Do You Really Have to Choose One or the Other?
When most people want to make changes in their life they automatically think of a psychiatrist, a psychologist, a therapist, or a counselor. These have indeed been the go to’s of days gone past and all have excellent approaches to helping. However, now there is a new tried and tested approach that has been proven to provide great benefits to clients who are looking to achieve positive personal growth.
What to Expect From a Life Coach?
When you first visit a Life Coach, you will have the initial discovery session. During this session, you will explain to your Coach where you are in life right now and what it is you are looking to change. Whether it’s your career, relationships, family dynamics, money worries, health and wellness, or your own personal growth, your Life Coach will help you determine for yourself where you want to be in the future. They will serve as a guide on your path to realizing these changes by providing the stepping stones you need to achieve the changes you seek.
A Life Coach will not teach, mentor, or advise. Through client-centered questioning, they empower you to discover and take ownership of the type of life you desire for your future. A Life Coach aims to help individuals define the desired outcome they want for their future and devises a realistic plan to help them get there.
Life Coaching is forward-focused and looks to your future. Essentially, your Life Coach will provide the strategies and support needed to help you define and reach your goals and aspirations. Coaches provide you with the following:
- The clarity you need to move forward
- Personal empowerment to help you achieve your goals
- Motivation to get there
- Accountability throughout your journey
What to Expect From a Psychologist/Clinical Therapist/Counselor
When you first visit a clinical therapist, you will have the initial discovery session. During this initial session, you will explain where you are in your life right now, what brought you to therapy (i.e., negative behaviours, limiting beliefs and negative emotions like fear, shame, anxiety, panic, procrastination, etc.), and what you hope to gain from therapy. Your therapist will help you look at where these emotions have arisen from and help you change your perspective on past events so you can let go of your baggage.
Through client-centered questioning, we are here to help you discover and take ownership of your life. It’s designed to help you let go of behaviours that may have served you in the past but are hindering you in the present and future.
A therapist can help you understand and better navigate such conditions as:
- Mental health conditions (such as ADHD, OCD, Depression, Anxiety, etc.)
- Sleep disorders
- Eating disorders
- Substance abuse
- Healing from past traumatic experiences
- And more
Leveraging Therapy and Coaching
The main difference between coaching and therapy is that therapy is backwards-focused and coaching is future-focused. Typically, coaching is focused on the future. Coaching sessions are focused on defining personal and professional goals and creating strategies to achieve them. Psychotherapy tends to focus on past memories and patterns of behavior to create changes for positive growth. Both therapy and coaching can prove beneficial for teens, young adults, and adults. Therapy helps individuals heal from past mental wellbeing issues. Coaching looks to your future mental wellbeing issues.
When practiced together, therapy and coaching can help individuals:
- Identify dreams and goals
- Learn solutions and strategies to achieve goals
- Discover talents, strengths, and weaknesses
- Develop a positive mindset to achieve goals
- Identify triggers and negative thoughts/patterns holding you back
- And more
Structure
During your initial intake therapy session, you will go over your personal and family history with your therapist. Your subsequent sessions will be determined based on your specific therapy goals. The structure of therapy sessions depends on the type of therapy you participate in. For example, couples therapy is different from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. The practices, strategies, and solutions will differ between modalities within psychotherapy.
Generally speaking, life coaching sessions are geared toward constant progress. Your first session is designed to define your goals and identify obstacles that hinder your progress. Subsequent sessions are designed to recognize strengths, help clients visualize their future, and understand their strategies to achieve their full potential.
Amount of Sessions
The amount of therapy and coaching sessions needed varies from person to person. Typically, therapy sessions are designed with an end goal. For example, managing anxiety or depression. As such, depending on their specific goals, one participant may only require a few therapy sessions to reach their desired goal, while another may need more. In this sense, therapy sessions are open-ended. The therapist and the participant determine the end date.
For coaching, the amount of sessions should also vary according to your needs. Some clients will need 4 or 6 whilst others may need 12 or 24. At one Life Coaching we take each Coaching client as an individual and decide together when the goals are met or when more work is needed. This is always client led and driven as we work in unison to achieve your goals.
Do I Need a Therapist or a Life Coach?
Traditionally, you would need to consider seeing a therapist when you want to heal or receive help for past events that have not yet been resolved and leave you with persistent negative emotions or to help manage mental health issues that have been diagnosed. You would consider a Life Coach when you want to get “unstuck” or reach your fullest potential. Fortunately, at One Life Coaching, you no longer need to choose between one or the other. At One Life Coaching, we are formerly trained in both therapy and coaching.
This philosophy evolved from the fact that to clear out the past and then be left with no idea as to where you are heading to in the future, or conversely to forge ahead into a supposedly new and shiny future whilst still carrying the baggage of the past is only ever doing half a job. We have learnt to combine a mixture of the two, that we use in different measures, depending on how much of one and how much of the other each individual needs. This is what makes us not only unique but allows every session to be more powerful and therefore come to results faster than if you were to do only traditional therapy or only traditional coaching alone.
At One Life Coaching
When we are looking to be the best version of ourselves, we often face a wide range of obstacles to overcome, both from the past and looking forward into the future. We are here to help you with your individual needs and not box up your needs and try to squash them into a specific model of work. We understand each person we work with has a unique past and unique goal for the future. As such, we are not here to squeeze you into a ready-made model or program. We tailor each and every session to your individual needs.
If you are ready to take the next step toward achieving your personal or professional best self, One Life Coaching can help! We are passionate about helping our clients overcome the obstacles on their path to living a happy and successful life. We are here to help you navigate the path to the next chapter of your life with a lighter load. If you’re ready to take the next step toward realizing your dreams, contact a member of our team.
We look forward to hearing from you.