What is Life Coaching and how is it different from Counseling?
Life coaches help the clients they work with focus on identifying and moving towards personal and, at times, professional goals. Through focused coaching support, clients can learn healthy and helpful ways of navigating through challenges in creating a life they feel excited about.
It may be interesting to learn that life coaching is rooted in clinical theory, often drawing on the work of Dr. Carl Rogers, Dr. Alfred Adler, and Dr. Carl Jung.
Rogers, Adler and Jung saw individuals as fully capable artists of their lives, and frequently involved their clients in goal setting and life planning. These are all tenets and approaches in today’s life coaching methods.
Coaching takes the best of those approaches, along with a new type of assistance for clients, such as:
• Working with the client to help them define life dreams and goals
• Formulating a plan that will foster and grow the client’s skills and talents
• Helping the client navigate difficult challenges in reaching their goals
• Teaching tools and providing materials to assist the client
• Helping the client with focus and accountability
• Providing structure, encouragement and support
• Providing intentional and empathetic listening
Is a Life Coach the same as a Therapist?
Experienced coaches have similar qualities to counselors, in that coaches listen, observe, encourage and customize their approach to individual client needs.
However, there differences between coaches and therapists. For example, a life coach partners up with the people they work with to help the client improve and enhance the quality of their lives in helping the client move forward. Coaches do not analyze the past.
A therapist works with and counsels a client dealing with emotional challenges, mental illness, trauma, grief and loss, and relationship issues. A therapist often draws on the client’s past history in order to help the client heal. This also improves the quality of the client’s life.
Additionally, a life coach works actively with the client in order to create solutions and strategies; they believe the client is naturally creative and resourceful. Often times, the coach’s role is to provide support so that the client can further develop their inherent skills, confidence and creativity.
Similar to therapists, life coaches support their coaching clients via in person or phone session in order to help the client create their best personal and professional life.
Through specific strategies and skills, the coach helps you define your goals and create the life you envision. Coaches help you focus, provide direction, compassionately challenge you, motivate you and celebrate with you.
What happens if I need a Therapist vs. a Life Coach?
If after our first session, or at some point during our coaching work together, it is apparent that you would be better supported by Psychotherapy, and you are not located in California (the State I am licensed in as a Marriage and Family Therapist), I will do my best to provide you with clinical referrals in your area, and will refer you out to a therapist.
If you are located in the State of California, and would prefer to work with me in my Psychotherapists’ role, we can discuss this and, as long as it best supports what you hope to achieve in counseling, and falls under my scope of practice, I may provide therapeutic support for you.
In my coaching role, it is important to understand that while I may draw on particular aspects from both disciplines from time-to-time, such as intentional listening, affirming, encouraging, reflecting, and supporting with empathy, I do not work in both roles at the same time with clients. This would be considered operating in a “dual role.” Providing counseling and coaching at the same time is not something that clinical therapists engage in, nor should a life coach without clinical training and licensing provide psychotherapy to coaching clients.
Though I am a Licensed Therapist, and though Life Coaching has aspects that are similar to counseling, should we work together, it is important for you to understand that my role and work as a Life Coach is separate than my role as a Psychotherapist.
Finally, I do not provide Business Coaching for former clinical clients.