what confidence-building actually looks like (one client's story)
There's a moment in every coaching relationship where I can feel something shift. It's not always dramatic….. nobody's throwing confetti. Sometimes it's just a slightly straighter posture on a video call, or someone saying "I think I actually want that" instead of "I don't know, maybe," and I have to resist the urge to fist-pump on camera.
I got to watch that shift happen with a client I'll call by her real name, because she gave me permission to share it: Jaden.
When Jaden first came to me, she was stuck. Not because she lacked drive or dreams, she had plenty of both, tucked away like a Christmas present she wasn't sure she was allowed to open yet. She was stuck because she didn't believe she was allowed to want what she wanted. That's a quiet kind of stuck. It doesn't look like a crisis from the outside. It looks like hesitation, a lot of "maybe someday," and waiting for a permission slip nobody was ever going to hand her.
Six months later, she's living a life she told me she couldn't have imagined this time last year. She's chasing a tattoo apprenticeship — a real, specific, entirely-hers dream and she's doing it with a steadiness that honestly makes me a little proud every time I think about it (yes, coach pride is a real thing, no I'm not sorry about it).
I asked her recently if she'd be willing to share her experience, on camera, in her own words.
She said yes, bless her. You can [Watch the video here].
Here's the part of what she said that I keep coming back to:
"Carin wasn't there to tell me what my dreams should be — she was there to help me build the confidence it took to get where I am today."
I want to sit with that for a second, because it's the part people tend to misunderstand about coaching, especially coaching for teens and young adults.
My job was never to hand her a plan.
Honestly, it would've been so much easier if it were. I could've shown up with a five-step PDF and called it a day. Teens and young adults often come in hoping someone will just hand them a map with a big "YOU ARE HERE, GO THIS WAY" arrow on it. But a map someone else draws for you doesn't build the muscle you actually need. The muscle of trusting your own read on your own life.
So instead, session by session, we worked on something a lot less Instagrammable than a plan: confidence. The willingness to say a dream out loud before it felt "earned." The ability to sit with uncertainty without needing it resolved by Tuesday. The practice of trusting a gut instinct even when it hadn't been proven right yet, which — if you've ever been a teenager — is basically a full-time emotional sport.
That's slower work than a five-step plan. It's also the only kind of work that actually holds up once I'm not in the room (or the Zoom box) anymore.
Jaden said something else in her video that I think about a lot:
"Sometimes all it takes is just one person who believes in you for you to believe in yourself."
That's what I try to be for every client who sits across from me — someone outside their family, outside their usual circle, whose only agenda is believing they can get there before they fully believe it themselves. It's a specific kind of support, and I don't take for granted how much weight it carries until I get to watch what it makes possible.
If you're a parent reading this and your teen or young adult is standing at their own "I don't know what's next" — I want you to know the answer probably isn't a better plan, and it's definitely not a more color-coded spreadsheet (I checked, doesn't work). It's probably someone in their corner, helping them trust the plan that's already quietly forming, even if it's not fully clear yet.
That's the work. I'd love to be that person for your teen or young adult, if it feels right.
If this resonates and you'd like to talk about coaching for your teen or young adult, I'd love to connect — you can [book a session here] or follow along on Instagram [@carinrassier] for more.
