We still tend to confuse life coaches with therapists. But life coaching is a completely unique service for aspiring achievers. Maybe you need one-to-one consultancy to establish patterns to clear constraining beliefs. Or need a professional guideline to improve and shine in your professional and personal life.
But you are confused about whether to hire a therapist or coach. In this position, you need to know the difference between a life coach and a therapist, their responsibilities, and their field of work to hire the best one per your requirements.
Without further due, let’s begin our discussion first.
Key Differences Between Life Coach & Therapists
A life coach works with you to improve your life and teaches you how to reach your goals. On the other hand, a therapist works with you to help you find solutions to problems or heal from past traumas that have affected you.
Depending on a few strategic terms, there are other differences and similarities between a life coach and a therapist.
a. Differences in Focus Points
The first difference we would like to begin with is the focus points. Life coaches focus on specific goals and work towards their achievements, unlike therapy, because therapy mainly focuses on mental health.
That situation is optimum for therapy when people need to focus on their work but can’t do it due to past incidents or trauma. People need to get out of those pasts and focus on their present.
On the other hand, when a person does not have the courage to take initiation to achieve his future goals, it is the right time to get life coaching.
b. Differences in Skills
Therapists help people to learn how to heal emotional weaknesses. As opposed to life coaches helps people understand the power of achieving goals. Meaning is that it won’t be easy when you need to accomplish any goals. Issues may stick you at a certain point without moving forward to reach your goal.
But on the other hand, therapists work like teaching to heal your pain. When you are in specific emotional distress, you need to be able to avoid that stress and move forward toward a comfortable living situation.
c. Differences in Tense That Both of Them Works for People
Now, this difference is a bit interesting. When it comes to therapy, we know that it will talk about the trauma or any stressful event that happened in the past. Therapists will let you calm down and think about how those events let you face challenges you shouldn’t. They will teach you how to get over those stresses, return to your current life, and enjoy it.
On the other hand, Life coaches teach people how to set goals; with proper strategic planning, anyone can achieve that. Not only that, life coaches help get inspiration when people don’t understand what to do.
d. Differences in Structure
Typically therapists decide how the therapy sessions will take place and what type of treatment the patient needs. Most of the time, they start with longer sessions to collect as much information as possible from the patient. It helps the therapists understand the patient and build a solid strategy to heal their emotional state.
On the other hand, life coaches also start with longer sessions, but the goal is different. Life coaches try to understand the persons and analyze their behavior. The reason is that life coaches are about inspiration, motivation, achieving goals, etc., and knowing how the person responds is essential.
e. Differences in Duration
Typically, therapy treatments don’t have a fixed duration because it depends on the capability of any human being to heal their emotional challenges. Sometimes, it also depends on the challenges the patient faces.
On the other hand, Life coaches offer packaged programs for specific types of goal achievements because it depends on that. They speak with the patient and understand what they need and how they can achieve it. Towards that goal, the session starts taking place and continues up to the package deadlines meet.
Summary: Life Coach vs. Therapist
If you need professional help to fulfill your dreams, you should take professional help from a Life Coach. On the other hand, take consultancy from a therapist if you want to healing from some mental health issues.
