Merula Manifesto III – In the Name of Being Honest
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Sandra Merula is a Mental Health & Life Coach, author of “ADHD and Autism: The ‘Together’ People,” working as a mentor with Autism, ADHD, and AuDHD, as well as trauma and narcissistic abuse recovery. Known for her direct yet unique approach with cat-assisted philosophy, she combines professional expertise with lived experience and a bit of magic.
Time after time, the same question resounds in my ear. "Sandra, how do people change so quickly when working with you?" Most of the time, I just smile. That gesture hides more than it shows. Not because I am guarding some clandestine answer. Simply because there is none.
“If someone tells you that you hurt them, you don’t get to decide that you didn’t.”
There is only the work itself: honest, fascinating, and sometimes wonderfully confusing. Its central claim is simple: when someone says they were hurt, you do not get to decide otherwise. The work draws both coach and client into questioning their own mental state, until chaos reveals its own unique pattern.
Yesterday, one story ended. Or perhaps it refused to end at all. It reached the point where my role was over. At least for now.
My first impression of the client: Their age didn’t matter; any number would have felt off. They were strikingly bright, with a mix of innocence and boldness that often comes with neurodivergence. Their intellect was obvious, but their own mind was still a mystery to them. When we started a couple of years ago, I gave them a simple task: “Make a list of things you are unhappy with and next to each one - the goal; how you want it to be”. They did it well, coming across as practical, almost clinical.
Most coaches would have seen goals. I saw trauma: complex, detailed, everywhere. No mention of romance. Silence said enough. I held back from asking more, knowing there were many reasons. The list pointed to deep loneliness, hidden behind a barely held smile.
Then, just as things became more honest and open, they had to stop the sessions and leave. I guess we’ll never know why. They didn’t explain much, only that life was leading them somewhere else. A clear and reasonable explanation followed way later. No dramatic goodbye. Just a small mind game. It wasn’t meant to be noticed, but it was.
Eighteen months later, they returned. This time, everything unfolded online. Strangely, I was not surprised. Their absence always felt temporary, a break rather than an end. I felt they would come back because the work on identity remained unfinished.
Within ten minutes of our first online session, I realized I was no longer speaking to the same person. But did I know the person I work with? The first time, though?
The masks had become more complex and more exhausting because they tried too hard to be liked. They were brutally honest, but not where it mattered.
Looking back, I guessed that their real need was to be truly seen. Not just as a client, but as someone mysterious and unique. Whether I was right mattered less than whether it helped. This wildness was the missing piece, and it challenged all my skills and preparation. That idea was what I kept testing.
People often ask what methods I use. When I work, I don’t focus on therapy models. I respond to the person in front of me. My choices come from intuition, observation, and what’s happening in the moment. I watch for changes in mood, language, defenses, and tone. Sometimes I match their energy, sometimes I challenge it, and other times I step back to see what unfolds. I trust my instincts, which are shaped by experience and constant questions: What is being protected? What is being invited? Is it time to push or wait? Later, I notice that my actions often look like Provocative Therapy, Elicitation, Strategic Paradoxical Therapy, Therapeutic Role-Assumption, or experiential reframing. I didn’t plan to use these models. I just followed what worked in the moment.
Early on, I stopped fighting their masks. When they played the villain, so eager and obvious, I let them. I let them try it out to see if it fit or just bothered them. Sometimes, the only way to find the truth is to let the act play out. For them, the role revealed more than it hid, showing old wounds and new opportunities. The risk was high, and I appreciated our shared boldness. Over time, I chose a new approach. Instead of confronting the defense, I entered it.
Gradually, the atmosphere became tense. Some mentors might have changed direction right away. I didn’t, because I thought sexuality might not be the real issue. It could just be another way to reach shame, guilt, vulnerability, and connection. If that was true, shutting it down too soon would mean leaving the very stuff we were trying to get to. The more openly we spoke, the more they seemed to need to regain control. Humor sometimes turned into criticism. Curiosity sometimes became discomfort. On several occasions, shaming me appeared to restore brief emotional balance. Whether that interpretation was correct, I cannot know, but it explained the pattern well enough to keep observing rather than interrupting it.
That remains one of the most curious parts of this particular case. In my experience, being curious has helped me more than being sure. Before the work ended, another pattern became so consistent that I could no longer. Ignore it.
Every time the work got close to something emotionally important, the mood in the room changed almost like clockwork. First warmth. Then curiosity. Then openness. Just when I thought we were about to reach the place we had been aiming for, everything flipped. Affection turned into criticism. Curiosity turned into suspicion. Openness turned into distance. If I had only looked at single talks, I might have missed it. But across the whole process, the pattern happened too often to dismiss.
Instead, I started asking myself what purpose they might have been serving. Looking back, I think that question changed the direction of the entire intervention.
But again, what interested me was something very practical. Why did the emotional mood keep changing as soon as vulnerability showed up? Why did a new role always appear just when the last one became emotionally hard? I couldn’t answer those questions for sure, but the timing kept pointing me back to the same process. That process was the central claim: the shifts were not random, but patterned.
Oh, and the paranoia was immense. At times, I doubted the whole workshop and the whole process because it was incredibly hard for them to cope with, and it made me feel things I rather shouldn’t when I work. As the work went on, I became less interested in individual actions and more in the deeper structure. One day, I might seem like the mother who finally understood everything. The next day, I might be the soulmate or the object of almost crazy sexual admiration. A day later, I might be someone to humiliate, provoke, or emotionally punish. Calls, texts, and voice messages changed how we had regular sessions.
Don’t get me wrong, it was serious work and a big side project. Reacting as Sandra or responding as the clinician. Those are very different positions, and confusing them makes this work dangerous. That is why I relentlessly monitored my boundaries throughout the process. After intense conversation, I paused to track my emotions. When my personal reactions intensified, I consulted a trusted coach to separate my experience from the client's needs. These self-checks and external perspectives were essential safeguards to keep the intervention therapeutic rather than personal or reactive.
The goal was to understand the emotional logic underlying the behavior. That was the central claim of the work: the behavior made sense within a pattern, even when it looked chaotic.
The more forcefully they tested me, the more discipline I needed. Sometimes, our conversations got intensely personal. There were occasions when I was pulled into new roles, new stories, new emotional realms. Looking back, I wonder if those moments were really asking a much simpler question than the words let on. "If I become this version of myself, will you still stay?"
What I noticed is that every time I resisted the urge to argue with the story and stayed curious about the process, the masks became just a bit harder to hold up.
That is one reason I have never been particularly interested in analyzing individual lies. A lie is often psychologically interesting, but the pattern of lying is usually more revealing. One false story can be random. Twenty false stories told in the same emotional circumstances rarely are. They begin to show structure, and structure tells us much more than content ever will.
This part of the work most closely resembles therapeutic simulation combined with paradoxical intervention. I wasn't trying to convince the client that my interpretation was correct.
Eventually, something began shifting. Just enough for me to notice. That was the first time I let myself wonder if we were finally working with the person, not just the masks. Perhaps, at last, we were reaching the person beneath them.
That was when I made another conscious decision. Instead of responding to every new emotional role as if it represented a completely new reality, I responded to the pattern.
I think this is where my work came closest to what is described as Strategic Paradoxical Therapy. I stopped trying to convince, explain, or correct, because the defense mechanism kept changing costumes. My intention became much simpler: I would stop arguing with the costume and quietly observe the actor underneath.
The longer we worked, the more I noticed moments others might dismiss as trivial. A phrase that conflicted with yesterday’s story. A joke that turned defensive. A compliment quickly followed by criticism. An intimate conversation was replaced by distance the next day. Alone, they meant little. Together, they formed a pattern impossible to ignore.
From the inside, it didn't feel as chaotic as you might think. It felt remarkably structured. Every intervention had a purpose. Every role I accepted had a purpose. Every symbolic story I introduced had a purpose. I wasn't trying to create emotional confusion; I was trying to understand the emotional rules by which the confusion itself appeared to operate. That is the central claim: the work was about pattern, not randomness.
Only afterward did I realize that many of those decisions closely resemble what the literature describes as therapeutic simulation and experiential reframing. At the time, I wasn't thinking about terminology. I was thinking about one person being in front of me and asking myself the same question I had been asking since the very beginning. "What is this behavior trying to achieve that the person cannot yet achieve in a healthier way?"
That became one of the process’s greatest gifts. The more I let go of my own theories, the more the patterns appeared.
During this process, I made sure to keep clear moral boundaries that fit both my needs and my client’s. I can’t even begin to explain how different those needs are. I often reflected on our sessions and sought supervision to make sure I was acting in my client's best interests and not crossing any lines. Informed consent and regular self-checks were essential parts of my practice. This careful approach was needed to protect both of us, especially in such intense and unusual work. Did I/They go too far? That question never stopped echoing in my mind. It shouldn't.
Anyone using intensive, emotionally demanding approaches should ask themselves that question repeatedly. The danger is not the method itself. The danger is forgetting to examine yourself while using it. I have always believed that provocative work demands at least as much self-awareness from the mentor as it requires courage from the client. Without constant reflection, confidence quickly turns into arrogance, and curiosity quietly disappears.
I realize people rarely glimpse this side of provocative therapy. They see the interventions, the unusual conversations, the symbolism, the humor, the confrontation. What they miss is the mentor’s constant self-questioning, the willingness to abandon even the most beautiful theory when reality refuses to cooperate.
For me, that is where the real work happens. Not in the performance. In the discipline required to make sure it never becomes one.
The more I grasped the structure of the process, the less I cared about individual victories. Whether a conversation went well or badly stopped mattering. What counted was whether the pattern shifted. Was the client reacting as before, or had something, anything changed? That became my measure of progress. Not because someone suddenly chose honesty, but because holding all those versions at once became harder. Earlier, each role was neatly contained: the confident one never touched the vulnerable one, the critic never met the child. By the end, those walls fell apart. Different versions of the same story surfaced within a single conversation, sometimes just minutes apart. That interested me far more than whether any individual statement was true.
But the real engine was needed, raw, immediate, and utterly self-referential. Their main problem was fear, the amount of fear that lived in that brain, body, and soul. They were creating a defense mechanism. They could be terrified and audacious in the same breath, longing to be the villain, convinced that hurting others felt good. I used those last hours to say everything that needed to be said. I did not hold back; they were oddly quiet; I thought to myself: the beast unleashed. Then doubt not. I was blocked.
If anything, I found myself wondering whether the process had reached the only ending it realistically could have reached at that moment. If my working hypothesis had been even partly accurate, then remaining in contact would have required a completely different set of emotional skills than disappearing did. Disappearing was familiar. Disappearing was predictable. Disappearing had worked, so perhaps disappearance returned. Even if we both know many new things have come to stay, old habits die hard.
The same person who had spoken about wanting connection appeared to choose distance once real connection became possible to adapt to. Perhaps that’s unfair. Maybe there are explanations I’ll never know. That’s always possible.
But mentors do not have the luxury of waiting for perfect certainty before thinking about their own work. We consider the information available to us, while remaining prepared to revise our conclusions if new information emerges.
Even though they said a phrase at the very end: “Yes, you helped me much to find myself; I had zero identity, the self-discovery definitely worked.” I think with time, they will see much more than that, as during this workshop, they got to taste so many roles that most people never even have a chance to try in a lifetime, yet are too confused to find their own. Because underneath every therapeutic model, every intervention, every symbolic story, and every provocative technique sits one very ordinary hope.
I sat there asking myself again if I’d gone too far. That is a question I ask myself after every unconventional case, and I sincerely hope I never stop asking it. The day I become absolutely convinced that every intervention I make is the correct one is probably the day I should stop doing this work.
Did I wait too long? Did I miss something obvious? Did I accidentally become part of the system I was trying to understand? Or did I manage to remain exactly what I was supposed to be: A mirror.
The last question will stay with me for a long time. Only afterward did I start putting names to what I had been doing instinctively.
At different moments, I found myself using what closely resembles Provocative Therapy, not because I enjoy confrontation, but because humor and exaggeration often bypass defenses that logic never reaches.
Other interventions remind me strongly of Strategic Paradoxical Therapy. Instead of wrestling with a defense mechanism, I temporarily walked next to it to see where it naturally wanted to go. Fighting a mask often creates a stronger mask. Sometimes allowing it to perform until it exhausts itself tells you far more.
There were also long periods where I was using what could best be described as Therapeutic Simulation or Systematic Role-Assumption. I wasn't pretending to become a different person for entertainment. I deliberately accepted symbolic roles that seemed to emerge spontaneously within the clinical relationship, allowing us both to observe how our emotions shifted as the relationship itself changed.
Some readers will undoubtedly find that uncomfortable. Good. This process should occasionally make us, mentors, uncomfortable, too.
Comfort is a wonderful place to rest. It is a terrible place from which to investigate. To work with trauma. Does that mean these methods should be used with everyone? Absolutely not.
In the wrong hands, they can become reckless. Without supervision, they can become egoistic. Without boundaries, they can become abusive. Without humility, they can become performance.
That is precisely why I have lingered over this case, dissecting it rather than celebrating. Not because I fear I went too far, but because I suspect there was still more to be done, if only they could have tolerated the exquisite danger of change, instead of withdrawing to the safety of the familiar.
Difficult methods demand even more difficult self-examination. The intervention is never the most dangerous part. The mentor's certainty is.
Any idea why the person I am writing about in such detail would wanna be a “bad guy” so much? When you are anything BUT bad, what type of people seem to deal perfectly with fear? Have no fear at all? Are always admired for boldness and bravery? The “bad guys.”
I hope they are well.
"I stopped reacting to the words. I started following the pattern"
The article's title is dedicated to clients' constant need to deny, change their minds, change plans, and change their moods. They often shift to hurt and disappoint the person they are dealing with. It’s like a drug, needing to see a reaction and negative emotion. This was always introduced with the phrase “I just want to be totally honest with you”. Another defense mechanism called: “I don’t feel good? You won’t feel good either!”
Misery loves company. Love, S.
Read more from Sandra Merula
Sandra Merula, Mental Health Coach, Neurodiversity Mentor
Sandra Merula is a Mental Health & Life Coach, author of “ADHD and Autism. The ‘Together’ People,” working as a mentor at the intersection of Autism, ADHD, trauma, and power dynamics. A neurodivergent thinker herself, she challenges rigid diagnostic narratives and explores identity beyond labels. Her work blends structure with intuition, psychology with depth, and clarity with unapologetic honesty. Through her writing and cat-assisted philosophy, she invites individuals to rebuild identity consciously, not obediently.
