Mental Health in Coaching: When Support Isn’t Enough and Professional Help Becomes Necessary

If you’re struggling with sleep, anxiety, or emotional overwhelm and want to explore support, you can book a session with me here: https://calendly.com/chevymermelstein/30min

Before you read on, you may also find this helpful: Two things can be true at the same time — feeling peace while still struggling https://www.chevymermelsteinsleepcoach.org/post/two-things-can-be-true-at-the-same-time-feeling-peace-while-still-struggling

At the beginning of the school year, a 19-year-old teacher came to see me. I’ll call her Raisy.

She wasn’t coming mainly for sleep, even though her sleep was poor. She came because she felt emotionally and mentally unable to return to work. Her energy was low, she felt overwhelmed by life, and deep down she carried a fear that she was slipping back into the same darkness she had struggled with since she was 13 years old.

At that point, neither of us had any idea where the journey would eventually lead.

Over the next few months, we worked consistently together, slowly uncovering deeply rooted fears — fears of everything becoming too much, fears of collapsing under pressure, fears of losing herself emotionally.

And honestly, she made beautiful progress.

She showed up fully. She did the work. The subconscious work helped her tremendously. She grounded daily, became more emotionally aware, returned to teaching, became social again, and slowly started feeling more like herself.

Which is why what happened next became so important to recognize.

Then in February, something changed.

She became unusually energized. She barely needed sleep, was talking nonstop, overflowing with ideas, highly creative, and suddenly extremely social. At first glance, it almost looked like she was doing better than ever.

But underneath it, there was still fear.

As the weeks went on, the energy slowly started crashing. After the holiday break, she fell into a depression so severe that she quit her job and could barely speak or think clearly.

And one of the hardest parts for her was how alone she felt in it.

People around her didn’t truly understand what was happening internally. Some told her to “just get up,” “stop being so emotional,” or “get a life.”

But when someone is struggling mentally and emotionally, it’s rarely that simple.

That was the moment I stepped back and reviewed everything carefully, the lows, the improvements, the sudden highs, the crashes afterward, and the way sleep seemed connected to all of it.

For the first time, I realized something difficult but important:

Coaching alone was not enough.

No amount of mindset work, grounding exercises, sleep support, emotional processing, or self-awareness was going to fully solve what was happening here.

Something deeper seemed chemically off.

This is an important conversation we need to have more openly.

Sometimes in the self-help world, there’s an unspoken belief that if you just work harder on yourself, everything will eventually resolve.

But mental health is not always that simple.

Sometimes someone truly needs medical intervention.

Sometimes medication is not weakness.

Sometimes seeing a psychiatrist is not failure. 

Sometimes the brain itself needs support.

Last week I called just to check on her. She couldn’t come to the phone.

Then yesterday, she called me back.

We spoke about the patterns I had observed over the months — the lows, the highs, the sleep disruptions, and the emotional shifts.

For the first time in her life, she said she could actually see it clearly.

She began to understand that the “highs” weren’t just positive periods, they were also unstable. They came with intensity, lack of sleep, and emotional imbalance.

Then very quietly, she asked me:

“Do you think I have bipolar?”

I told her honestly that I didn’t know.

That was something she would need to explore with her doctor. But I also explained that the clearer picture she could give him, the lows, the highs, the sleep changes, the energy shifts — the more he could truly help her.

By the end of the conversation, I heard something very different in her voice.

Relief.

Not because everything suddenly made sense.

But because for the first time, she wasn’t guessing alone anymore.

She even shared that what got her through the weekend was hearing from her sister that I had called to check on her. In that moment, she realized she wasn’t completely alone.

That stayed with me.

Because sometimes healing doesn’t begin with the perfect strategy.

It begins with being seen.

With someone noticing.

With someone caring enough to say, this is bigger than you need to carry alone.

Did I see all of this at the beginning?

No.

Not at all.

But her honesty, consistency, and willingness to keep showing up slowly revealed a much bigger picture.

Ricky has now made an appointment with her psychiatrist.

She is terrified.

But she is also more empowered than she has ever felt in her life.

And maybe that is the most important message here.

Good coaching can be powerful.

But good coaching also knows when to step back.

Because sometimes real healing requires more than one layer of support.