What is the difference between coaching and therapy?
What is the difference between coaching and therapy?
Psychological therapy and coaching have many similarities, but also important differences that need to be taken into account.
First of all, there is one major commonality: both are there to help the person seeking help. Helping to find a way out of a situation that is disturbing and impairing everyday life. The focus of both is therefore on the person seeking help.
Clients are not only very individual and have different personalities, but have also developed their own approaches, opinions and have had different experiences in the course of their lives. All these facets need to be taken into account if you want to find the right way out of a situation: a coaching? therapy? counselling. So how does a person seeking help find out which of the options is the right method for him or her?
It mostly depends on the subjective needs and beliefs of the person seeking help. In the case of very serious problems, therapy is often unavoidable in the long run, but sometimes you can find the entry point through coaching.
Here we want to help you understand these differences in order to choose the right help according to your needs.
The first step is to assess what kind of problem you have. Is it a small stone in the path that you have to move aside or a mountain that forces you to go off the path?
The second step is to ask yourself how you react to criticism? What kind of support will take you further?
In both cases it is important to feel comfortable in the presence of the support person — therapist or coach. The interpersonal connection and the chemistry between the two are the basis for building a relationship of trust with each other. Because this is the only way to create the space in which one can open up. The desire for change and the belief in one’s own abilities to change something about the situation and in the potential for growth that crises bring with them are important prerequisites for overcoming problems.
Therapy is about working on a mental knot that has become deeply entrenched and is not so easy to untie. Going to psychological therapy means taking time. Time to deal with one’s problem, to understand it, to learn to deal with it and to develop mechanisms to either solve it or to deal with it better, to strengthen one’s own resilience. The problem is searched for, found, understood and worked on until it no longer interferes too much with life (although it may still exist).
The therapeutic approach is a slow one, which aims at the person becoming aware of the problem by becoming aware of it. With this process of recognition, also to find out the reason as well as the solution and the way out at the same time.
The approach is therefore a very thorough work on oneself, sometimes with a lot of theory, in order to put it into practice. In psychological therapy, the work is not so much on the concrete solution to the problem, but on giving the person seeking help the tools to be able to master these (and future) challenges themselves.
The methodology of coaching is more “hands on”; this means that concretely applicable solutions to clearly defined issues are worked out more quickly together and at eye level. Often there is less in-depth coaching. Which is not always necessary, because the work is active and involves practising new beliefs and behaviours. As with a sports coach, a problem is defined at the beginning of the cooperation so that it can then be analysed and new approaches to solutions found, which, with motivation and the support of the coach, lead more quickly to success. Coaching is therefore directed towards the future and there is less analysis of the past in the process. People who choose coaching are in a position to take responsibility for themselves and their actions.
Each person must decide for himself or herself which approach appeals more to him or her. Sometimes one kind of support leads to another approach. But both are on the way to the goal.
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PS.: Please remember that The Helpnet is not necessarily suitable for long-term therapy. The Helpnet is meant to help out in emergency situations or on a bridging (yet not temporary) basis.