I think very highly of fellow journalist Barbara Ehrenreich, so when I saw her being interviewed a few weeks ago on The Daily Show about her most recent book, I didn’t expect my blood pressure to rise.

But escalate it did when she and Jon Stewart dished about Bright-Sided, How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America. Uh oh. That, of course, sent this life coach to the bookstore in a how-dare-she-undermine-the-coaching-profession snit.

Then I started reading the book and, lo and behold, I found page after page was tapping into concerns I had already been feeling (suppressing?) about my profession. For example, Ehrenreich’s reporting from the juiced-up speaking circuit, designed to sell motivational products and essentially proselytize for positive thinking, brought to mind how many times I’ve been encouraged to write a “back of the room” book or “get a gimmick.”

Just a few weeks ago I was invited to become an “ambassador” for a coach and his book and all it would cost me is $240 (for a package valued at $4,000). I must have read that postcard five times to see if I understood it correctly. Was it clever or audacious? With coaches constantly marketing to other coaches, it’s become so incestuous in this industry.

Don’t get me wrong. I love what I do and I was less than thrilled about how life and career coaches are generalized in Ehrenreich’s book, but there’s no doubt many in the positive thinking movement -- yes, including me sometimes -- need to get off the ‘giddy train’ and climb aboard the ‘reality train.’ On any given day, my Twitter and Facebook pages are filled with a steady stream of nauseating positivity updates from coaches. What do you see when you look in the mirror? What kind of day are you creating today? Isn’t life non-stop grand?

Promoting perpetual positive thinking is watering down the message, isn’t it? Who is responding to this cheery barrage?

Ehrenreich has effectively called us out. She was first motivated to explore the positive thinking movement while going through the ordeal of breast cancer with a three-part harmony of pink ribbons, teddy bears and upbeat chatter. It was enough to send her right over the edge and in search of sane support. In our recent interview, she recalled talking to a career coach when she was in an undercover persona researching another book, Bait and Switch.

“I said, ‘I’m a little concerned about my age as a factor in keeping me from getting jobs,’” Ehrenreich said. “And [the coach] said, ‘Your age is whatever you feel it is.’”

I laughed, but not before I cringed. Then I went right for it and asked Ehrenreich if she saw any redeeming qualities in life coaching.

“Potentially,” she said. “I’m trying to see it in the perspective of the whole giant enterprise of therapy and every kind of counseling. There was a need for something and positive psychology saw this in the late 90s, something that was not just addressed to people who are suffering from neuroses or psychoses or whatever, but who needed help to, as you say in your industry, get to the next level. That’s been filling up with people who are completely uncredentialed. Some of the … positive psychology departments do try to professionalize it more, but it’s pretty much the Wild West as far as what you’re going to get with a life coach or a career coach.

“And whereas psychology and psychiatry have at their core, no matter how much some of us feminists complained, things like Freudian psychology … What the coaching industry has sort of put at its core is the pseudo science of the Law of Attraction, that you can get your way just by thinking and visualizing strongly enough.”

So true. What often happens is that once people believe they manifest things in their lives, they feel powerful. They attracted the fabulous job and the terrific life partner. But then they get laid off or they are diagnosed with cancer and they wonder how they could have attracted that. They blame themselves. It can be maddening and stressful when healing feels out of their control. Others, it must be noted, do find a new job or get better and it serves to reinforce that belief system.

“The response I’ve been getting [to the book] has been gratifying,” Ehrenreich said. “I had expected to be pilloried. So many people are saying thank you. They’re tired of being blamed.”   

I must inject some personal reality here. I’m a well-trained life coach, helping people problem solve, cut through the issues blocking them, allowing them to see their own gifts and encouraging them to use them. I confess to a joyous belief in the mystical aspects of life, but the key is to know when, if ever, to invoke the “magic” with clients. I have worked with some who would have run for the hills if I ever told them to get in a ‘Universal Flow.’ Others came in with that belief system and thrived because of it.

I have had clients referred to me by therapists and several I wouldn’t take on unless they were already seeing therapists. What I do is not a replacement for therapy, which typically gets into the past and the “why” of behavior. Coaching is designed to move a client forward through action and goal setting, so it is often a wonderful complement to the work done in therapy.

Does this ability to be discriminant make me a minority among coaches?

“I would say yes,” Ehrenreich said. “But research is needed. There are no quantitative studies I can refer you to. I would love for someone to do that work.”

Ehrenreich’s work in Bright-Sided includes taking to task such luminaries of positive thinking as Authentic Happiness author Martin Seligman, mega-minister Joel Osteen, and The Secret writer/producer Rhonda Byrne. She dismantles this camp and its messages: woo-woo, rah-rah, there’s nothing that can’t be solved with a positive attitude, or look, happiness is a science.

Her book is a scathing indictment of the positive thinking movement, for sure, but some of its truth set me free. My blood pressure, I’m happy to report, is back where it belongs.

Nancy Colasurdo is a practicing life coach and freelance writer. Her Web site is www.nancola.com. Please direct all questions/comments to FOXGamePlan@gmail.com.