When faced with the choice between therapy and coaching, it can be difficult to know what you need. Many wonder what the difference is and whether it is truly necessary to choose. If you contact someone who can offer both services, you don’t need to know exactly what you’re looking for. It’s okay to just feel that you want to talk to someone. There are clear differences between therapy and coaching, and I will go through them shortly.
Coaching is always about setting specific goals. Many of my clients come with a concrete problem, even if they may not have fully defined it or articulated their goals. Often, they know which area of life it concerns. They may be facing a choice or want to achieve something, but they might need help narrowing down their goals and creating an action plan. Sometimes they have a plan, but for various reasons, it doesn’t go as they intended. It’s often those unexpected obstacles – those that we didn’t foresee – that hinder us. A current example is the Corona pandemic, which has caused significant issues and was almost completely unexpected.
Sometimes the difficulties lie within ourselves, where old experiences create barriers that we unconsciously allow to negatively affect our lives. Coaching focuses on managing these issues, while therapy aims to resolve them. In coaching, we don’t place much emphasis on these old memories; we acknowledge their existence and identify the obstacles standing between starting point A and goal B. The question then becomes how we can effectively overcome these obstacles. Even if you achieve your goal, the underlying mechanisms that affect your reactions in various situations remain.
Therapy, on the other hand, takes a different approach. When the therapist discovers barriers or resistance, it’s not about quickly solving the problem but about exploring it and understanding what experiences created it. The goal is to resolve these deeper issues so that the problems caused by the barriers disappear. Coaching helps you achieve your goals, while therapy focuses on your personal development.
These underlying mechanisms rarely affect just one part of life; they can appear in several aspects. An analogy can be made with bindweed, a weed that is difficult to eradicate due to its deep root system. If we just cut it to have a nice garden by midsummer, it will soon come back. To truly get rid of the weed, we need to go down to the roots.
Due to these differences, coaching is usually shorter than therapy; coaching typically includes 10-12 sessions, while therapy can span several years. So how do I determine what I need? If you visit someone who offers both coaching and therapy, you don’t need to worry about choosing between them. However, if you go to a specific therapist or coach, it might be good to consider the following question: does what you’re thinking about relate to something that can be transformed into a measurable goal? If so, coaching may be right for you. If it instead concerns personal development, it is probably therapy you are seeking. Still unsure if you need therapy?