Hi and welcome to today’s session. I’m Gilles Brideau. I’m a psychotherapist, coach, and hypnotist that lives and works in Sudbury Ontario, Canada.
I thought I’d do a quick video today on the differences between coaching and psychotherapy. I know even for my client service a lot of confusion between the distinction between the two terms and what they really represent.
I created this kind of little table to hopefully help you understand the differences between the two. Now first, from a psychotherapist point of view, psychotherapy really deals mostly with dysfunction. When a person has a mental illness, or a mental health condition, it’s usually when you see a therapist or psychotherapist who can best help you deal with those issues. A lot of times those issues deal specifically with past events, so that could be problems in adolescence, problems in childhood, or problems that happen even in their adult life but several years back. It’s really dealing with the past a lot more specifically.
Now the model of care which is in psychotherapy is sort of like the medical model. In essence it’s a client that comes and sees an expert in a certain area like depression or anxiety or that kind of stuff, and they hope to get specialized care in that area. It also assumes that the emotions are simply a symptom of a bigger problem. We look at symptoms of depression as indicators as to something else greater that’s going on with the person. In essence it’s like if they have certain criteria, kind of the meat of the diagnosis, even those as a psychotherapist you can’t diagnose, you can kind of model what your approach will be to that person based on those symptoms and criteria.
Actually for a lot of people that struggle with depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, it’s really a slow process, so a lot of times clients will see me for on average of 12 sessions, usually around 12 sessions, some, like for addiction clients, it can go as long as a year, and I know for other practitioners sometimes it’s beyond a year. The process towards feeling much better and improvement can be significantly much longer when you have a mental health concern.
Now in coaching, on the other hand, it really deals with healthy clients wanting to have a better quality of life. The coaching assumption is not that you’re broken and you need for somebody like me to fix, it’s that you already have the resources within you to get to where you want to be. You see a coach when your life is okay, but it’s just okay, and you’d like to have a better quality of life, or you’ve been struggling with decisions, whether or not to change jobs, whether or not to be in a relationship, or to get married, or something like that. A coach can help you kind of achieve those goals.
In this modality the person really deals mostly with the present, how they’re doing right now. A lot of times it’s by looking at how they’re feeling right now and also setting a trajectory to where they want to go. It’s like you’re now at point A and it’s recognizes where point A is, and it’s usually never as bad as you think it can be, but you have to still take account into where you are today before you can move to the next place.
The relationship between a coach and a client is much different also because it’s really considering two equals and then I’m really just your guide to help you go and be where you’re going to be. We use different techniques and stuff to help a person kind of see their own way, or find their own resources within themselves. It also assumes that emotions are a naturally occurring thing, so within the coaching it’s to understand the emotions are normal. It’s a natural part of the evolution towards where you want to go. For example, sometimes my clients talk about, “I want to get to happy.” Well sometimes to get to happy, you’ve got to go through anger, sadness, and fear in order to get to happy, because happy is about right now.
Anxiety is usually about tomorrow and worries about tomorrow. Sadness is usually around things from the past, and so is anger. I help clients recognize that if you want to get to happy, we have to sometimes deal with those other emotions that come into play, normalize them, and then help the person feel today. When you feel today, you’re in the present. When you’re in the present, you’re much more able to experience joy.
The last point on this one is that growth and change can happen very rapidly. I know for a person I had recently coached, she was struggling with understanding her mom and just the dynamic within the relationship and we just kind of talked about a strategy that she used in that same day, and she said it’s significantly created a 180 in terms of her relationship to her mother, now she perceives her mother. Again, it’s understanding that she was in a healthy place and just wanted to have an improved relationship.
Those are kind of some key elements. Now the other thing that’s really important too is okay, there’s great distinctions between the two, now when though should I see a therapist? Mostly when you’re really struggling with negative emotions from the past that holds you back and you can’t seem to break the cycle. It’s like you’ll repeat the same behaviors again and again and again. A therapist will help to shed light on some patterns and why you’ve created those patterns. That’s one of the reasons why you would see a therapist.
The next category is if you have extreme fears or phobias that can kind of get in the way of you progressing. Obviously if you have high levels of anxiety, social anxiety, agoraphobia, all that kind of stuff where it kind of limits your life, seeing a therapist will provide you a better level of care than just seeing a coach. If you have a tendency with your coach to avoid talking about certain issues out of fear, embarrassment, or shame, it’s probably good to review and observe them or look at those specifically with a therapist who can kind of help you work through those negative emotions so that you can have, again, more of your energy present for now.
Lastly you have difficulty with homework, I know with coaching it involves lots of follow through and homework. It is really an outcome based practice. That’s what we’re really really concerned with. It’s not necessarily what brought you here, it’s really where you want to go, so in that there’s a lot of actionable steps where you want to go, so a lot of people are not comfortable with doing homework or having themselves held accountable for stuff. Understand when we talked about therapy being a much slower process, sometimes it’s more comfortable for people to develop a slow relationship over time rather than one where they’re really kind of held accountable right off the hop because again, my job as a coach is to produce results for you and help you go or be where you want to be.
The last point that I did mention here is if a person has an addiction issue, substance abuse issue, it’s also kind of key in terms of them getting help, and you should do that with a professional. That’s all I have for today in terms of the difference between coaching and psychotherapy. I hope that this enlightened you a little bit, but of course if you have questions, comments, anything, if you like the video please give me a thumbs up at the bottom of today’s video, and as usual, thanks so much for joining me today and have a wonderful day.