The Difference Between Therapy and Coaching
Hi there!
Welcome back to the MoodiNews. Every Thursday, we discuss a variety of matters related to mental health and self-improvement.
I’m so glad you’re here.
In today’s post, we will be discussing: THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THERAPY AND COACHING!
Let’s start with a diagram that I often use with my clients:
Optimization Zone
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Baseline
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Crisis Zone
Looking at the diagram above, from the bottom up, here’s what you need to know:
People in the Crisis Zone struggle with tasks of everyday functioning. They often have a hard time taking care of themselves and are unable to manage basic responsibilities—i.e., holding down a job, maintaining healthy relationships, controlling their impulses, staying organized, etc.
People at Baseline are able to successfully manage reasonable levels of stress and tolerate reasonable changes within their everyday environment. People at Baseline do not engage in activities of overachievement, but they do solve their problems consistently and function effectively enough to keep themselves out of crisis.
The Optimization Zone is where self-improvement happens. People who function within the Optimization Zone are self-aware, flexible, self-compassionate, and disciplined. The benefit of living within the Optimization Zone is that it allows you to go above and beyond what life demands on a daily basis, in order to create a more ideal life by choice.
So, how does the diagram above explain the difference between therapy and coaching?
Glad you asked!
Therapy serves as a means for getting people out of the Crisis Zone. Generally speaking, therapists use interventions that are designed to help people overcome issues of basic functioning. Thus, therapy typically moves more slowly than coaching and delves quite deeply into a person’s particular (often complex) issues. It is common for people in therapy to require healing work—that is, they must revisit their past in order to find their way forward. Thus, in therapy, the initial goal of the work is usually to bring a person up to Baseline.
Coaching is different. Coaching involves offering guidance or mentorship to a person who is already functioning at Baseline in order to help them improve their current life outcomes. Unlike therapists, coaches are not trained to do healing (therapeutic) work by examining a person’s past, so coaches instead focus entirely on their client’s future, in order to help them achieve specific results that will then vault them into the Optimization Zone. (Keep in mind that people who are in the Crisis Zone do not make a good fit for coaching, because they typically cannot sustain change long enough to stay at or above Baseline.)
Here are a few other important distinctions between therapy and coaching:
1) Therapy is used to treat psychological disorders. It’s an evidence-based intervention for mental illness, which is why it’s considered a health/treatment issue and is covered by medical insurance.
Coaching does not necessarily focus on (improving) a person’s emotional well-being. While many coaches do address emotional issues in their work, few are qualified to treat complex psychological dysfunction. Thus, coaches typically tie their cognitive work with clients in with another specialization—for instance, nutrition, entrepreneurship, or dating—rather than focusing exclusively on a person’s mental functioning, as therapists do.
2) Therapists practice under the oversight of licensing boards that set strict standards for ethical practice and continuing education. Therapists are extensively trained because they work with vulnerable populations and therefore have the potential to cause a lot of harm to clients if they practice without proper precautions in place.
Coaching is a less-formalized discipline. Certification opportunities do exist for coaches, but many coaches use their life experience and past personal successes to guide their clients, as opposed to any formalized training. Importantly, there are no regulatory boards that oversee the work of coaches, so anyone can enter into the profession at anytime. Obviously, this causes some people to question the credibility of coaching—however, that same flexibility can also be quite helpful, as it allows coaches to tailor their services based on specialization and client demand without the annoying red-tape found in other fields.
3) Coaching is typically a short-term intervention, intended to help people overcome situational (temporary) stress or performance-related issues. Coaching is always solution-focused, and therefore emphasizes problem-solving and the use of strategy to help a person overcome their particular struggles.
Therapy, on the other hand, tends to be a more open-ended exchange, and can be used to address many simultaneous, complex, long-term issues all at once—and over a longer period of time. Because therapy offers more intensive support for people in unstable situations, it often plays more of an essential role in a person’s functioning, rather than coaching, which typically plays a more additive role to a person’s functioning.
Lastly…
4) All therapists can offer coaching. Not all coaches can offer therapy. Many people seek out coaching for assistance in areas where therapists do not specialize. However, therapy inevitably supports people in a lot of ways similar to coaching—for example, in discussing challenges around health, dating, or career planning. Therefore, coaching happens all the time in therapy—the reverse is more rarely true. (In fact, a lot of people elect to stay in (or might even to seek out) therapy even after reaching a Baseline state of well-being, simply to explore the Optimization Zone with some additional support—this can change the role of therapy overtime, as well.)
In summation, while there are fundamental differences between therapy and coaching, both can be helpful avenues for pursuing personal growth and self-improvement. Depending on your goals, how well you are managing your current levels of stress, and how much support you imagine you will need in the process of change, one approach might be more effective than the other.
Either way, what’s most important is that you get the results that you are looking for.