In my practice, I have received this question quite often: What is the difference between coaching and therapy?
Therapy sounds quite serious, like someone is mentally ill and needs extreme treatment and pills, and it is almost crazy. Not quite true. That is something psychiatrists are dealing with.
Therapy helps you heal past emotions, and people need psychological training to perform it, a training that spans many years (I have six+). Therapy helps with understanding past experiences and with healing them.
Coaching helps you achieve goals, and it’s mostly based on the coach’s personal experience. Like “If I could do it, then you can do it too. Let me show you how I did it, and you can see if you can do it as well”.
It is a term coming from sports where we find coaches who are leading the team to success. Most coaches from sports have been themselves players in a particular sport, and after retiring or injuring themselves and not being able to play anymore, they decided to work as a coach for the same sport they have practiced and use the experience from the field.
In time it was discovered that people could use this kind of coaches in their daily life as well, to help them deal with different areas of their lives: body issues, food, career, parenting, performance in music, and other various arts, business, and I am sure that today, we can find coaches for everything. Not a bad thing. Usually, if we want to go to a higher level in any field, we need help, and there is no shame in asking for it, only strength.
There are also extensive readings one can do by self-study about how to help oneself overcome some issues, known as “self-help” books. Reading helps, yet at some point, it is difficult to work alone on yourself, and you need help from another person.
Some coaches have taken so many programs that they have become really good at what they do. The fact that they went on many programs shows that they have acquired great personal experience through self-directed learning and achieving their own goals. They learned new tools and awareness to help both themselves and the clients.
In my practice, I use both methods in one session. Depends very much on the necessity of the people I work with. Some people are ready to look at their history and heal some wounds, and then they can move further to working on achieving their goals.
Healing wounds from the past can be easy or hard, depending on each person’s personal experience and history. It is a bit like modeling clay. Sometimes you may need to bring to dust whatever you thought was true for you, to add water (new information, perspectives, feelings), and reshape it into a conscious story that can help you move forward. Not always easy, yet very rewarding for those who dare to do the work. One can achieve a lot working alone, yet if one wants to move past one’s limits, assistance is required. It is easier to share the load of the work and talk it through together with someone who knows how to sustain and give space to this kind of inner process.
Many people cannot touch their past because it is too painful, and prefer coaching instead. In time, past stories come forward, and a measure of healing is achieved through the coaching process.
My experience, both personal and from my practice, is that 90 % of people need to heal some emotional blockage first before they can go further in their lives and achieve goals. Here is where I would like to ask those who are working as a coach, and who feel that they are stumbling in the “healing” part of their client’s process, to make a conscious decision and send them to a therapist. As I said, asking for help is a strength.
Each person needs to understand themselves in their own time. The work, both on the past and the future, happens in layers, step by step, all in good time. Each experience in their life adds a measure of understanding both about own past and about the steps they may need to take to have the future they want. The process takes as long as it takes.
In case this article has awakened thoughts that may need to be sorted out, leave a comment, or/and contact me here. A lot can be sorted out in ONE good conversation!
I wish you health and resilience!
Yours
Gabriela Sirbu
PS. My book “Speak the Unspoken: exploring the unwritten rules of North Norway” is out. If you have an address in Norway, you can find it with me if you want it signed (or not). Or on www.norli.no (click og send/hent from Book store in Tromsø). If you are outside Norway, Amazon will do the trick. Enjoy!
Also, my book “Speak the Unspoken: exploring the unwritten rules of North Norway” is out. If you have an address in Norway, you can get it directly from me HERE if you want it signed or on www.norli.no (click og send/hent from Book store in Tromsø). If you are outside Norway, Amazon will do the trick. Enjoy!
