Coaches should NOT be doing therapy!!!!🤬🤬🤬🤬 I agree! However, I have never personally heard of, nor heard of someone who heard of, a therapist anywhere in the history of forever, saying “that’s not therapy”. Coencidently, we all ALSO claim therapy requires a specialized license, nobody else can do it. So, everything, literally EVERYTHING is therapy…but also nobody without a license can do therapy. It seems something in this argument here is flawed.
Confusion comes from treating mental health as though it only has two categories: therapy and coaching. Physical health doesn’t work that way, and neither does psychological care. We recognize a continuum in medicine. Emergency medicine and primary care to physical therapy, athletic training, strength & conditioning, nutrition, and fitness. Each serves a different purpose, requires different education, and has distinct ethical and legal boundaries. Psychological care has a similar continuum. Crisis intervention, psychotherapy, counseling, clinical psychology, sport and performance psychology, and coaching all have important roles. They overlap at times, but they are not interchangeable. Two primary issues I’ve encountered: -practitioners understanding the limits of their own competence respecting the expertise of other disciplines. My master’s degree in performance psychology doesn’t qualify me to provide therapy. Likewise, a therapist without education and training in performance psychology isn’t automatically qualified to provide performance coaching. Different expertise. Different scope. Both deserve respect.
Coaching is absolutely NOT synonymous with the terms therapy and counseling. They are absolutely distinct and should be treated as such. I’ve listened to licensing boards, and read many ethical cases about this line being crossed and license holders finding themselves in trouble. To differentiate, coaching is here and now, and to the future. Counseling and therapy is that but can dig into the past. A good coach should recognize when a client needs help beyond that which a coach can legally and ethically provide and then provide referrals. I’m also a “certified life coach”. Something can be therapeutic with having provided therapy. I have corrected many people on the difference who thought they were receiving “therapy” when it was only coaching, and many times that’s because the coach overstepped
One thing that really surprised me when I went to grad school to be a couples and family therapist is some of the ways I'd respond as a naturally caring person would be anti-therapeutic i.e., taking sides when a couple is having conflict to advocate for my client when it's the cycle that's problematic. There are things we cannot know unless we officially learn them otherwise we fall trap to the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Therapists who also provide non-clinical psychoeducational coaching services do not claim everything is therapy, as is evidenced by their own services. However I know exactly the type of person you're referring to and a lot of them have a very inflexible and angry mindset. It's not all therapists. It's a very vocal minority.
Good coaching is therapy, and bad coaching is malpractice. Therapy is a clinical treatment, and Counseling is clinical support therapy. 😂
Open share groups at Celebrate Recovery have given better group results that many therapists.
This is way too deep and possibly you may not be allowed to type this type of post as your license and board says that feels like you are not gatekeeping the old dinosaur enough.... This is great - lol - I shall wait for the " You are RIGHT BUT"
I agree, all "coaches" should posses a degree in therapy and be regulated by a board.
Coaching is for people who have normal life problems and need support. Therapy is treatment for people with mental health needs. We don’t practice medicine without training and a license. Nor should one be doing therapy without the same.