What is your relation with endings? (1/2)

It is always important to know when something has reached its end. Closing circles, shutting doors, finishing chapters, it doesn't matter what we call it; what matters is to leave in the past those moments in life that are over.

― Paulo Coelho, The Zahir

Sounds like a simple question, right? And yet, when you give yourself some time to reflect on it - surprises might show up. From deep abandonment wounds to separation anxiety. And all is welcomed.

The past week for me meant a lot of endings - closing a chapter on my professional training as a coaching supervisor, closing 2 processes a team coaching one and a mentoring one. In all there was meaning, in all I left a part of me and took a part of them with me. The journeys made me better, stronger and wiser.

And as we embarked in the last module of the coaching supervision training our relationship with endings was brought into the field and that was a great opportunity for me to reflect on it. So here is a reflective inquiry from my perspective as a mentor and supervisor for coaches, I still hope that you will join in and reflect alongside me. Focus is on coaches, yet before one being a coach - is a human with patterns, beliefs and wounds.

Endings are not neutral events. In coaching relations, and in supervision spaces, I repeatedly see that how a person meets an ending often reveals more than how they begin. Contracts close, roles shift, relationships dissolve, identities transform. And beneath each of these: a patterned response. This isn’t just psychological. It’s relational. It’s embodied. It’s learned. And there is awareness to be brought into the field during this. I remember a year ago during a chemistry session with a coach that was looking for a supervisor I asked - how do you want to end this? referring of course to our short demo and discovery moment. My client? What do you mean end? Don’t you want to work with me? - Abandonment wound - hello! Lucky we had over 30 minutes left and we explored what my question triggered. They become my supervision client :)

The question is deceptively simple: What is your relationship with endings? But stay with the question and notice how the answer tends to live in layers - story, attachment, and body. Feel free to treat this article as an invitation to journal or to note down some observations that show up for you.

Endings are usually mirrors, not just events - and in coaching we often frame them as milestones: completion, closure, transition. Yet clients rarely experience them as tidy conclusions. Instead, endings behave like mirrors - reflecting back internal dynamics that were always present but easier to ignore during the “in-between.” And as a coach and as a supervisor the way you do the closing of the process will have an impact on your client and on yourself.

Have you found yourself delaying decisions until the last possible moment? This may be your way to prolong endings, stretching them thin to avoid the rupture. Or maybe you choose to pre-emptively withdraw? This is one way of ending things early to avoid being left. Or maybe you just ghost people, fading in the landscape - not wanting to have ”the talk”.

From a supervisory lens, this shows up in coaches too:

• Overextending contracts - and turning a process that should be a short or medium term one - into a long, co-dependent relationship - both ways

• Avoiding closure conversations - what else you have been avoiding in this relation or in others?

• Softening endings to the point of ambiguity - what is the benefit of leaving under the sign of ”maybe”?

This is not because of poor skill, as a coach - but because endings activate something personal, in each of us.

Could it be that an Abandonment Wound lies beneath the surface. Many intense reactions to endings are not about the present moment alone. They are shaped by what is often called the abandonment wound an early relational experiences where connection was inconsistent, withdrawn, or unpredictable in your forming years.

When that imprint is activated, an ending can feel less like “this is complete” and more like:

• I’m being left

• I’m not enough to be stayed for

• Connection disappears without warning

In coaching, this can subtly influence dynamics:

• A client becomes overly attached to the coach and resists termination

• A coach struggles to hold firm boundaries at the end of an engagement

• Closure feels emotionally disproportionate to the actual relationship length

From a supervisor point of view of view my task is not to pathologize it, but to name the pattern I observe with precision and care and invite the coach to reflect on that. And in order to do that I need to know what my patterns are so when I bring them in the field to understand that are mine.

Then we have Separation Anxiety in adult transitions - we often associate separation anxiety with childhood, but its adult expressions are widespread - especially around endings, and you are not alone in this. It doesn’t always look like overt distress. It can present as:

• Restlessness or urgency to “replace” what’s ending with a new, next best shinning thing,

• Difficulty being alone after a transition, not looking at the ending, not reflecting on what transpired there,

• Overthinking or rumination after closure, looking around scenarios and ”what ifs” over and over again,

• A pull to reinitiate contact, even when unnecessary, trying to create a new begging or hanging with the hope that one of your mental scenarios might come to life if only….

In coaching conversations, this may appear as:

• “One more session” requests that extend indefinitely, over and over again, or never contracting a number of sessions and just agreeing to have ”some” sessions.

• Hesitation to articulate goals that would lead to completion, and the coach is not holding the space for goals measurements and effect of achieving them.

• A sense that ending equals loss rather than integration or achieving the goals and celebrating the journey.

A useful distinction for clients (and coaches) is this - Is this grief or is this anxiety? What is the difference: grief often is softening over the time, while anxiety tends to escalate without reassurance.

I will stop here for the moment, and after I finish my reflection and my somatic awareness of the week, I will return with a second part of this article here.

Photo by Tyler Mower