Life has its challenges that can sometimes overwhelm people. Some of these challenges affect people leading to mental conditions. When this happens, it can be challenging for a person to live their best lives. So, it's essential to speak to a person outside your life. You can seek the help you need from therapists or life coaches. However, people need clarification on these two fields, so what's the difference?
What is coaching?
It's a process where you get help to determine your vision for individual and professional success. You can identify your strengths, priorities, and values to better your professional and personal life. You can develop a self-care practice that will play a role in you reaching your goals. If you are seeking help, you can find life coaching services in Los Angeles.
What is therapy?
It's also referred to as counseling or psychotherapy. This is a process of visiting a therapist to resolve beliefs, feelings, relationship issues, problematic behaviors, and bodily responses. Anyone who has attended therapy will tell you it's the first step to having the healthiest version of you. Therapy will help change destructive behaviors and habits, allowing you to live the best life possible. So, what's the difference between therapy and coaching?
Coaching VS Therapy
Therapy is mostly about recovery, whereas coaching is about discovery. Therapists determine illnesses and pathologies to ensure their patient receives clinical treatment. Therefore, therapy is a process that involves several steps making it much longer. As mentioned earlier, it involves resolving feelings, relationship issues, behaviors, and responses due to past traumas. All these create problems in how you view yourself, resulting in painful emotions. Therapists use the right ways to address these issues to help the client get out of it. In this way, a person can have a healthier sense of self.
On the other hand, life coaches do not diagnose the people they deal with. Life coaches help their clients identify barriers and make action plans so that they can reach their goals.Life coaches focus on clients' current situations and become involved from that point onwards. Through this, they can help clients take control of their lives and improve their situations.
Although these two are different, the process can work hand in hand. When patients are free from the past, they have more energy to focus on the present and start a new life.
Session Structure
The two fields have some differences in their session structure. A patient's therapy session varies depending on their needs and the type of therapy the therapist practices. Coaching sessions are goal-oriented and mainly focus on moving forward. In both, professionals ask questions but differ in how they do it. Therapists ask questions that may lead to discoveries, while coaches ask questions to a goal or future-oriented answer.
Another difference you need to learn is both of them offer different services. Most therapists can accept insurance for the sessions, but coaches cannot. The reason is coaches don't provide mental health services.
Personal growth and transformation are part of human life. You might wonder where to start to regain your lost power. Reading about therapy and coaching will help you decide what support you need. Therapy and coaching can be phenomenal, but your experience will depend on the chemistry with the therapist or coach. In addition, your investment and openness will play a significant role in the whole process.