Coaching versus Therapy

Coaching is Self-Actualization

Coaches are trained to work with clients who are somewhat on an emotionally stable baseline

This means that if you for instance are severely depressed, or suffering from a diagnosed mental disorder that is crippling you in your day to day life, you are probably not in the right state of mind to be able to be coached, and therefore won’t get good results from coaching.

In coaching we help our clients with self actualization, and for our clients to achieve their highest potential, it requires that they are able and willing to do deep inner work. This type of emotional work requires energy and motivation from the client to persist even when the going gets tough, so we need our coaching clients to have a certain “stable emotional bandwidth”.

Coaching is Present and Future oriented

Another important difference between coaching and therapy is that in coaching we are focused on the present or the future of our client.

Coaching is overall focused on the current state of the client, and to move them towards a future set of goals through practices and dialogue.  Whereas in therapy, it is often about looking into the past to determine what caused a particular mental illness or psychological issue, and moving towards wholeness or healing.

Therapy is Treatment of Mental Illness

Therapists on the other hand work with the other half of the mental health continuum, more precisely the part that is devoted to mental disorders and mental illness.

In short you can say that therapists are trained to get their patients back to baseline emotional functioning, if the client is suffering from mental health problems or mental disorders.