Method developed and refined since 2010, across 1,000+ clearance sessions. Training practitioners internationally.
I worked with a coach who wanted to ditch her job and do her coaching full-time. It turned out she had spent years chasing the wrong dream.
She wanted to be the best coach she could be, and had invested over $30,000 getting trained in All.The.Things. She’d even persuaded her husband to remortgage the house so she could invest in more training. She’d trained with some of the best, and had done god-knows-how-many processes to get herself unstuck. Her coaching business was going nowhere.
When I heard her story I knew that more traditional coaching was the last thing she needed. She’d had bucketloads of it in various forms and none of it had worked. So I used Head Trash Clearance with her to clear the self-sabotage standing between her and her goal.
We spent around 45 minutes clearing, and then she hit an epic realisation: she didn’t want to get paid for her coaching.
In fact she didn’t want a coaching business at all. She loved her job, because it brought her real fulfilment even if it didn’t bring the money. What she wanted was to coach informally, on the side, perhaps within her job where it was useful. That was all.
Then came the realisation: $30,000 chasing the wrong dream
She had spent over $30,000 chasing the wrong dream, one she didn’t even want. Years of time and energy poured into a destination her heart had never actually chosen.
And this is why it never became a reality for her: deep down she simply didn’t want it. Of course she wasn’t going to let it happen.
Nobody else had been able to help her uncover that. We did it in under an hour.
Why the goal goes first
When clients come to me with their goals and ambitions, the first thing I do is clear the sabotage around the goal. Not the plan, not the strategy. The goal itself. Because a client who is aligned with what they genuinely want, and clear of the head trash around it, has far less standing in their way. And a client chasing the wrong dream will sabotage every plan you build with them.
After that, my job is keeping them focused on the goal and clearing whatever head trash comes up along the way.
The conventional route is to think through all the options with the client and consider everything that might stop them. It takes time, it’s logical and left-brained, and it works at the surface. Our desires, and our freedom to act on them, come from somewhere a good deal deeper than that.
It’s also why a coaching model that takes a client’s stated goal at face value can spend months building on a foundation nobody has tested. I’ve written about that here.
For coaches
Head Trash Clearance is a fast, simple way to get at the unconscious sabotaging patterns sitting under a client’s goal. This client is one case; what she got in 45 minutes is not a promise for every client. The Self-Sabotage Clearance Framework is the structured way of running a client’s goal through it, and it’s part of what I teach on the training.
So: do you want to be the coach who spends six months taking a client up a blind alley? Or the one who finds out in session one whether the alley goes anywhere, and then clears the path?
Where to go next
- What the GROW model can’t see
- The Self-Sabotage Clearance Framework
- How Head Trash Clearance works
- HTC for coaches
- The training pathway
If you’re a coach and you want to add Head Trash Clearance to your practice, book a fit conversation.
About the author
Alexia Leachman is the creator of the Head Trash Clearance Method. Every case study on this site carries assessment data alongside the story, because she has spent 16 years refusing to let “the client felt better” stand as evidence. More than 1,000 clearance sessions, four books, the Fear Free Childbirth podcast (2M+ downloads), and Ladder of Growth, the independent framework the numbers come from. Clients consent to every case published here.