The Whale and the Barnacles

A few weeks ago, somebody I was coaching said something that has stayed with me.

“I feel like a whale that’s covered in barnacles.”

It was such a vivid image that I could see it immediately: this magnificent creature, perfectly capable of moving through the water, but carrying layer upon layer of things that had attached themselves along the way.

So rather than translating it into coaching language, we stayed with the whale and its barnacles.

What were the barnacles?

Some had been there for years. Difficult relationships. Hurt. Anger. Dishonesty. The importance this coachee placed on respect and the pain felt when that respect had been withheld.

And then something rather lovely began to happen.

As we talked about particular experiences, they started recognising when a barnacle had gone.

Not because the past had changed. Not because somebody had apologised or behaved differently. But because something in the relationship with it had shifted.

One conversation the coachee had been avoiding became another barnacle.

They said what they needed to say.

And afterwards, that one barnacle that had represented the feeling and the pain had gone too.

As more of the barnacles began to loosen, the whale changed as well.

The coachee described themselves as rising higher through the water. Leaping out. Lighter. Happier. Freer.

At one point, the whale was no longer simply moving through the vastness of the ocean weighed down by everything attached to it. The whale was coming up through the surface - breathing fresh air.

That image stayed with me too.

There was something joyful about it.

The whale itself had not changed. It had always been there.

And as the barnacles began to fall away, the whale could move differently.

By our next conversation, the whale had become part of our shared language. We didn’t need to spend ten minutes explaining what it represented. We could simply wonder whether something was another barnacle, whether one was beginning to loosen or whether an old one had somehow reattached itself.

And that made me think about metaphors.

We use them constantly, usually without noticing.

We talk about carrying baggage, hitting walls, being at a crossroads, drowning in work or seeing light at the end of a tunnel.

But occasionally somebody produces an image that seems to contain far more than the words around it.

The temptation for a coach can be to interpret it.

A coach could hear “barnacles” and immediately decide what they represent. Burdens. Trauma. Difficult people. The past.

But they weren’t my barnacles.

They were the coachee’s.

My role was simply to be curious enough to stay with the image and let them discover what was attached to their whale.

This is what fascinates me about metaphor.

Sometimes we seem to know something before we can explain it.

An image appears first.

The meaning follows.

And sometimes, as the meaning changes, the image changes too.

The whale that began the conversation, weighed down beneath the water, was eventually rising towards the surface.

Lighter.

Freer.

Perhaps even ready to leap.

When Your Child Is Struggling, Who Is Supporting the Parent?

There is often an enormous amount of attention on the child and rightly so. But somewhere in the middle of appointments, school meetings, assessments and advice, the parent can become almost invisible.

I was recently speaking with a parent whose child has ADHD and has been unable to participate in the ‘normal’ day-to-day activities of life and what unfolded was the number of professionals who had already become involved in this young child’s life.

Their child had seen perhaps seven or eight different specialists.

I asked him a simple question:

If you were ill and were being seen to by seven or eight different professionals, how would you feel?

“Angry and exhausted.” was part of his answer.

And he is an adult.

For a child who may already be struggling with change, trust, emotional regulation or feeling misunderstood, repeated introductions to new adults can become another thing to manage. Another relationship to negotiate. Another explanation to give. Another uncertainty about whether this person will stay.

That does not mean professional support is wrong. Far from it. Children with ADHD and related difficulties may need specialist assessment and appropriately qualified help.

But the parent may need something different.

The parent is living it too

When a child stops participating in everyday life, becomes distressed or struggles to function in ways that other children seem to manage, family life can gradually begin to revolve around the problem.

Parents can find themselves constantly asking:

Am I pushing too hard? Am I not pushing enough? Should I insist? Should I back off? Is this anxiety? ADHD? Something else? Am I making it worse?

There may also be meetings, phone calls, conflicting advice and the fear of making the wrong decision.

And beneath all of that can sit something much more personal:

What if I can’t help my own child?

That is a painful place for any parent to be.

Coaching is not treatment

Coaching a parent in this situation is not about diagnosing the child or offering clinical advice.

It is not about telling a parent what their child needs.

That belongs with appropriately qualified specialists.

The coaching space can instead focus on the parent themselves.

What are they feeling?

What are they carrying?

Where are they becoming reactive rather than responsive?

What can they influence and what is outside their control?

What assumptions are they making about their child’s behaviour?

What happens to the relationship when every interaction becomes about school, behaviour or the next appointment?

Sometimes a parent needs somewhere that they do not have to be the strong one.

Seeing the situation through the child’s eyes

One useful shift can be moving temporarily away from:

“How do I get my child to do this?”

and towards:

“What might this situation feel like from my child’s perspective?”

That does not mean removing boundaries or avoiding difficult decisions.

It means becoming curious before becoming corrective.

For a child who is already overwhelmed, what appears to an adult as refusal, defiance or avoidance may be communicating something very different.

And when parents are frightened, exhausted or under pressure themselves, curiosity can be difficult to access.

That is where having a thinking space can help.

Supporting the system, not just the symptom

A struggling child does not exist in isolation. There is a family around them.

When one person in that system is under enormous pressure, everybody adjusts.

Parents may disagree about what to do. Siblings can feel overlooked. Relationships become strained. Ordinary family life can begin to shrink around the issue.

Helping a parent think more clearly, understand their own reactions and decide how they want to show up may not remove the child’s difficulties.

But it can change something important:

the emotional environment in which the whole family is living.

And sometimes that is a meaningful place to begin.

When We Lose Sight Of What Is Already Holding Us

People can intellectually know that they are supported and still emotionally lose sight of it.

One of the things I find compelling about systemic coaching is the way it helps people see the relationships, dynamics and sources of support around them more clearly. Family, friends, colleagues, peers, all of the systems we sit in, often without consciously noticing them.

Sometimes the shift is almost physical.

A person may begin a conversation feeling isolated, overwhelmed or as though everything rests on them. And then, through exploring what is around them, they realise that they are far more supported than they had believed.

Nothing outside them has necessarily changed.

What changed is what they are able to see.

It is human to wobble. To feel overwhelmed. To feel alone.

We can know that we are loved, capable, supported and resilient… and yet, under pressure, temporarily lose access to that knowing.

Sometimes a gentle reminder of the people, relationships and resources already around us can help us re-centre.

For me, this is one of the things coaching can offer.

Not answers.

Not advice.

But the space to reconnect with what we may already know, but have temporarily lost sight of.