which is why i became a coach instead of a therapist or a doctor.
don’t get me wrong!! i did HIGHLY consider both of those paths, and still consciously decided to choose this path. not because i couldn’t do the work, or because it would take too long, but because the scope is different.
coaching is an unregulated industry right now, which is both a good thing and also a thing that kind of sucks. any coach only has the standards they choose to hold themselves to, which could potentially be zero standards at all. anyone can hang up a shingle that says “life coach” on it. anyone.
certifications exist, and each certifying body has their own code of ethics, standards, recertification requirements, continuing education requirements, all of that. for me, i chose to become certified through IACT, the international association of counselors and therapists.
i chose to become a coach because i get to help the person in front of me, without getting bogged down in the labels and diagnoses that are inherent to more clinical work. i get to work with their humanity instead of a constellation of symptoms.
this is no shade at all to anyone in the other industries. therapists, psychologists, social workers, are HELLA important and there need to be passionately dedicated people working with folks in those ways. i just didn’t want to be one of them.
i like to work with folks in terms of habituated patterns. i see the stories they get stuck in. i see how they take a diagnosis and turn it into their identity, and when you do that, you want to adhere to that identity. so i’d rather eschew them completely in my work. it’s a shift in perspective.
doesn’t mean that my work is for everybody, or that everybody is for me to work with.
when you look up the difference between coaching and therapy on google, there are miles of web pages that attempt to create a nice little boundary between them. i don’t think it’s that simple. i think there’s considerable overlap.
sometimes people come to me intending to work on some surface level anxiety or figure out how to approach a goal they want to achieve, and we end up uncovering some real deeply entrenched stuff in the process.
am i just going to leave someone broken without showing them there’s a way through it? absolutely not. but i’m still gonna suggest they follow up with their therapist about it.
to me, coaching and therapy should be an alliance. not that i want to be in touch with your therapist by any means, but in that we can help you with very different things to help you be the person you want to be. our scopes are different. our approaches are different. we’re reaching into different parts of your mind. there isn’t a competition here.
i’m here not because i want to make oodles of money off of peoples suffering. i do not. i am here because i love people, i love helping people, i love making people feel seen exactly where they’re at.
i love that i can help people without running everything through the lens of whatever’s in their medical history— i don’t even ask for that, on purpose. it’s none of my business. i can’t cure or treat, or anything like that, so why would i? nobody’s going to come to me for, say, OCD treatment, but they might come to me to get help feeling regulated and reduce their impulsive or compulsive behaviors.
i like being able to sit across from someone as they tell me what they’re struggling with, and being able to pinpoint what it all can be rooted in. i love helping create awareness, because cultivating that awareness is the first step to making huge changes on your own.
it’s the connection. it’s unlike anything else. and that’s why i chose this life.
Leave a Reply