What’s the difference between working with a life coach versus a counsellor or therapist.
This depends on two things:
Whether you want to deal with your future and/or present > Life and Career Coaching.
Or your past > Counselling & Therapy.
Coaching:
Coaching is action orientated.
A client chooses to work with me to clarify their goals, identify obstacles, problematic behaviours or barriers they might not have noticed in order to create action plans to achieve their desired outcome.
Your goals can be small i.e. you might want to finesse how you live your day-to-day life, or work out whether moving from A to B is the right thing to do. A big goal could be working on how to change career completely, or needing to find yourself again after a big life change (divorce, empty nest syndrome, bereavement).
The main way I or any life coach differs to a counsellor or therapist works is that we take the client’s current starting point as a neutral ground and will be more action based from that point onward by asking gently challenging questions.
I will enable you to take control of your life.
Counsellor:
Counselling is coping-orientated. Counsellors want to help you realise how you feel. In speaking to a counsellor you are more likely to focus on the short-term ‘here and now’ and find ways to manage your current issues and feelings.
Counselling may be more commonly used to treat issues that aren’t necessarily diagnosed mental conditions. These might include things like grief counselling and bereavement, relationship counselling, building coping strategies, and support with issues such as low self-esteem. These issues may be considered to be related to the general ‘ups and downs’ of life, although this isn’t to say that they are any less significant than formal mental health conditions.
It is not uncommon for clients to see a counsellor and then move on to seeing a life coach to help them move forwards once they have dealt with the ‘now’.
Therapist:
With therapy, you are more likely to explore the ‘backstory’ to your problems in order to get to the root cause. This will enable you to understand how your past experiences may have influenced the way you’re feeling, challenge the way you respond to these, and then move forwards.
Therapy is generally a longer-term journey to diagnose and resolve problematic beliefs, behaviours, feelings, relationship issues and sometimes physical responses. e.g. depression, anxiety, OCD or PTSD. This is because therapy is evidence-based and formulation-driven.
It focuses on past traumas and issues to change self-destructive habits, improve (or repair) relationships and work through painful feelings. Therapy focuses on introspection and analysis (the past) with the hope of resolving issues and creating a more stable and manageable future.
I place a great deal of importance on trust and transparency - if you are unsure as to whether you need coaching, therapy or counselling book a discovery chat with me. If, during our chat, I think talking therapy would be better suited to your needs, we can discuss potential alternatives that may be more appropriate.