The Path From Psychotherapy to Life Coaching

Any form of therapy focuses on correcting something that is not working properly. In the case of psychotherapy, the person often has some thinking pattern that is causing them distress. That is, how they see the world is causing them to feel upset in some way, often deeply upset. When the thinking disturbance occurs (and likely, it started early in life), the person often finds it difficult or impossible to be happy… to enjoy the day. It often affects their satisfaction in relationships, at school, and at work. Life appears bleak.

A disturbed, irrational thinking pattern is not a stand alone. The person’s feelings are often negative to the extent the person is aware of what they are feeling. It is surprising to me, still, after 30 years of working with people, how frequently people fail to distinguish between their thoughts and their feelings. People use the work “feel” when they really mean “think.” For example, let’s say someone says “I feel left out.” “Left out” is not a feeling. Rather, the person has a specific feeling about thinking they’re being left out. It could be hurt, anger, disappointment, frustration.

In my experience, unless a person has been through some reasonable amount of psychotherapy (6 months to a year of ongoing weekly contact), they are unlikely to talk about their feelings except perhaps for anger. Even then, people will often “act out” their anger rather than verbally express it in a productive way. Don’t we all know people (including ourselves) who may not return phone calls in a timely way or at all, will not answer when being spoken to, will not do what was asked of them even though they said they would?

People decide to come into therapy usually when they feel very frustrated or upset. Or, when they experience themselves as pushed up against a wall. It may be their irrational thinking, their negative feelings (e.g., depressed, anxious), or their negative behavior (e.g., withdrawal or aggression) that is the reason they come in. Or, they may even decide to come only when someone in their lives has given them an ultimatum. For example, a wife (and it’s usually the woman) telling her husband that if he (e.g they) do not go into therapy, she’s getting a divorce.

When is someone ready to leave therapy? Clearly it’s when their thinking has changed to be reasonable, their feelings are positive and their behaviors are prosocial. This does not mean that the person will never experience negative feelings, but they are able to manage them better and are less likely to become extremely depressed or anxious.

Once a person gets to this point, they very frequently discover that they want to go further with their lives. There are changes they want to make to reach goals they could not have reached, nor even have known about, while they were preoccupied with their negative thoughts, feelings or behavior.

It is incredibly gratifying to see people move on with their lives. At this point, the remedial work is over. And, to the extent that the person needs a professional to help them hold their future vision and keep them accountable for what they now want, they will need a life coach.

This is certainly not to say that all people who enter life coaching have gone through a course of therapy or that they ever needed to. It is, however, one route.

Life coaching is becoming more popular and well known, and therefore many people who identify a need to move forward with their lives are entering the process. Some of those people even find that while they thought they were ready to move forward, what they needed first was some remediation (psychotherapy). When the coaching process does not lead to forward movement, it is likely the person has some issues that first need to be addressed though psychotherapy. There are even some instances when people can both work through issues in therapy and work on their goals in coaching.

So, where we used to think that psychotherapy was “enough,” we have learned that it is only part of a personal and professional growth path.

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