EP 84 - The Third Entity: The Secret to Mastering Coaching Relationships & Emotional Detachment
6 Aug 2026 · 3 min
Dr Shiny Unsal explains how to treat a coaching relationship as a separate entity with its own rules, distinct from your personal attachment patterns. He covers anxious attachment, childhood conditioning, and using intuition as a detached tool rather than a personal reaction.
Chapters
A relationship is a third separate living entity co-created by two or more people. It's what happens in between spaces. It's not you, not the client, it's the relationship, right? So this, this is you, the coach. This is the client. That is the relationship. That's a separate entity. It lives by its own rules and regulations. It's a, it's a different system. This system is gonna require its own mission, vision statements, and values, and boundaries, and timeline, and all that, okay? You're literally becoming an architect of this third entity. A very, very simple format you can practice in your breakout sessions. You're gonna say, every time you hear something, oh, I hear what you're saying, and then you're gonna ask a question. What is a loving boundary you can communicate from now on? The formula is, I hear what you're saying, and here's my question, open-ended question. I see what I see what you're saying, or I see your point. Here is my question. As you will remember, there are 4 attachment styles. If you have an anxious attachment style, here is the symptom. I know it because I have gone through it. I had anxious attachment style because of my conditioning with my father. I need to do something so that I receive love. That's anxiety. That's anxiousness. If you find yourself, oh my God, you know, I'm doing it because I need to receive love. That's the conditioning that we first had when we were little. And that is why we don't feel safe. You're trying to get accepted. You're trying to get understood. You're trying to be safe, seen, heard, appreciated. That's a conditioning.
One of the things that really stuck out to me, and I agree with Jan, is detaching from your own personal insights. But for me, I realized when I'm in a coaching session, especially when I'm not grounded, like Jan said, you're ending up coaching yourself throughout the whole time that you're there because you're having to— you have to get back to center each time. So each time something hits you, you're like, okay, you cannot react to that. Coaching yourself back in. So the sooner you get to the point where you are automatically coaching yourself throughout, you don't have to think about it anymore. And I think that becomes a little difficult in the beginning because you're having to coach yourself and the other person.
I just want you to use your intuition. You are your own universe and your intuition is telling you something. The trick is you cannot be attached to your intuition. You cannot be attached to your thinking, your feeling, anything, because it's not about you.
Okay?
What you do is you use your intuition as a tool and then you just separate yourself from it and then you just drop it as a beneficial contribution to your client. Something like, my intuition tells me there might be more into this. I might be wrong. Shall we look at this or not? Boom. So it's always like detached. Whenever you are detached, from your perspective, that's mastery.
More from Dr


EP 92 - My 5 Take-Aways From Peter Diamandis & Neil deGrasse Tyson In The XPrize Moonshot Conference


EP 90 - What Happens When Coaches Go to the Next Level? | Inside Our ICF PCC Path


EP 88 - The Mental Decluttering Party: Clear Your Mind, Find Your Truth & Unlock Your Potential


EP 87 - Your Presence Is the Coaching: How to Create Safety, Trust & Transformation


EP 85 - Stop Assuming. Start Coaching. | The Mental Blocks That Get in the Way of Great Coaching


EP 81 - The 7 C's of Leadership: How Great Leaders Think, Communicate, and Inspire