Therapy vs life coaching
Essentially therapy is a needs-based service and coaching is a desired-based service.
Coaching will get you to a desired point in your life a lot faster than you would on your own efforts. The coaching industry is full of various titles but the principal is to train you to become better and stay focused on your goals.
Therapy is a process of clearing blocks and making you feel whole again. You would expect to address recurring problems and work on the cause.
More likely than not you’d be in a situation where you require elements of therapy and coaching because once you’ve cleared mental struggles the thought of building your life to the next level can be overwhelming. After therapy, many people snap back into old ways because of this. Coaches also find they need to do therapy work to help clients clear mental blocks.
The issue comes when you give coaching to someone that needs therapy because the person ends up pushing forward in life to cover up the deeper issue. Also, if you keep giving therapy to someone that needs coaching they’ll get too comfortable with talking and not step up to practical life duties.
The best results I’ve seen, and from the top therapists, is from the approach of applied psychology. With this you do exploration work to find your patterns, strengths and weaknesses. Once you have this you train the person to work to their strengths and swing the patterns in a better direction. For example, someone that has anger issues also has many strengths in life. Help them build confidence in their strengths so that they can use their pattern of frustration towards achieving their goals.
I’m a huge believer in therapy and coaching but I’m a bigger believer in applied psychology. Happy to answer any questions and guide you in the right direction – especially if you had a bad experience in the past or are new to this.
