SOS! Ready for Change. Do I Need a Life Coach or a Therapist?
Discerning Your Path - photo by Vlad Bagacian, Unsplash
Do I Need a Life Coach or a Therapist?
Many people feel overwhelmed, struggling or stuck these days. (You’re not alone!).
Along with facing weighty collective difficulties, we’re coping with the usual slings and arrows of life: studies show that mental health challenges have been skyrocketing over the last few years.
A supportive professional relationship may be invaluable to boost your wellbeing.
Are you ready for change and wondering if coaching or therapy might help, but a little unclear about the differences between the two options?
In this blog, I’ll outline some benefits and limits of coaching and therapy to help you consider what might best support you.
One caveat to acknowledge is that both therapy and coaching were derived from a psychology paradigm, with its inherent biases: I’ll address this, too.
But for now, let me dive in to distinguish life coaching and therapy and to help you better understand which of these routes might be right for you (if either!).
It takes courage to explore coaching & therapy - photo by Hester Qiang on Unsplash
Therapy
Many people turn to therapy when they are in significant emotional, spiritual or psychological pain.
Think of some of the most devastating or excruciating experiences you’ve experienced - and consider how soothing and validating it could be to have a companion who has your back to walk alongside you and help you normalize, understand and perhaps even alleviate your suffering.
Therapy will likely be most fitting if you’re navigating a crisis, mental health challenge, or acute struggles that significantly impact your daily life, such as:
depression
anxiety
addiction
complex PTSD
psychosis
disordered eating
or other clinically-addressed issues
If you’re experiencing violence, abuse, or a shock, loss or betrayal that has pushed you beyond your resources and effective coping, therapy may provide crucial support.
Societal oppression and marginalization, with all its macro and micro aggressions, is often traumatizing: skilful, culturally sensitive therapy may be helpful to heal past wounds and to boost protection, resilience and resourcing for ongoing harms.
When we’re overwhelmed by our current circumstances, such as an illness, caregiving overload or conflict, old losses, stressors and traumas may be re-activated in our bodies and psyches.
We often experience this unconsciously, not realizing that our ‘charged’ emotions, stories and reactions in the present are linked to memories and experiences from the past.
Therefore, therapy often helps us address current challenges and to revisit our personal histories with skilled guidance, consciously encountering and caring for traumatized parts of ourselves that were under-supported, misunderstood or unprotected in the past.
Therapists in many regions of North America are regulated by professional bodies: it differs from one province, state or territory to another.
Therapists, psychologists, and mental health professionals are experienced in a variety of approaches and access a broad array of tools and knowledge to serve individuals, couples, or families.
Research has revealed that the best predictor of successful therapy is the strength of the therapist-client relationship, suggesting that the client’s psychological safety is paramount.
So, while modality and specialization are worthwhile criteria to consider, check out a few different therapists through consultations to discern a good fit.
Trust your instincts as you assess who you feel most comfortable with: to get the most benefit, you need to feel safe to share honestly, especially the raw and messy stuff that you may not often reveal.
If you’re in the swamp of relentless grief, entrenched in limiting patterns that won’t quit, or overwhelmed by persistent powerful feelings like despair or rage, I strongly encourage you to seek out therapy. You deserve to feel better and help is out there.
If you can’t afford private therapy, I suggest that you talk to a health care or social service provider in your community to see if there are reduced-fee options that make this support accessible to you.
Coaching
Where therapy has a primary healing orientation, coaching facilitates learning and growth and helps people navigate change and take brave actions to turn their goals and dreams into reality.
People often explore coaching when they feel stuck and want a thought-partner to access clarity and encouragement to create more of what they really want in work or life.
Some will have already experienced therapy and want to shift their emphasis from understanding and integrating their past to cultivating new possibilities for the present and future.
Many people seek out a coach when initiating change, such as contemplating or pursuing a new career direction. Other times, people hire a coach when they are integrating and responding to changes they may not have chosen, such as a divorce or job loss.
Navigating change can be disorienting, lonely, bumpy for our relationships, and surface vulnerability - especially in a dominant culture that provides little literacy or acknowledgement of common change experiences, such as frustration, grief, liminality (the messy middle!), and not-knowing.
A coach can be an invaluable guide for change.
You may appreciate a coach if you want support to make a pivotal decision, create strategy for work or life, or to develop new habits or practices.
A good coach will offer you deep listening, powerful questions - and typically more neutrality than a friend, partner, or family member - as you explore and determine what feels right for you.
They’ll also help you come up with new strategies and provide accountability to help you follow through with your intentions - especially helpful when you encounter internal resistance to the very changes you consciously want or the external setbacks and obstacles that inevitably arise.
Coaching utilizes an appreciative lens, focusing on the client’s strengths, resources, and possibilities (rather than pathology or perceived deficits).
Coaching helps people anchor in their values and to pay close attention to their thoughts, beliefs, and internal stories so that they cultivate greater awareness, choice and power to consciously author helpful new narratives. (Hello, blind spots!)
Like therapy, there are many different kinds of coaching: career, leadership, organizations, health, money, dating, weight loss, female empowerment, business, productivity, rest, spirituality - there’s an incredible array out there these days.
Unlike therapy, coaching is not a regulated profession, though the ICF is often recognized as the largest international body supporting coaching professionalism and ethics.
Some coaches have had minimal training and/or supervision, others extensive - so, in a consultation with a coach, feel free to bring your questions about their approach, training and credentials.
I have been coaching for almost fifteen years, and if you want to learn about my particular flavour of work, you can do so here.
In short, I’ll share here that I recently graduated from Sas Petherick’s Self-Belief Coaching Academy, which emphasizes developmental psychology, adult development, and a trauma-informed approach.
I’m more passionate than ever to help people develop deeper self-trust and self-belief, courageously expanding their lives and themselves during seasons of change.
I’ll also add that the coaching industry is currently dominated by white men and women from industrialized countries: again, more on bias to follow.
“Every human being is happy when growing in the direction of their highest potential, but it isn't just happiness we long for — it's purpose, a compelling desire to live for something beyond ourselves. We are called to create families, communities, and societies from a potential orientation…[which] invites us to lean toward the emergent and evolutionary, listening for the potential strengths, capacities, and outcomes that are possible if only we invite them forward." - Thomas Hubl
Intersections Between Therapy & Coaching
After reading about some differences between coaching and therapy, you might also be wondering if there’s some overlap between the services.
While some present them as cleanly and entirely distinct, I think it’s not actually so clear cut.
For example, while each has their emphasis, both are flexible to orient to your past, present or future.
Likewise, in both domains, people will often:
acknowledge and express painful thoughts and feelings
uncover limiting beliefs
more deeply understand the fears, shame or adaptive protective patterns that hold them back
practice regulating their nervous systems and accessing healthy and wise parts of themselves
One friend of mine (who has trained and practiced as both a coach and therapist) put it this way:
“Coaching most often focuses on actions and behaviours in connection to a goal and sometimes explores related motivations and experiences; where therapy most often focuses on motivations and experiences and sometimes explores how actions and behaviours connect to a goal.”
Bit tricky, right? But I wanted to be straight up with you: this intersectional-unfolding is the way I see these two professions evolving, shifting and doing their best to help people navigate their lives.
Some coaches and therapists also teach, consult or mentor, providing roadmaps or knowledge to help people achieve highly specific results or build or deepen particular skills.
If you have the impression that messy emotional work should be relegated to therapy or that coaching is more ‘cleanly cerebral,' let me wobble that binary for you: your whole self is welcome in either relationship, even if the scope, intentions and boundaries of the work differ.
So, the distinctions can blur a little, especially in an era where many therapists and coaches train eclectically and across silos.
Coaches have varied backgrounds - some come from corporate cultures, others from government or formal leadership, while others, like myself, draw on more therapeutically-oriented roots.
With my background studying psychology, sociology, human development, adult learning; working for twenty years in the non-profit sector (ten in the violence-against-women sector); and practicing mindfulness and Buddhism (honoring the lineage of Zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh), I work from a socially critical, trauma-informed, and compassionate lens.
I aim to be transparent and ethical as I navigate this transformative work with people.
If privilege and access allow, some people benefit from working with both a therapist and a coach: this concurrent approach can create a powerful synergy whereby you can do your deeper trauma and history-oriented work with a therapist while implementing new strategy, tools and experiments in the present with your coach.
If you value being in community, you might also like to seek out group coaching or therapy:
therapeutic groups may be more process or healing oriented or provide psycho-education to help people live with particular challenges or conditions (e.g. ADHD or grief)
group coaching programs typically support people focused on a specific and shared goal, often providing a blend of curriculum and group coaching | learning
Back to Bias…
As I’ve referenced briefly, both coaching and therapy have cultural biases that have influenced how they have served, impacted and harmed different groups and individuals.
Psychology was predominantly created by North American and European white, straight, able-bodied, cis-men - and this paradigm bears significant influence on today’s ‘helping’ professions.
While many coaching and therapy modalities, governing bodies, and organizations - still highly influenced by white supremacy and colonialism - are evolving in their consciousness and critical analysis, there is still a long way to go to have a broader array of diverse humans influence the theory, modalities, core assumptions and worldview that influence these fields.
Moving forward, especially if we are able to unlearn (traumatized and traumatizing) dominant ways of seeing, thinking, knowing and experiencing, perhaps these ‘helping’ frameworks will evolve to be more contextual, relational, and holistic; and less rationalist, hierarchical, and individualistic.
While many have experienced therapy and coaching to be helpful (including me!), you may want or need to interrogate the approaches and consider if they are safe and respectful to you.
When consulting with a prospective coach or therapist, ask questions to assess if you could feel safe with them: go ahead and query them about their values, mission, or worldview.
Especially if you have aspects of your identity that are marginalized, you will likely want to seek out a professional helper who you trust will be positive, affirming and sensitive to you (e.g BIPOC-positive, queer-positive, disability-positive, trans-positive, etc…).
This is really important, as the last thing you need when receiving support is someone whose approach or manner is traumatizing or requires you to constantly educate them or leave parts of yourself at the door for fear of judgment or recrimination.
Other approaches may be a better fit for you, such as exploring plant medicine; nature-related healing; a spiritual, religious, or a culturally-based tradition or community to honor yourself and the guidance and support you’re seeking.
You might also want to reflect on what your blood, land and/or spiritual ancestors reveal to you about growth and healing or read a critical, evocative book like, The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture, by Gabor Maté.
You could also check out the Coaches Rising Podcast to get a sense of how coaching is evolving as a profession.
How to Choose: Life Coach or Therapist
Having a respectful companion to support your healing and growth can be life-changing.
Whether a coach or a therapist, having someone offer you listening, compassion, and skilful presence is a privilege and a gift.
I wholeheartedly believe that we’re not meant to do this transformative work on our own: we need each other to become more healthy and whole versions of ourselves.
Remember, with any helping professional, you deserve to feel psychologically safe and ethically ‘held:’ it’s that safety that provides the conditions to nurture your wisdom and growth.
You might also check out coaches and therapists through their websites, books, workshops, newsletters, podcasts or social media - so that you get a feel of them to ‘try before you buy.’
If you give therapy a go and after a time, it starts to feel ‘too passive,’ or like you have a good handle on some of the roots of your challenges and you feel hungry for new resources, strategies and tools to experiment with, you may be ripe for coaching.
Conversely, if you’re working towards meaningful goals with a coach but encounter so much internal resistance that you’re not seeing concrete progress and you feel like you’re ‘spinning your wheels,’ you may do better going to the roots of trauma work in therapy.
I hope this helps illuminate the path of guidance you’re seeking at this time in your life.
If you’ve got more questions about whether you want to seek a therapist or coach, please put them in the comments below or quietly shoot them my way here.
(I’ve got trusted coaches and therapists in my circles and I’m always happy to offer referrals. I also have loads of coaching and therapy books | resources to suggest).
I’d love to help you ascertain a wise next step for YOU.
P.S. If you’re curious about coaching, please set up a free 60-minute consult with me to explore your options. I’d love to hear from you.
P.P.S. Want to hear another take on the differences between a therapist and life coach? Try this.
Nicola Holmes is a Change & Transition Coach who helps people turn their potent questions, dreams and goals into inspired action. With warmth and wisdom, she’ll guide you to untangle constraints and cultivate courage to create a more aligned and joyful life. She has a BASc in Human Development, an MEd in Adult Learning and spent two decades working in the non-profit sector. Along with coaching for the past 16 years, she’s mama to two young spirited kids and dedicated to Buddhism. Having experienced Long-Covid and a move over the past two years, she brings deep empathy to others who are exploring how they’ve changed and who they’re becoming in turbulent times. Check out Nicola @nicolaholmescoach or join the email party for inspiration and resources to fuel the changes you want.