There are significant and obvious differences between coaching and therapy, but it is surprisingly challenging to approach a substantial grey area. Psychotherapy is fundamentally a guided exploration which prizes autonomy and seeks to relieve pain and suffering. This is a place for deep work undertaken in a unique relationship. Psychotherapy leverages an understanding of development and implicit or pre-verbal memory in who we sense ourselves to be, how we navigate emotions, how we show up in relationship, and how we came to be where we find ourselves. A therapist understands the change process at a fundamental level, including pitfalls, risks, and where this process can be harmful if mismanaged.
People present for therapy for a wide range of reasons; feeling depressed, anxious, and or burnt out, questioning alcohol use, wondering if an intimate relationship is viable, wondering about a sense of purpose or meaning, to process experiences of trauma, to figure out a vague unhappiness, identify new direction, navigate elderly parents, challenging teens. Often in those explorations unexpected material comes up which may be processed, usually in an approach avoidance dance, especially where difficult truths may be revealed. This can help in finding peace with an underlying reality for which there was formerly only a vague sense, but which now explains a lot. Revelations can be extraordinarily difficult to face especially where feelings of shame, guilt, grief, rage, inadequacy, loss, of being unloved or feeling unworthy are concerned. We build considerable defenses to protect ourselves against these, and therapy is about the cautious process of folding back the layers. The hope is people find a deeper understanding for who they are, for where they are, and a richer experience of meaning with peace and joy. This opens choices, settles anxieties, lays to rest internal conflict. But therapists are well aware of the trade-offs, and not everyone is willing or able or even wants to do this work. Therapists are specifically trained in attunement and a deliberate sense for timing and pacing. It is a critical and unique skill to recognize and honor where people are willing and able to explore, where support and not persistent attempts at interpretation is more appropriate, where pushing risks unacceptable harm.
Coaching by contrast has a goal of solving a concrete and well-defined problem or developing a specific skill set. This can include behavioral strategies to more effectively navigate ADHD, advice and resources contending with divorce, elucidating career goals, improving performance, developing skills. Clarifying goals and strategies towards success can include providing information, encouragement, resources, advice, exploration of blocking ideas, career assessments, among many other things. Coaching can function as a scaffolding from which something new is built with a focus on meaning and purpose and sometimes redefining ideas of success.
Both are a shared space created by two or more people. Both are creative. Both seek growth. Each requires a fundamentally different education and stance. Therapists often provide coaching in a therapy relationship in the form of encouragement, defining goals, providing resources. Coaches, however, cannot provide therapy. And here is where it can get tricky. Where one ends and another begins is sometimes obvious. Coaches do not treat medical diagnoses, for example major depressive disorder or generalized anxiety disorder. But if anxiety is identified to be a blocking problem where does this slide from the purview of coaching to formal treatment? Managing stressors towards a goal is very different from unearthing origins, meaning, purposes served, and understanding towards foundational change. If anxiety is related to buried memories of trauma, a mistaken belief in one’s fundamental inferiority, a misapprehension that in fact growing up was not an ideal circumstance, risk of intensely negative feelings and what they might mean, comes roaring to the forefront.
In those driven by rather than informed by feelings, this can be particularly risky. Individuals can be either helped or harmed in these moments, meaning clinicians can reinforce painful distorted beliefs and painful underlying realities, or they can begin the process of helping someone understand in an environment that strives to make this work tolerable. We often do not say in therapy that an individual has had trauma, we ask what their specific experience was. This is deliberate in valuing an individual’s perception of what happened, but also it provides layers of information to be used in service of growth and understanding. If someone does not define their experience as traumatic, it often doesn’t help to insist that it is. There are defenses to be accounted for, including the reason behind defenses in the first place. They are protective, after all.
Another area in which the psychotherapy relationship differs is in a deliberate use of feelings. What feelings signify in both self and other is attended to with consideration for possible impacts. This is particularly important in the face of painful feelings such as anger or shame. Navigating emotions expertly means more than just not lashing out or reacting thoughtlessly in a psychotherapeutic relationship but rather deliberately immersing oneself in feelings that come up, and exploring this for meaning. Sometimes it means sorting out feelings arising in the realm of the other versus the stirring of one’s own deeply rooted issues. We all have them, but psychotherapists cultivate awareness for and use this in service of the client. Because this is work steeped in vulnerability psychotherapy training places an emphasis on ethics, understanding one’s own values, and being intimately aware of one’s own issues. We learn specifically not to impose clinician values on clients, why this is harmful, and what to do when we feel challenged in the work. We learn how to effectively navigate our own shame, sadness, anger in service of client growth and well-being.
Both therapy and coaching are interested in well-being, but for the former it is a mandate. So how does coaching work in a therapist’s hands? Stay tuned for part II in this series and reach out with questions and inquiries.
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