Therapy often involves exploring painful feelings or difficult decisions, including delving deep into your past to discover the root cause of your current mental or physical health concerns. Usually accessed through a medical route, i.e. a referral through your GP, therapy seeks to address deep-rooted trauma that continues to have an affect on the present day. There are many different types of therapy, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy or Relationship Therapy, for instance. Therapy can be accessed anything from daily to weekly and sometimes for many years
Life coaching, on the other hand, is a much more targeted approach to a specific problem or goal, and is usually focused on creating an immediate change in a person’s life. It’s about creating the “you” of tomorrow.
It could be that you are stuck in an unhealthy relationship, in a job you don’t like, or in a pattern of behaviours that don’t serve you well. Or it could be that you are experiencing stress or anxiety, and you are not sure how to tackle these. A life coach can help release you from all of these things by working together with you on a step-by-step approach to a solution.
Like therapy, a life coach may also speak about past events, but only within the context of what you want to achieve today and tomorrow. Life coaching is all about looking forward. Over a period of two to three months, a life coach can help you identify your strengths and limitations, explore and understand positive and negative behaviours, in order to change your life. It is about releasing inner potential rather than exploring a trauma.
Life coaching can be accessed by anyone at any time, without the need for a medical referral.
In addition, in life coaching the client decides what matters they wish to tackle. In a therapy situation it would be much more down to the medical professional to guide this.
Life coaching is goal oriented and you will be given tasks to complete in between sessions, such as daily affirmations, or a challenge to get out of your “comfort zone”.
By setting small, medium and larger goals, at the end of your sessions you will begin to see the changes in your life that you have longed for. In this sense, life coaching can be therapeutic and even ‘healing’
Are you looking for a positive solution to reach goals and improve yourself or life? Contact me today for a complimentary consultation. Interested to learn more first? Read my blog on How to Change a Life.