As one client said, “This is better, and worth more, than all the money I’ve spent on therapy!”
I like to think of it like this: Therapy digs into your past to try to understand how and why you think, feel, and act the way you do. It is introspective and clarifying.
Coaching, on the other hand, moves you forward into a future of your own design. Sure, there’s some past-digging to do, because usually the things that block us have to do with stuff we’ve been through, or stories we’ve made up about ourselves due to past experiences. But overall coaching is actionable and transformational.
I’ve had a number of clients who’ve been in therapy for years but got to a place where they thought, “OK, yeah, I get it all, but now what??” I find these clients to be my biggest success stories, and the ones who make the biggest leaps in the shortest period of time, saying things like “Wow. In all my years of therapy, I never felt such huge shifts.”
I find the most effective process usually includes both therapy and coaching, or some combination of the two.