Hey guys, welcome back! Today I want to talk about the difference between therapy and coaching in general – but more specifically couples therapy and relationship coaching. What do they each have to offer? How do you know which is best for you and your partner? And what are the pros and cons of both?
I’m also going to go into detail about why I choose to work with one partner and not both. Not only have I utilized both therapy and coaching in my personal life, but I’ve also been a therapist and am now a coach. So, I’ve got a lot to say here. My goal is for you to know which way to go based on what serves you best.
Ok so let’s start with the difference between therapy and coaching in general. Now some people don’t even know what coaching is. It’s relatively new, maybe 30 years old. Of course people have been coaching each other informally for a long time but as a formal profession, it hasn’t been around too long.
There are three differences between therapy and coaching.
- Therapy is regulated while coaching is not. What that means is that there are many laws and rules that go with being a therapist and with being able to get paid through someone’s health insurance. What that does is it limits the therapist. In order for a therapist to counsel you, they must diagnose you. Now this is in the U.S. If you’re not in the U.S., it might be different but here you must have a mental health diagnosis in order for your health insurance company to pay for your therapy.
Now this isn’t a problem if you legit have a mental health diagnosis but some people are not clinically diagnosable and just really need to talk to someone. So therapists have a few go-to diagnoses such as adjustment disorder – because let’s keep it real who hasn’t had a hard time adjusting to something before. But nevertheless, you get diagnosed.
Coaching is not regulated. This means that when you come to a coach, there is no diagnosing going on, which I personally think is great. But the downside to coaching not being regulated is that literally anyone can do it. Which can be a little scary right? There is no degree or certification that a life coach needs to have in order to help clients. There are plenty of coach certifications available but you don’t need to attain one in order to be a coach.
This is one of the things that makes me different from a lot of coaches. Because I was a therapist for about 13 years or so, I do have advanced degrees, training, and experience. And on top of that, I chose to get certified as a life coach as well. So I am more than qualified. But not everyone is.
2. The second difference between therapy and coaching is your level of functioning. Therapy is appropriate for you if you are having a hard time functioning in your daily life. So if you can’t get out of bed or if its so hard to get out of bed that it’s an event every day. Or if you are somewhat neglecting your kids or not getting to work on time or not showering… something like that, then you should go see a therapist. Most likely there is something going on with your mental health on a deeper level because what actually makes a diagnosis a diagnosis is whether the symptoms interrupt your daily functioning.
But if you’re doing all the things, handling your business and taking care of your responsibilities – but you just aren’t feeling it. Like you know you could be doing better or you know your potential is so much higher than how you’re living. Or if you are fine in most areas of your life but you struggle in one particular area – such as career or parenting or marriage – then you are appropriate for coaching.
I’m going to simplify it for you. Therapy is to go from feeling bad to feeling ok. Coaching is to go from feeling ok to feeling great.
3. And the third difference is that therapy tends to focus on the past. Therapy is for processing shit that happened that you’ve never really taken a look at. To go through all the details and really rehash something that has never been processed. That being said, therapy tackles unprocessed trauma while coaching definitely does not. If you have a coach who is trying to help you process trauma, please go find a therapist who is trained to make sure you don’t get retraumatized in the process. Please!
Coaching on the other hand focuses on the present and the future. Coaching is great for setting and attaining goals, for creating significant mindset shifts, communication skills, relationships, parenting, taking a look at how you’re contributing to your own wellbeing, things of that nature. And once you’ve processed a trauma with a therapist, you can then go to a coach with it because a coach will help you see how it’s affecting you NOW and what you want to do about that. As opposed to reliving it.
Ok so now that you understand the difference between therapy and coaching – and by the way doing both at the same time is phenomenal if you have the bandwidth for it – but now that you get the basics, let’s talk about couples therapy vs. relationship coaching.
Most couples therapy goes like this: you and your partner come into session and tell the counselor the latest incident or argument the two of you had. Therapist listens, they may or may not give their opinion, and then they have each partner tell the other one what they need and what their expectations are.
This is one of the reasons that it doesn’t work. Most couples in distress don’t want to fulfill each other’s expectations. Or they can’t. If they could and they wanted to – they would have by now! It also insinuates that your partner needs to change in order for you to be happy. I don’t like that because now you’re completely powerless and at the whim of whether your partner decides to change or not.
Now if couples therapy has worked for you, my hat is off to you. Personally, I’m not a big fan. Whenever I was facilitating a couple’s therapy session, I always felt like I was breaking up two kids from a fight. It was a lot of “say you’re sorry” or “what could you have done instead?” or “can you see why that bothered your spouse?”
I was always itching to go deeper and really pull apart the belief system that person had that caused them to feel and act the way they do. It felt like a lot of band aid work and not enough healing the wound. I know that bad behavior comes from pain. I know there is something deeper going on.
But it’s very hard for people to open up about their fears and insecurities in front of a partner – especially a partner you’re not feeling especially close to right now. And most people are not aware of their thoughts, feelings and insecurities that run their life. Most people really need some deep coaching and guiding to even identify them. But again, almost impossible to do while the husband you resent is staring at you.
Which brings me to why I work with one partner and very rarely do a couples coaching session. You see, and here’s the most important part of this episode – you can actually feel better about your marriage without your partner ever being part of the process.
I know you’re skeptical because all the social media says it takes two. But it doesn’t. It takes one. And here’s why. Your entire experience within your relationship comes from the way you think about your relationship. The lens you see it through. The sentences that run through your brain about your partner.
For example, if your lens is dark, then when your partner says to you “I did the dishes,” you might think “what do you want a medal or something? I do the dishes every day!” But if you’ve cleaned up your thought process and released your resentment then your lens will clear up and you might think, “aww that’s so sweet that he’s trying to help more and I definitely want to acknowledge him for that.”
In both scenarios, the partner doesn’t usually do the dishes but did this time. The facts stayed the same. It’s the way you choose to see your partner that makes the difference. And I know some of you are thinking, wait it’s not a choice! And I agree that until someone teaches you, you don’t know how to choose your thoughts. But I promise you it’s a choice. You can choose your thoughts. That’s literally what I do for a living, teach you how to choose your thoughts.
So because of all this, I work with one partner – usually the woman but I love working with men as well. Because they are in the session alone with me, I can really start to dig into their belief system. How they were raised. The communication style they were exposed to. How they feel about themselves. How they view the world. All of this makes up the lens you see your relationship through. Then I help you change it if you want to. And bam suddenly you start seeing your partner differently which of course leads you to feel differently about them.
This is great news is you’re someone who wants to improve your relationship experience but you have a partner who isn’t on board to go to therapy. I’ve had clients whose partners never even knew they worked with me. But the relationship got better anyways. My husband was in active addiction when I went to coaching about our marriage. He had no idea I was going. But I found inner peace and our dynamic actually did get healthier even under such crazy circumstances.
My biggest problem with couples therapy – and why I think it doesn’t work – is because change has to come from within. Sustainable change requires internal motivation. Your spouse being mad at you is external motivation. Wanting to make your partner happy is still external motivation because you have to depend on how they receive it. Internal change comes from studying and challenging the stories and narratives that run your life.
That being said, in my private relationship coaching program, I do offer optional coaching for your partner. So, if you have a partner who is willing to be part of the process – great! I’ll coach them too. I will do a session with both parties together if they request it here and there but about 95% of my sessions are 1:1. It’s what works best, gets the most results, and helps you have a better relationship with YOU.
So if you’re interested, I have space for two clients right now. My program, Partnership Aligned, will help you release resentment towards your partner, strengthen your relationship with you, help you communicate more effectively, and above all relax and start to enjoy each other again.
But I only work with people who want to see a solution. If you just want to be stuck and complain about your partner, I’m not the coach for you. While I leave plenty of space for you to vent and process, the goal is to help you have a mindset shift that serves you and your family. So you need to be open to that. You have to be wiling to be wrong, willing to take ownership of your own feelings, and willing to do things differently. If that sounds like you but you just have a hard time getting there on your own, let’s chat. Scroll down to the show notes and schedule a free consultation with me.
