Comparing Psychotherapy to Life Coaching
There seems to be curiosity about how these two different professions interact with each other and what is different.
Psychotherapy is very well defined because of the licensing requirements and the acceptance of this practice over the last 130 or so years.
Life coaching has a certification process but not a licensing process so its definition is still maturing.
Life coaching roots originated in sports and theater coaching. About 30 years ago was the founding of the International Coaching Federation (ICF) the first certification of life coaching.
As life coaching matured over the years, it was led by brilliant leaders and pioneers like Steve Chandler, Steve Hardison, Carolyn Freyer Jones and many more as it profoundly changes lives.
Life coaching works and has benefited millions of clients in expanding and enriching their lives mentally, emotionally, financially and spiritually for the better.
The comparison between these worlds a start with a primary and simple definition:
- Psychotherapy – Addresses mental illness, using psychological pathology to: study the cause, components, patterns of cognition, emotion and behavior that negatively affect a person adaptation to life. Using many different modalities and approaches to healing.
- Life Coaching – Address mental health enhancing and expanding personal mental, emotional and spiritual components allowing a person to gain remarkable insights into their lives that would not usually happen without the coaching. These insights promote positive transformational shifts in perception of the world and self that create a forward evolutionarily gain.
The common ground between these two worlds:
- Compassionate Inquiry – Trusting curious conversations where the Practioner will take the patient/client to places that they would not go themselves in order to shift their perception of their life in a positive manner. Through reflecting to the client blind spots and false beliefs that holds them in a stagnant loop, will facilitate a release of these beliefs. This then results in a positive movement forward to a healthier more expansive life story.
This is a short explanation of a very complex world of human behavior and mental and emotional growth.
Please contact Greg if you would like to know more or actually experience a complementary life coaching session.