What Your Emotions Are Telling You (And What They Are Not)

There is a moment most coaches will recognise.

You are in a session. Something shifts in the room. You feel it before you can name it. A tightening, a pull, a quiet alertness. Something in you says: pay attention.

And you do. Because you have learned to trust that.

But here is the question that does not get asked often enough.

How do you know whether what you are feeling is a signal or noise?

Emotions as data

One of the most useful ideas in Susan David's work on Emotional Agility is deceptively simple.

Emotions are data. Not directives.

What she means is that our feelings carry information. They are worth listening to. But listening to an emotion is not the same as believing everything it tells you, or acting on it immediately.

This matters in everyday life. It matters even more in the coaching room.

Because when we are sitting with a client, we are not just receiving information through our ears. We are receiving it through our whole selves. Our bodies notice things. Our nervous systems respond. Something that looks like intuition is often emotion arriving before language does.

That capacity is part of what makes a great coach.

But it is not infallible.

When what we feel is genuinely about the client

Sometimes what arises in us during a session is meaningful data about what is happening for the client.

You might notice a sudden flatness in yourself and realise the energy in the room has dropped. You might feel a quiet unease that turns out to be tracking something the client has not yet named. You might sense a kind of held breath, yours and theirs, just before something important surfaces.

This is the kind of attunement that takes time to develop. It is subtle, relational, and genuinely valuable.

When it is working well, it deepens the work.

When what we feel is about us

But there is another kind of feeling that arises in sessions.

One that has less to do with the client and more to do with what they have touched in us.

A client talks about a difficult relationship and something tightens in your chest, not because you are tracking them, but because it echoes something in your own life. A client sits in confusion and you feel an urgency to help them find clarity, not because they need it yet, but because uncertainty makes you uncomfortable. A client seems disappointed and you feel a familiar anxiety about whether you are doing enough.

These are not meaningless feelings. They carry information too.

But the information is mostly about you.

And if you do not notice that, those feelings can quietly start to drive the session in ways that serve your own need for resolution rather than your client's process.

The honest difficulty

This is not a clean distinction.

Sometimes what we feel in the room is genuinely both, partly signal, partly our own material. The skill is not in perfectly separating the two. That is not always possible.

The skill is in pausing long enough to ask the question.

Is this feeling telling me something about my client, or about me?

That pause is not a distraction from the work. It is the work.

Susan describes this as holding your emotions lightly, like wearing walking shoes rather than being cemented to the ground. The metaphor is useful here. Walking shoes allow you to move. They do not attach you to the spot. You can carry the feeling, stay present with what it might be telling you, and still choose how to respond.

Cemented to the ground, we react. In walking shoes, we notice, and then we choose.

What this requires

This kind of discernment does not happen on its own.

It is built through the ongoing practice of knowing yourself. The inner work that sits alongside the technical work of coaching.

It means developing familiarity with your own patterns. The emotions that tend to hook you. The topics that touch something personal. The clients or dynamics that bring out your own unfinished business.

It means being willing to be supervised, to be questioned, to notice when you leave a session carrying something that does not quite belong to you.

And it means building a practice of checking in with yourself, not just after a session, but during one.

Not in a way that takes you out of the room. But in the quiet, ongoing way that a grounded coach learns to do. A kind of dual awareness. Present with your client. Present with yourself.

A reflection

Think back to a session that stayed with you. One where something happened that felt significant, or confusing, or unexpectedly charged.

Ask yourself:

• What did I feel during that session, and when did I first notice it?

• Was I tracking my client, or was I responding to something in me?

• Did that feeling shape how I responded, and if so, was that helpful?

• What might I have missed because I was too close to what was arising in me?

• Is there a topic, dynamic, or type of client that tends to bring my own material into the room?

This is not about getting it right every time.

It is about building the kind of self-awareness that makes you more useful, not less human, in the work.

Your emotions in the coaching room are not a problem to be managed.

They are part of the instrument.

But like any instrument, they need to be tuned. And tuning requires honesty.

About Melissa Hague

I'm Melissa Hague — a coach, courage-builder, and Certified Dare to Lead™ Practitioner. I support coaches to build the courage, compassion, and grounded confidence they need to show up more fully in their work, their lives, and their businesses.

Much of my work centres on the quieter, more human side of coaching — the inner work, the small brave steps, and the spaces where we learn to trust ourselves a little more deeply. I trained with Susan David in 2025 and am close to completing my Emotional Agility Certification. It's at the heart of what we explore inside The Courageous Coach® Programme.

Find out more at melissahague.com/courageous-coaches and let's connect here on LinkedIn.