The Coaching Difference
Coaching (also known as counseling before psychotherapy was invented) is couched in the perspective of knowing you don't have to do it, and yet you are aware of wanting to. And also aware that there's more that you "want to do and are not doing," than there is of what you "want to do and actually do." So the function of coaching is built-in to this perception that we are not here because you "need" to be. We are here because you want to be. I like to call it a luxury.
By contrast psychotherapy is designed to detect, label and diagnose medical need. This is the actual reason a state license is required to practice psychotherapy. Both coaching and psychotherapy are processes by which we analyze and assess, or sort things out. When it comes to actual time spent in psychotherapy sessions and coaching sessions, both could look similar in thi
Psychotherapy's purpose being medical need assessment slants the perspective of the process towards a needs-based one. Many would say this is most practical and effective. It is. In the way of discovering, and assessing whether or not there is a medical grade disfunction; meaning biologically or physically manifested, in the form of debilitated process, behavior, disease or dis-ease.
While such detection generally is necessary for any of these three roles, psychotherapy is most focused beyond detection.
Where psychotherapy is a scientifically designed problem hunter, coaching is a systematically designed solution executor. Counseling, as it's currently universally applied in modern terms, might at its core be considered what we always did, will do and are doing for each other as humans who care about each other. It actually encompasses both psychotherapy and coaching. Its highest functionality is its lack of agenda. Receptive listening and discerning response, mostly in the form of reflection, are primary tools of the trade.
Again, all three processes utilize this skill set. There is nothing fundamentally lacking in the application of one over the other. They are all three truly interwoven by the main braids of discovery, assessment and skill execution.
This braiding is further emphasized by the fact that each individual practitioner has their own style, regardless of how professional, allegedly qualified or experienced they are. Many psychotherapists are stylistically predisposed listeners. Many coaches are stylistically predisposed analyzers. Many counselors are stylistically predisposed executors of skill.
Then of course, each individual seeking help is also unique, making the process of finding the optimal practitioner extraordinarily expiramental. It helps to be prepared to let what isn't working go, as soon as it's obvious it's not working. And anyways, this is how all healing begins.
Perhaps the question to ask yourself before seeking outside help might go something like this:
Right now, am I looking to define the problem or implement the solution?
If you don't know the answer, then any of the three processes could help you find the problem. As far as strength in implementing solutions, leaving room for individual practitioner styles, abilities and preferences, it is the emphasis with which psychotherapy is least concerned. Counseling is more concerned with solution-focused modality implementation. And coaching typically makes this its primary focus.
Coaching process picks up at the point of naming the problem without concern for degree or intensity. And with primary consideration for recovery. Counseling and coaching pre-exist psychotherapy for the reason that medical grade description isn't necessary in the typical application of daily living. And when it comes to problems certainly not justification and qualification.
What we now call coaching naturally evolved out of acknowledgment that naming, and only naming, emotional disturbance is one of the most practical things we can do. Diagnosing it, assessing it and describing it again and again, while useful for justifying prescriptions and medical care coverages, are rarely productive in real time. Coaching has evolved alongside the other two roles, as if ready to jump in and activate potential in a field designed to detect, identify and implement it, on repeat. If the three were siblings, coaching would most likely be the hyperactive one.
The coaching part is the part that often automatically kicks in after accurately naming. Internally or externally: that is to say internalized or externalized; or both. The reason discernment in choosing a type of therapy is so important is that when the focus is on diagnosis, description and digging into deeper and deeper layers of the story of dis-ease and/or dis-ease, we tend to forget that it's meant to be a prompt, not a container. This can be particularly tempting when the emphasis is on the physical and biological. Bottom line: pay attention to what is actually therapeutic for you, and 1. repeat; 2. revise according to optimal results in your experience as they occur.
What is generally referred to as counseling is somewhere in the middle. We are all qualified to counsel and coach ourselves. Perhaps this is the most crucial thing to remember when asking for help with the expression of your internalized process. Psychotherapy by the very nature of its purpose, is a designation of trust to what psychology calls an external locus of control. Another human. And this is occurring in droves, not because of an interpersonal interaction by which individuals come to trust each other. Because of a license issued by a governing entity the individual will never know, and which grants authority based on past alleged information retention. Why? because it's measurable. Depth of human interaction is not. (Insurance covers only measurable risk...and we see the domino effect...)
And so the challenge of acknowledging the care sought is at the level of "want," not necessity, comes largely in the form of doing lots of experimentation. When we're having trouble following through, paying attention and thus feeling accomplished, productive, grateful or appreciative of most things, we tend to seek out a practitioner.
Ultimately psychotherapy involves counseling and coaching. Where coaching assumes permission to be unfettered by psychotherapy, licensed counseling reserves space to be informed by it.
Infinite things are therapeutic. Coaching is about placing equal priority on naming them and using them to inform and infuse solutions. Effective coaching keeps as a focus evidence of enactment of solutions while placing equal importance on the implementation of the automatic routines most likely to prompt us to the action inspired by our natural sense of self satisfaction.
All effective healing practitioners work to get fired.