Life Coaching vs Therapy: What do you need?

Imagine this: You are feeling stuck in life. Maybe it’s your career, your relationships, or just an overarching sense of “something’s off.” You know you need support, but here’s the catch—you’re not sure if you need someone to help you heal from the past or walk towards the future. Should you see a life coach or a therapist?

This is a common question when one is at a crossroads. It’s one I’ve faced in my own life, and it’s something many of my clients bring to our initial conversations. Let’s explore the differences, clear up the misconceptions, and help you decide who’s the best fit for your needs.

Coaching vs Therapy: Clearing Up the Confusion

When I began my coach training with Neuroleadership Institute, I was introduced to the difference between therapy and coaching.

It is often framed like this:

• Therapy looks back at the past to heal and restore.
• Coaching looks forward to helping you set and achieve goals.

It sounds simple, doesn’t it? Therapy is for those dealing with mental illness or emotional wounds, while coaching is for mentally healthy people looking to thrive. But here’s the truth – it’s not always so black and white.

Sustainable change often requires processing past experiences. Uncovering and addressing underlying beliefs can be challenging without exploring past events in a safe, supportive space. While the past may surface in coaching, the future is ever-present in therapy. So, how do you decide whether to choose a life coach or a therapist?

As an ICF-certified coach, I’ve received extensive training, supervision, and practice in coaching. I’ve also personally benefited from therapy. While I work with a coach on and off depending on my needs, I’ve been meeting with my therapist consistently—at least twice a month—since 2019. Based on my experience and professional training, let’s decode the differences between these professions and how to choose the right one for you.

CLOSE LOOK: Understanding Mental Illness vs Mental Health

Before diving into coaching and therapy, let’s clarify the distinction between mental illness and mental health, as this is critical to making an informed decision.

Mental health and illness are terms that are used interchangeably. Let’s explore what exactly they mean, because they are very relevant in understanding when, where and how therapy and coaching are helpful.

Mental Illness

Mental illnesses are diagnosable conditions that significantly impact a person’s behaviour, mood or thinking, often impairing their daily functioning. Examples include schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression and anxiety disorders. Mental illness is a disruption in mental well-being, and is part of mental health. Without intervention, mental illness is disruptive and affects interpersonal relationships, physical health, emotional regulation and daily life. Treating mental illness requires targeted interventions like medication, therapy or other treatments.

Mental Health

Mental health is a broader concept. Just as everyone has physical health, everyone has mental health. It is a dynamic state of well-being that changes with life’s ups and downs. Mental health is not a fixed state and it fluctuates based on life events, stressors, support system and environment. Good mental health allows us to cope with challenges, build resilience and improve our quality of life. While mental illness is a disruption of mental health, mental health itself exists on a spectrum.

Therapy

Therapy is a process that helps clients heal. It is a process of personal growth through self awareness and acceptance. It is particularly effective for addressing mental illness and persistent challenges that interfere with every day functioning. Therapy often involves exploring the past to work with unprocessed experiences, events and beliefs that have left a mark on one’s psyche.

Therapy also supports in building one’s mental health when persistent behaviour patterns are preventing progress in one’s life or causing interpersonal challenges. The goal in therapy is to guide clients towards wellness, healing, equipping them with skills to handle ups and downs of life without going into distress.

Therapy is powerful and life changing. I’ve used therapy to work through trauma, mental illness and persistent patterns that I’ve not been able to break with just self work. It has been the key to my surviving and thriving while living with chronic health conditions.

Life Coaching

Life coaching is a process that helps clients to move toward achieving their goals. It is a laser focused process where the coach partners with the clients to set goals and work towards them. All insights, awareness, learning and growth that a client experiences in the coaching session is channeled towards helping the client achieve the goal. Life coaching is a goal oriented process.

Coaching is not an intervention that can treat mental illness. It can be used in conjunction with therapy to help create new habits or work with specific challenges at work or interpersonal relationships. But it cannot and should not replace therapy when working with mental illness.

Coaching is powerful to move forward with specific goals. I’ve worked with coaches during pivotal moments such as starting my business and becoming financially independent. and I’ve worked with coaches when I started my business. Coaching offers accountability, structured reflection and clarity, which can be incredibly effective for many areas of our work and life.

What’s Common?

Both therapists and life coaches facilitate personal growth. They use active listening and create a safe, supportive space for clients to develop self awareness.

What’s Different?

There are three key differences between life coaches and therapists that we will explore below.

1. Professional Training

Therapists typically require formal education and licensure in psychology, psychotherapy or counselling to practise.

Life coaches, on the other hand, aren’t regulated, meaning anyone can call themselves a coach. There is no oversight or requirement that an individual needs to meet before they can call themselves a life coach. However, there are international coaching bodies that have set a standard for ethical and professional standards in coaching. Three major international bodies offer credentialing and standards that a coach needs to meet before being certified by them.

They are International Coaching Federation, Center for Credentialing and Education and European Mentoring and Coaching Council. These organisations have extensive requirements of training, assessment, mentoring, supervision and practice before they offer the credential of a coach. So if a life coach has one of these credentials then it is safe to assume that they have put in the time, effort and money into training to become a coach.

Of course there is no guarantee that a coach with a credential is going to be good at what they do. And likewise a coach without a credential can be amazing at what they do. Credential is a signal that indicates to a client that the coach has put in the work to learn and practice coaching skills. It is a strong signal of a coach’s dedication to their craft and practice.

2. Surviving Vs Thriving

Therapists are best suited to address issues affecting your every day functioning at work and in life.

Life coaches are ideal for enhancing quality of life or work – helping with key decisions, transitions, building habits, tackling limiting beliefs, doing your best work and unleashing your full potential.

Survival = Therapist. Thriving = Coach.

That said, a good therapist can also support thriving, just as an ethical coach will refer clients to therapy when deeper issues arise.

3. Process Vs Project

If a therapist can work with you on both matters of survival and thriving, then why does one need a life coach?

The key differentiator is that a coach focuses on setting goals and working towards them. A coach will help the client set overall life goals, and then session goals. Setting session goals can sometimes take up to one-third of a session, as getting this clarity right up front can be transformational for a client in choosing the issue they want to address that will help them move forward.

This is not the key focus for a therapist, because the process is about increasing self awareness, building resilience and improving quality of life. When a client is working on a specific goal with a therapist, and if the client is unable to move forward or break through some barriers, the therapist will go deep to uncover what is behind it. What’s beneath the iceberg then becomes the focus. The goal takes a back seat and it may or may not feature in the future therapy sessions.

Whereas in a coaching session, the focus is always on how the past can be used to inform the present and the future. The coach doesn’t get deep into this exploration of the past and if need be will refer the client to a therapist to do the exploration while the coach and the client work towards making progress on their goals.

Therapy is a continuous process that adds to an individual in terms of their being. Coaching is a targeted approach that is useful when there are goals that a client wants to work towards that will enhance their quality of work and life, which will help them thrive in their world.

How to Choose between a Coach and a Therapist?

Here are five questions to guide your decision between choosing a coach or a therapist.

1. Do you need support with mental illness? Therapist.
2. Are you struggling with persistent challenges to your mental health? Therapist.
3. Do you want to uncover the root cause for dysfunctional behaviours and break unconstructive patterns? Therapist.
4. Do you want targeted support to achieve a specific goal? Coach.
5. Do you want to work towards goals that result in your life’s best work? Coach.

The Best of Both Worlds

Therapy helps uncover root causes of behaviour, fostering healing and acceptance. Coaching helps clients set and achieve goals – both the BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goals) and every day goals that will make their life and work better. Coaches will help you to identify and progress towards these goals, work with barriers and take action that help you to achieve the goals.

Many of my clients work with a therapist to explore deeper issues while I support them in setting and achieving their goals in their life and work. I help them identify and remove barriers and move closer towards their goals – no matter how impossible or audacious a goal they are.

Still unsure? Book a free, no-obligation call with me to discuss your needs and determine the best fit for your situation. And, don’t worry, this call is not a sales call! It is a conversation designed to ensure that you meet the professional aligned to your needs, and I work with clients aligned to the work I enjoy doing the best.