Life Coach Vs Therapist
Life Coach vs Therapist, which is the best option for you?
We know that you are a successful, driven woman.
God has gifted you with unique talents and a set of skills you use daily to impact the world around you.
Perhaps you long to use what God has empowered you with to make a significant impact and legacy.
Despite these facts, you’ve found yourself “stuck” in a place you aren’t sure how to navigate and you’re looking for the best, God-centered way to get “unstuck.”
Maybe you’ve known about therapy for years and you’ve recently started to hear about life coaching, but you aren’t sure which avenue of support is best for your specific set of needs.
Defining the Terms
Let’s start with defining the terms.
Therapists and Life Coaches may occasionally find themselves serving similar clients, but the services they provide and the avenues by which they provide them are quite different.
The first difference is found within the technical definition of the terms themselves.
Therapy, (also known as counseling or psychotherapy), takes more of a health-care centered approach to support.
Some therapists (like psychologists and psychiatrists) are able to medically diagnose their clients and use a series of therapeutic medications and strategies to help their clients work through past trauma and find stability and happiness.
While stability and happiness are also goals found within life coaching, the strategies and supports are not the same. Life coaches are not health-care centered professionals and they don’t medically diagnose their clients.
Instead, they use a specialized set of skills to support their clients in mindset development to help them identify goals and strategize the best methods to reach those goals.
what's the difference between a life coach and a therapist?
Life Coaches Focus on the Future
The technical definition of the terms create a solid foundation of understanding the differences between the role of a therapist and the role of a life coach.
However, the focus each of the care professionals take to provide support is another primary difference in the way the two services support clients.
Therapists work with their clients over a period of time and use a series of therapeutic strategies to help clients unpack their past and find emotional healing.
The role of a life coach is to take a more future-focused approach with their clients.
The past is brought into life with coaching primarily as a means to help the clients understand how their past influenced their current set of circumstances.
Life coaches use the current set of circumstances to then help clients identify a vision for their future.
They help you strategize a plan to help the vision come to pass, and support and hold the clients accountable in the plan application.
Life Coaches Create Positive Change
The commonality between a Life Coach vs Therapist is that both work to create positive change in their clients.
Therapists do so by using therapeutic techniques and therapy sessions to help clients find healing within their emotions.
Life coaches create positive change by helping the client identify where the client is feeling “stuck” and helping the client take a firm hold on the calling in their life.
Life coaches work the clients through a series of action steps to help them see progress.
Life coaches serve as a coach and mentor throughout these action steps. They come alongside their clients with encouragement, support, and accountability.
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Life Coaches Empower Clients
While the therapist’s role is to provide treatment and healing, life coaches strategically work to help clients use the foundational experiences in their lives. This helps them to find personal, professional, and spiritual empowerment.
The journey a client takes throughout their life has a direct impact on the set of experiences the client has and the set of skills and talents a client develops.
A life coach helps the client dig deep within themselves to hone into those experiences and skill sets to help the client bridge the gap between. The goal is to identify what could serve as barriers, and what can serve as stepping stones toward the client’s future goals.
This process develops a strong sense of empowerment for the client and helps them navigate through circumstances that once served as walls between the client and their success.
Life Coaches Help You “Unstick” Your Mind
It’s not a secret that many people run into feeling “stuck” at some point over the course of life.
Perhaps for some it feels like they’ve hit a ceiling and for others they have a deep sense that there is “more” for them to do in life. But they just can’t put their finger on what it is and how to get there.
The main difference between a Life Coach vs Therapist is that Therapists focus primarily on digging out the past and helping the client find a place of peace.
Where life coaches focus directly on current mindsets and behaviors, how they are serving as barriers, and help the client work to modify those mindsets and behaviors.
The goal of the life coach is to help the client chip away at limiting beliefs that serve as barriers to the client so they can more freely move forward in life.
Life Coaches Help You Achieve Your Dreams
Therapists take clients on a journey to help them uncover and understand how their past has impacted their conscious and subconscious minds. The overall focus is mental health and mental healing.
Life Coaches help clients focus in on their blind spots, press into hard things, and help clients create a plan and take action to move forward in order to help them achieve their dreams.
You’ve found yourself at the place where you know God has more for you.
That’s a great place to be because the discomfort caused by that place will inspire you to reach out for the support you need.
If you find you are in need of healing from past trauma or are suffering from mental illness, a therapist may be the person who can support you.
If you have a deep sense God is calling you to something greater and need support in identifying and getting to that calling, you’re in the right place.
Enroll in our signature 90 day course Unstick Your Mind and start taking the steps to working toward getting unstuck today!
