If you have ever asked yourself this question, you are not alone! There are some similarities between coaching a therapy that can lead to confusion, and as I have worked as both a therapist and a coach, my goal in this blog is to help clear that up!
The short version is that coaching is like being a swimmer. You are working with a coach because you want to become a champion swimmer. Therapy is like being a patient of a physical therapist who gives you swimming exercises to gain range of motion and the mobility to start to be able to swim after an injury or medical problem.
Life coaching is most simply about helping you identify and achieve your goals! Like a sports coach helps an athlete, a good life coach provides quality feedback, so you can identify areas to create exponential growth and reach your goals at an accelerated pace! Life coaches help you see yourself more clearly, gain skills and habits that lead to success, and gain confidence to get there. Coaches may use research from multiple disciplines, including positive psychology, to inform their understanding of human behavior and goal attainment. Because of that, the coaching experience is usually positive, strengths-based, and empowering!
Those who are a good fit to work with a life coach are typically people who are doing okay in life but want more. For example, Oprah and Leonardo DiCaprio talk about how their life coaches have played a role in helping them towards their success. Coaching is based on the client is willing to work collaboratively. The coach is an expert in behavior, strategy, thriving, and change, but the client is the expert in their life and experience. A coach provides insight, encouragement, and that extra push on hard days. Coaches celebrate with you and help you rehearse and study what is going well, and where you can upgrade even more.
Research suggests that coaching is much more effective than trying to help yourself. In one study, 80 percent of those asked said coaching helped them increase their confidence!* Why? For the same reason that working with a seasoned swim coach is more effective than jumping in a pool, taking a few strokes, and hoping to become a confident champion.
Success is a skill, and it can be taught and learned, like swimming techniques. Think about this; there is no Olympian in history and no sports team that has never worked with a coach. The most successful people in history have advisors and experts that help them gain and sustain their success.
Now, let’s talk about therapy. Again, it is like working with a physical therapist to resolve an injury, or maybe even a mental health therapist to get over a fear of the water. Both champion swimmers and physical therapy patients get in a pool and have conversations about what to do in the pool, but the discussion and goals are vastly different.
In therapy, the focus is typically on the past, on hurts, trauma, or psychological pain that is keeping us from functioning well in daily life. Therapy typically involves a medical diagnosis to treat a mental illness and is considered part of the medical profession. There is an illness, trauma, or disorder that must be healed so that the individual can go back to functioning in life. In order for a therapist to be paid for their work by medical insurance, the person must have a diagnosis. If there is no diagnosis, medical insurance does not consider the work a therapist is doing to actually be therapy. In this model, the therapist is a trained expert in treating illness, and the patient is not an expert; they are receiving the treatment.
Neither therapy nor coaching is right, wrong, good, or bad. Both serve a purpose and are important to help people transform and achieve something they could not otherwise! If coaching seems like the best fit for where you are in life, I would love to connect! You can schedule a free initial strategy session by clicking below.
*https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4853380/