Therapy vs. Coaching
People often ask what the difference is between therapy/counseling and life coaching. The way we think of it in my Wayfinder coaching practice is this: when there's something hurting you, blocking you, or otherwise not working the way it should be, the therapist is like your surgeon. They're there to dig out all the shrapnel and make sure you’re not in any major harm anymore. The life coach, then, is like your physical therapist, there to get you in tip-top human working condition, healthy and whole.
Let's dig into this a bit with a made-up person...we'll call her Liv. Liv's gone through a lot in her life so far. Growing up, her family dynamic wasn't exactly idyllic. Instead, Liv's dad was an angry alcoholic for the first 23 years of her life, only entering recovery after Liz had moved away and was on her own. His wild mood swings when drinking dictated how everyone else in the family responded. Walking on eggshells and doing everything she could not to upset him was a specialty Liv learned to excel at.
While she was in college, Liv worked really, really hard to maintain a part-time job and a 3.9 GPA. She rarely took the time to relax and be a silly college kid like most of her friends because she was completely focused on succeeding. She was pretty isolated, with her head down in her books, but she knew that all her hard work would help ensure she got a good job in finance, just like her Uncle Jim, whose house/car/new carpet/vacations her mom never stopped talking about. (I mean, he did take their whole family to Paris one year!)
She got her entry-level finance job and was proud of her paychecks, which were better than her other friends who were still struggling to make ends meet. Even though she was stressed out by the demands of the job, she excelled at it because she continued to push herself. She was pleased with herself. She was actually "making it" in a respected field.
She got a promotion after her first year and, when her co-workers took her out to celebrate, she met a guy. Shortly thereafter, they started dating seriously -- it was her first "real" relationship. They moved in together after just 4 months, even though he was only working part-time and couldn't afford to pay his share of the rent and bills. Liv liked him, but (in hindsight...always in hindsight) what she actually liked was that he liked her. She'd never had a serious, long-term boyfriend before.
So she let him live at her place, pitching in with the bills whenever he could. He also used her car, rarely filling it up with gas. And ate most of the groceries. And would "forget" to empty the litter box. And sat around playing video games on days he wasn't working instead of looking for full-time work. And asked her for money for new video games.
Liv made a lot of excuses for him and told herself to overlook the things that weren't exactly ideal. She didn't confront him about it, except on the very rare occasion when she was exhausted from work and she came home to see him sitting around in dirty sweatpants with fast food wrappers all over the place. She'd learned throughout her life that keeping the peace was the most important thing to do in a relationship. And she was happy, after all! She had a good job, a nice apartment, and a live-in boyfriend -- everything she was supposed to have.
Except. Well. She WASN'T actually happy. Not really.
Not at night when insomnia wouldn't let her sleep because her mind kept going and going and going telling her that something wasn't right. Not when she came home from work after being there 10 hours, and knowing she had at least 2 more hours of work to do at night. And not when, way down deep inside, a teeny tiny voice crept up inside her and told her was actually really fed up and even kind of grossed out by her boyfriend.
OK! POOR LIV, eh? Now let's unpack this:
1) Childhood with alcoholic father: THERAPY. While a coach can definitely help Liv out with some of the after-effects of this childhood trauma, there's A LOT to uncover and excavate here and it likely runs deeper than she even knows. What did it do to her, to not REALLY have a father available to her? How did her coping mechanisms both serve her and hurt her? Is there anything there she hasn't truly looked at yet, that she needs to? A great therapist can help Liv work through all of this, and understand how it's led her to become the person she is today.
2) Working hard, at the exclusion of living a happy life, in order to be successful in a "good" job: COACH. This is practically an epidemic -- successful, smart, hard-working people get sucked into the notion that SUCCESS AT ALL COSTS is what life is about. And, furthermore, that SUCCESS is defined in very rigid terms such as salary, job title, field, etc. This is one of my areas of expertise: helping brilliant, creative, wild, fun people understand what success ACTUALLY looks like for them, and then helping them go out and get it.
3) A relationship without open communication or fair partnership: COACH. This one absolutely builds off point number one above, but can be even further revealed to Liv with a good coach. A coach can help her understand why she got into the relationship in the first place, why she stayed, and what she'd like to change. That might mean coaching her through changes with her existing partner -- including how to communicate her needs -- or it might mean coaching her through a breakup. There's no one right answer for everyone, and that's where a great coach can help.
If you have questions about how a coach or therapist could help you out in your particular situation, just email me! I'll happily talk you through it on a (free) initial consult.
