Coaching’s Empathy Problem: How Performance Culture Hijacked Presence
Many coaches talk about empathy—but few embody it. This essay exposes how performative empathy, toxic positivity, and the pressure to “look caring” are re-traumatizing clients and burning out practitioners. Learn the neuroscience behind real attunement, how false empathy activates the brain’s pain pathways, and five embodied practices to rebuild authentic presence in your coaching work.
When Care is Driven By Data
We’re living in an era where care itself has become a KPI.
When profit or throughput becomes the measure of success, people turn into units of service instead of human beings.
In insurance, it’s “cases closed.”
In therapy apps, it’s “sessions completed.”
Even in coaching platforms, it’s “hours logged.”
The language of metrics seeps into the soul of the work.
People who entered this field to heal end up drowning in dashboards. The human connection—the part that actually transforms—gets treated as inefficiency.
What we call “helping professions” are now haunted by the quiet pressure to perform empathy.
The result? Practitioners look like they care—but the body of the client can tell when they don’t.
Case Study: The Performative Empath
Let me tell you about a coach I once observed—we’ll call her Alex. An MCC credentialed and highly active on social media. Her website gleamed with testimonials, buzzwords, and the gentle promise of transformation.
But in reality, conversations with her felt like watching someone act empathy.
She was technically ok. She said, “I’m hearing that this is hard for you,” with the precision of a GPS. But there was no heartbeat.
I heard from a client of hers—a VP navigating burnout—who began to cry during a session. Alex then asked, “So, what’s the next step for you?”
Huh? She was crying. “Um… I could set some better boundaries?” she said.
Alex nodded. “You’ve got this.”
And there it was: a moment of humanity neatly processed into a deliverable.
When the client met with me for a discovery session, she said, “Alex calls herself a master coach, but I felt like AI was coaching me.”
That’s what happens when care is performative and reduced to metrics.
You can’t chart resonance. You can’t log attunement. But you can feel when it’s missing.
The Hidden Cost of Performative Empathy
“Performative empathy” sounds harmless—until you feel it.
When someone smiles, nods, and says the right words without real attunement, your nervous system knows.
The tone is off. The timing is wrong.
You feel watched but not witnessed.
Neuroscience gives language to what the body already knows.
When empathy is fake or forced, it triggers the same internal alarm bells as neglect.
The anterior cingulate cortex—the brain’s pain alarm center—can’t tell the difference between emotional disconnection and physical pain (Eisenberger & Lieberman, 2004).
Your body senses: This person is looking at me, but they’re not seeing me.
That’s emotional ghosting in real time.
For trauma survivors, it can re-activate the original wound: the caregiver who was physically present but emotionally absent.
That’s not care. That’s reenactment.
The Science of Real Empathy
True empathy, on the other hand, is messy and embodied.
It means letting another person’s energy move you—even slightly.
It means your throat tightens when theirs does.
It means your own body softens when they exhale.
Neuroscience calls this interoception and attunement—the ability to feel what’s happening in someone else by noticing subtle changes in your own system.
Your mirror neurons light up; your insular cortex translates their emotional state into sensation.
This is not sentimental—it’s biological.
Empathy is co-regulation in action. When a coach or therapist’s body is grounded and calm, it signals safety to the client’s nervous system. Their breathing slows. Their heart rate stabilizes.
That’s not “energy work.” That’s neuroception—the body’s unconscious scanning for safety or threat.
So if your presence feels performative, your client’s body will know before their mind does.
If it feels embodied, their system will start to settle—sometimes before you even say a word.
That’s what healing actually looks like: not productivity, not polish, but physiological permission to rest.
Metrics That Honor Self Agency
If we must measure care, let’s measure what matters.
Instead of “cases closed,” measure capacity regained.
Instead of “sessions completed,” measure connection sustained.
Instead of “client retention,” measure agency restored.
Each of these metrics reframes success around aliveness, not efficiency:
Capacity regained honors nervous-system regulation.
Connection sustained honors attachment repair.
Agency restored honors liberation and choice.
This isn’t anti-data. It’s pro-dignity.
Every trauma-informed coach knows: safety precedes insight. You can’t build awareness in a flooded nervous system.
Polyvagal theory gives us the map.
When people feel safe and connected, the vagus nerve signals to the body that it can relax. The prefrontal cortex—our center for reflection, empathy, and executive function—comes back online.
In other words, the brain that learns is the brain that feels safe.
Self-agency, then, isn’t a cognitive skill. It’s a physiological state. It’s the ability to stay in your body when your instinct is to disappear.
The more we measure outcomes without honoring this foundation, the more we reward performative recovery instead of real regulation.
Why Coaches Must Lead the Shift
Coaching sits at a unique crossroads—between business and healing, between human development and late-stage capitalism.
If we’re not careful, we replicate the same hierarchies we claim to disrupt.
The coach who measures “impact” by client loyalty or the number of testimonials is no different from the system that rewards throughput.
The question isn’t just Are you helping people?
It’s Are you helping them return to themselves?
The best coaches aren’t performers.
They’re mirrors that don’t steal the light.
Despite the noise, I love this work.
I love it because I learn so much about myself through my clients.
Every session teaches me how to listen better, regulate deeper, and stay honest about my own patterns.
I love holding space for people who might not have it anywhere else.
That’s what keeps me here—not the hours logged, but the moments when a client exhales and says, “I didn’t know I could feel this safe.”
That’s not a metric.
That’s a miracle.
How I Measure Success
In my own coaching practice, success isn’t applause but it’s gentle connection.
It looks like:
A client pausing before saying yes to something that drains them.
Someone realizing they no longer need to perform calm to be safe.
A grown adult laughing for the first time in months.
The truth is, transformation doesn’t show up in quarterly reports.
It shows up when someone remembers their own sense of aliveness—and decides it’s worth fighting for,
Coaches: Practice Non-Performative Presence
If you’re a coach reading this, here’s the work:
Stop trying to look empathic.
Be with people instead.
When we lead from the nervous system instead of the ego, the whole dynamic changes. The body of the coach becomes the intervention. The client’s system doesn’t need to be convinced—it simply feels safety and follows suit.
Lead with embodiment.
Breathe before you speak. Let your nervous system do the teaching.
Attunement starts below the neck.
Reclaim slowness.
Presence is productivity in nervous-system time.
You’re not wasting time—you’re widening bandwidth for change.
Tell the truth.
If you’re burnt out, say it.
Vulnerability isn’t weakness; it’s calibration.
When you model honesty, you normalize humanness.
Collaborate, don’t colonize.
The future of care is co-created, not branded.
You’re not here to manage someone’s process; you’re here to witness it with integrity.
Redefine success.
The best outcome of any helping profession is when people need you less.
Liberation, not loyalty, is the metric.
Try This Experiment:
Drop your agenda.
Ask, “What do you need right now?”—even if it derails your plan. Real empathy often lives in the unscripted moments.
Let silence breathe.
When someone finishes speaking, wait three full seconds before responding.
That pause invites their nervous system to settle—and yours to listen.
Regulate yourself first.
If you feel tension rising, name it internally. A calm nervous system is a lighthouse. Clients will match your steadiness before they absorb your insight.
Track for resonance, not progress.
Did their face soften? Did their breathing shift? That’s data too.
The body speaks before the words do.
Stay humble.
Coaching is not performance art.
Your job isn’t to sound wise—it’s to stay real.
Embodiment is the opposite of performance.
Presence doesn’t need an audience.
When your care stops being something you deliver and becomes something you embody, people feel it—and heal in your presence, not because of it.
About the Author
Minal Kamlani is a trauma-informed ADHD recovery coach based in NYC. She works with neurodivergent adults in recovery from trauma, burnout, and survival-based coping. Her coaching blends structure and nervous system awareness to help clients reclaim function—without shame or perfectionism. Learn more at Higher Vibes Coaching.