have a mistaken view of how feelings arise. They think feelings simply exist, that we are compelled to follow them. But if you understand that sometimes feelings arise from something as simple as the fact that the temperature of your body has changed by half a degree, and suddenly in a situation in which you would usually be very calm you’re now angry—if you’re conscious of how your feelings arise, you stop seeing them as uncontrollable.
All of what I do is about challenging people’s feelings and challenging the origins of their behavior, thoughts, and impulses, and trying to shape those in line with how they’re motivated to live. That’s the point of it all. Believing that you are in the driver’s seat of your life, able to shape it, able to shape everything that goes along with it, to me is fundamental. It’s the life force that propels you because if you believe you’re passive in all of this, then why be curious? Why develop your brain? Why do anything, essentially?
Walker: You’ve hit on another philosophic premise there, which is mind-body integration. Not only do our physical sensations affect our moods, but our moods affect our bodies as well. We hold tension in our muscles. I’ve dealt with that a lot. Would you say that treating the mind as though it’s some kind of floating entity separate from physical reality is a premise that often comes up in coaching and psychology as well?
Ermolenko: I think so, but again, it depends on what the point is. If the point is to develop or disabuse yourself of certain beliefs, then treating the mind as a separate floating entity might be helpful to that particular end in a delimited way. However, if that’s the only framework you have, and you’re refusing to engage with basic science, that’s not going to work. For example, this often comes up in debates about treating depression, such as when somebody is not engaging with the basic ways to live well. If someone isn’t eating healthily, exercising, or going outside every day, then there’s no point going any further. Those are core physical ingredients that impact how the neurons in your brain interact with each other. You need a combination of everything. I think whatever issue makes logical sense to address in the moment is what professionals with integrity should address.
Walker: You ended up focusing on relationships specifically in your work. How important would you say relationships are to a person’s overall ability to flourish? Do you think they’re something we need for our happiness, or is it particular to each individual whether he or she needs a romantic partner, a big group of friends, close family connections, that kind of thing?
Ermolenko: I think so, based on what the research says and what I’ve observed with my clients: The importance of the specific number of connections you have varies in relation to people’s personalities. Clearly, some people are extroverted, and some are more introverted, but your perception of the extent to which you are succeeding in that domain is quite crucial. For example, if you want a romantic partner but you don’t have one, your opinion of your own well-being will be lower than someone who is accepting of the fact that these things take time, and you need to find the right person. It’s the expectation versus reality. At the same time, people who live longer, people who are healthier in old age, are the ones who have close, loving relationships. But I think there are individual differences, and clearly some people are self-sufficient and comfortable—if they find like-minded people they’re happy, but if they don’t, they almost would prefer to simply be self-sufficient. It’s all about identifying and managing each person’s expectations.
Walker: It sounds as though self-esteem’s the key concept here because, on the one hand, if a person’s struggling with self-esteem, he can become very dependent on other people for validation. That apparent “need” of having lots of friends or a partner can be an expression of something that’s missing internally. How does self-esteem enter into the question of how to coach people on relationships? Do you see relationships as key to self-esteem, or do you think self-esteem needs to be right first before a person starts trying to sort out his or her relationships?
Ermolenko: I think somebody’s self-esteem should ideally exist independently of his or her romantic relationships, because then you’re entering into relationships for the right reasons. I do a lot of work on self-esteem. I mainly try to point out to clients the long-term cost of relying on external validation for self-esteem, which is that they usually end up in mediocre relationships that they’re not happy with because they’ve received what they felt they needed in the immediate term, which is validation. But perhaps that real connection, that mutual respect, isn’t there. If you have low self-esteem and you’re relying on external validation, the way you come across to your partner is also influenced by that. You come across differently from somebody who is self-sufficient and would be able to be resilient should his or her partner leave. So, I think self-esteem is crucial, especially for people trying to find their path in this whole relationship game. If you’re trying to be comfortable walking in the light of the truth and identifying where perhaps things are suboptimal and need to change, then the higher your self-esteem, the more likely you are to make the right choice.
Walker: Do you find that all this is true for non-romantic relationships, such as friendships, as well?
Ermolenko: Because friendships and other relationships form earlier in life than romantic relationships, I think it’s actually much more the case with friendships. I work with certain clients exclusively on friendships, identifying, for example, what the problem is with simply telling somebody that you don’t want to go for a drink. To me, that’s really difficult to understand, so I have to be curious and ask things such as, “Why is it difficult to tell somebody exactly what you want?” Then the low self-esteem comes up, the childhood experiences, being left out at school, all that stuff that needs working through. Because we generally have more friends than we do romantic partners, the potential for self-esteem to be eroded further is even higher if you’re relying on validation from friends. In such cases, you’re inevitably going to be led to some sort of lowest common denominator there if you don’t have your own confidence and your own clear path in life and you’re merely relying on other people to pivot you wherever they wish to.
Walker: It’s almost a stereotype in psychology that everything goes back to your relationship with your mother or your father. How often do you find that that actually is a big element in why somebody’s not finding happiness in romance or in friendships?
Ermolenko: I do find that sometimes. I don’t find it as often as pop psychology suggests, but what I find is that the way people interact with their parents as an adult influences or is related to the way they interact with other adults. It’s almost like a formula, which obviously harks back to childhood. I’m interested to know why grown-up young adults who are otherwise successful and self-sufficient struggle to interact with their parents in a productive way, even when there’s been no severe childhood trauma or pathology. When they have unhealthy interactions with parents—when they lie or evade certain things to protect their parents’ opinions of them, for example—that then maps on to how they see themselves in the world as a partner, as a friend, as a colleague. I think parents are really important, and changing the way you interact with parents when you grow up is a good idea from what I’ve observed so far.
Walker: If you could give one piece of advice to a reader who’s getting started thinking about their relationships and life choices, what would it be?
Ermolenko: I would say that the easiest thing for the average person to grasp is that relationships are no different than any other domain. Because romantic relationships are carried out with one person at a time, they have considerable weight in someone’s life. Nowadays, people generally feel that they can have a variety of careers. They can pivot easily. I don’t think anyone’s worried that they have to stay in the same job forever anymore. It’s the same with friends—people can switch friendship groups or simply move. But I think with romantic relationships, we spend so much of our youth waiting to find that good relationship that’s going to carry on, and when we find a relationship of any kind, we almost want to put it into that category regardless of whether it truly fits.
Most of the work I do with clients is disabusing them of the notion that they should stay in a relationship that’s mediocre, one in which there’s loads of compromise. They would describe it as hard work, for example, when there’s underlying resentment but nothing’s radically wrong—most people would consider that to be a good relationship. But I have to explain to them that that mediocrity, that lack of self-actualization you feel, the lack of respect you feel for each other on a deep, mental level—that is enough for that relationship not to be healthy, because you’re engaging in it to the detriment of all other opportunities in a way that you’re not with friends or family or colleagues. So, the idea is to spot that mediocrity and analyze it and ask, “Why are you content in a situation in which you don’t want to invest in the relationship? In which it’s not driven by a positive impulse, but it’s a burden?” I investigate that and try to give people the tools they need to feel confident enough to walk away from situations like that so they can find ones in which they’re flourishing.
Walker: I find that a lot of people, especially in older generations such as Generation X and higher, tend to settle and compromise with somebody who’s clearly not their ideal. Do you find that people are so driven to find a partner that they will not wait and will choose security, stability, and validation over taking the time to find somebody who’s right for you? Which, if you’re an interesting and complex person, often requires looking overseas, looking in specific places; it requires being really patient and willing to search. You’re not going to find that person in your office, which I think a lot of people expect to.
Ermolenko: Yes, absolutely. It’s almost as if we may as well not be in the twenty-first century because people really do settle so quickly. Even though they don’t make things official quickly, and the social norms have changed, it may as well still be like it was in the past. The story I often hear (and, of course, the people I talk to have relationships that are mainly suboptimal because otherwise they wouldn’t come to a relationship coach, so you have to take what I say with a pinch of salt) is, “If there’s no reason not to, I will take the next step. If there’s no reason not to go on the second date, I’ll go on the second date. If there’s no reason not to make things official, I will.” There’s this passivity. Rather than it being a conscious choice to move toward something that they value, they’re thinking, “Well, I should be in a relationship, and there’s nothing wrong with this one. We only argue every night, but that’s OK because everyone else does that; my friend Sally and her partner do that, too.” But that’s merely because she wants to believe that she’s also in the right. People validate each other in this wrongness, and I’m trying to fight against it as best I can and equip people with self-esteem. They need to be able to exist outside of the romantic relationship realm until there’s a reason to enter it, rather than the other way around—this mindset of having a relationship at all costs. Why would you want a mediocre relationship even if there’s nothing badly wrong with it? Why would you not want the best relationship you can have? I think my job is to equip people with the understanding that they can have the best relationship possible to them, but they can’t do that if they’re not in it for the right reasons.
Walker: If people are interested in finding out more about what you do, where can they find you?
Ermolenko: People can find me on Life Coach Directory and on my website, dariaermolenko.com. I offer relationship coaching based on rationality, tailored to your personal needs and situation. I always have a consultation session, and if I’m not the right person to help you, I will let you know straight away. The idea is that I will challenge your thinking. I will challenge your assumptions and beliefs. I will challenge all the advice your friends have given you before you’ve come to me, and I will try to work with you to put you on a path on which you are flourishing and in a relationship that’s fulfilling, that you are fully actively engaged in rather than passively going through the motions and simply settling. Ultimately, I try to put people in the driver’s seat of their personal lives.
Walker: Thank you very much.