As a Licensed Mental Health Counselor, I am both a life coach and a counselor, people often ask me what the difference is between the two. For clarification, I make the following distinctions:
The purpose of coaching is to help the client achieve goals in the context of one's whole life. In a coaching relationship the coach and the client are equal partners with the client being naturally creative, resourceful and whole. The agenda for the session is chosen by the client who takes responsible action on his or her personal vision. Together the coach and client develop a plan and a strategy that accelerate the client’s movement forward towards the established goal. The emphasis in coaching is on the present with an eye to the future and taking incremental steps towards those goals that are aligned with one's values.
In counseling the counselor is almost always considered the expert. Clients generally come to counseling when they are struggling emotionally with an issue. Counseling is about helping the client process, understand and resolve his or her past issues in order to live more fully in the present. Coaching and counseling can work together because while therapy deals with deeper psychological issues, coaching can help keep the client's everyday life on track.
In other words, Counseling is about resolving the past to live more fully in the present while coaching is looking at the present and beyond to opportunities and possibilities in one's future.
A lot has been written lately on the differences between therapy and coaching. Or between counseling and coaching. There may be differences on some levels, but I find that much of it is simply splitting hairs so that one modality seems better than another; so that you will buy one product rather than another.
The product I am offering is assistance and support. The fact that I am licensed tells you that I have completed an advanced degree program, and that I continue to study and develop those very skills that make me effective in providing you with assistance and support.
My clients come to me to develop self-awareness, to make change in their lives, to better understand their own potential. We use whatever tools are needed to make those changes a client wants or chooses to make. If something in your past keeps you from being successful now, then we will look at your past. If you want your future to look different, we will look at today to see where changes need to be made. If you are sad or anxious, we will look at ways to eliminate those difficulties. This is typically called solution focused therapy, but it works just as well when I call it solution focused coaching. With this kind of work, my client chooses our direction, chooses the goals, and decides when he or she has achieved as much as is desired at that point in time.
If we choose to call the work we do together coaching, we are not required to maintain confidentiality; we can hold our sessions by telephone if you prefer; and you will not have a diagnosis – a label defining a mental health issue. If you are seeking counseling, my behavior will not be different, I will use the same tools, but I won’t conduct our sessions by telephone as a personal choice.
So, you decide:
Would you prefer coaching to help out with some life issues?
Are you more comfortable with the concept and confidentiality of counseling?
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