Do I Need a Life Coach or a Therapist?
Life coaching or therapy?
“Healing happens in the presence of empathy and compassion.”
If you are seeking help with stress management, well-being, and healing, or dealing with significant challenges in your life, you may be questioning whether you need a therapist or a life coach.
You might be considering a life coach because your previous experience with therapy didn't yield the results you wanted. Conversely, you might have worked with a life coach who focused on positive mindset but didn't achieve optimal results.
I am sharing these insights to clarify the dilemma of “who can really help me?”
Let's first focus on the main differences between a life coach and a psychotherapist.
Education and Credentials
The educational paths for each are very different. Psychotherapists must have a master’s degree in counseling, social work, or psychology. They are also required to be regulated by the state to practice and have credentials. Psychotherapists are mental health professionals; they assess, diagnose, and treat mental illness, often in collaboration with psychiatrists.
Life coaches, on the other hand, do not have a specific educational requirement. They can take courses and training from various agencies. Coaching paths can vary from business coaching to career coaching, executive coaching, transformational coaching, and health coaching. There is no requirement for credentials to be a coach, though a practice of integrity and ethics is essential. Life coaches do not make mental health assessments, diagnose, or treat any conditions. This is a crucial distinction.
Focus and Approach
Coaches work with mindset issues, including conditioning, worldview, limiting beliefs, and values. They offer strategies to help reduce stress caused by negative thinking, rumination about the past, overwhelm, and poor lifestyle choices. Coaches also help clarify life goals and the process of achieving them.
Therapists, however, address deeper mental health issues, providing a structured environment to explore and treat underlying psychological conditions.
Choosing the Right Person
What matters most is the person you choose to work with rather than their credentials. You can work with a therapist with a Ph.D. for years without significant healing and transformation. Conversely, you might work with a skilled life coach and experience major changes within a year. However, you could also spend thousands on a life coach with poor results.
Without knowing your specific needs and goals, I can’t definitively tell you which professional you need. However, I can offer some guidance.
Qualities to Look For
Choose a professional who is fully present and sees you without bringing their own agenda. In my 30 years of experience in fitness-human performance and 11 years of life coaching, I have found that unhealthy behaviors and negative thinking often stem from core limiting beliefs such as "I am not enough" or "I am not worthy." Work with someone who can help you to dismantle those core beliefs.
Seeing a coach educated in positive psychology and personal development who focuses only on mindset will not address those core beliefs. It will address behaviors and patterns without uncovering what fuels them. This approach is like taking a painkiller for a chronic headache without addressing the cause. Positive thinking does not promote healing and can lead to denial and spiritual bypassing.
Healing requires addressing the emotional body and subconscious mind where conditioning resides. Many professionals have grown tired of personal growth and positive psychology hacks that promise change but only address the cognitive mind. True healing and transformation require accessing the emotional body, we have to be willing to go to the core wound..
Therapy vs. Coaching
Many therapies and coaching methods focus on coping strategies, but coping is not healing. Talk therapy and positive psychology are good starting points, but the journey must deepen. It’s important to address past events and connect your behaviors to them. Understanding these connections gives you the power to make choices and let go of patterns and beliefs that no longer serve you.
True healing involves releasing unresolved pain, trapped emotions, and negative limiting beliefs. This is somatic and trauma work. Both therapists and life coaches can be trained in these areas without needing a college degree or master’s. Programs by experts like Gabor Maté, Peter Levine, and Richard Schwartz offer sound practices and education for both professions.
Finding the Right Guide
Choose a guide who understands psychology, the effects of stress and trauma on your body. Most importantly, choose someone who makes you feel safe, is compassionate, and offers strategies to integrate the work between sessions. Choose someone who validates your feelings and emotions, not your stories. The past is a reference, but healing happens in the present. You guide’s job is to lead you back to your truestet Self, not to be your best friend.
When looking for someone to support you, do your homework. Check their education and who they typically help. Request a short phone call to ask questions and ensure you are heard and understood. If the professional is more interested in impressing you than in you, find someone else.
During sessions, notice if your nervous system relaxes. Do you feel seen and heard? Is your guide compassionate while also telling you the truth? Do they empower you to find the healer within yourself?
Conclusion
Discernment is key. Follow your intuition in choosing your teacher or guide on this journey. Select someone who brings you closer to your truth and essence. Healing occurs in a compassionate and safe relationship. Your guide should help you reconnect with yourself, love, and a higher power.
Look beyond credentials and fancy offices. Choose a guide who can navigate grief, fear, anger, guilt, and sadness with fierce compassion. The best guides are those who have walked their own paths of pain and transformation.
So, life coach or therapist? I hope this blog helps you seek someone beyond their titles.
Much love,
Alex