Coach vs. Therapist
What’s the difference between a therapist and a coach?
We’re often asked what the difference is between a therapist and a coach. We hire both for different reasons in different seasons of life. We’ll speak from personal experience about who helped us and how.
There are many people and programs who help us on our journeys in life. We’ll share other ways to get help outside of therapists and coaches below. Coaches have been the most impactful for us because this relationship is the most action-oriented. For us, action cures fear and creates clarity. A combo of therapists, programs, and accountability buddies have been important in moving the needle with processing subconscious limiting beliefs.
High Level: Coach vs Therapist
Coaching is for growth, goals, and achieving forward momentum. It’s action oriented. The focus is on habits, accountability, and building skills. Coaches help you bridge the gap between where you are and where you want to be.
Therapy is for healing and understanding the past and caring for mental health. Therapy is clinical and done by licensed professionals. They’re trained to help you understand why you feel the way you do and how to heal from it.
Coaching
Coaches help you level up. They provide both expansion and accountability. Meaning, they show you that something greater is possible, and they guide you through action steps to get there. They provide accountability because they check-in on progress towards taking action. They also provide accountability because coaches are an investment. For us, when we’re paying top dollar, we’re doing the work. A good coach will teach, mirror, and hold pressure in a loving way.
We’ve had a number of coaches over the years. There’s coaches for everything: life, leadership, business, career, writing, executive, etc. Our advice for finding a coach is:
Identify what phase you're at in life and what’s calling to you (ie launching a business, finding love, working on your relationships, moving from burn out into alignment, growing in your career) and choose a coach who can help you now with what’s top of mind.
Choose a coach who has similar values. We look at our coaches to see what their lifestyle is, what they value, what they spend their time on, etc. This is important because they’ve LIVED the experiences you desire.
Therapy
Therapy helps us process our subconscious beliefs based on how we were raised, things that happened to us growing up, and unhealthy patterns showing up in life today.
For example, I (Anna) kept having the same dynamic come up over the past 10 or so years. The belief is that I have to be productive to ‘be enough.’ Logically I know it’s not true. Subconsciously, the belief is still ingrained because my behavior patterns all point back to it (working to exhaustion, not allowing myself to relax, never-ending to-do lists, saying yes to too many things). So, no it’s not fixed, but I’m aware of it now and have made a ton of progress at rewiring my brain around it thanks to therapists asking me about why and how these beliefs formed.
Over the years we’ve tried different therapists. In-person, TalkSpace (don’t recommend), and virtual. TalkSpace and virtual quickly fell off. The connection isn’t as strong virtually if you don’t already have an in-person relationship. TalkSpace has short sessions and is unreliable, as we’d have therapists be late, cancel last minute, leave, then we’d have to find another one and re-explain everything.
Going to therapy is like going to a doctor, but instead of caring for your physicals, you're caring for your mentals. This is especially important if you have signs of depression, anxiety, trauma, or your navigating grief or other life changes.
Additional Paths for Growth
Accountability Buddy - We can’t overstate the impact of having an accountability buddy. This person will know you better than both your therapist and your coach. Also, it’s FREE. The challenging part here is finding someone you can trust, who is aligned, has a growth mindset, and who can regularly and consistently meet.
Mentors - Sometimes we overemphasize what a mentor can do. From our experience, a mentor is NOT a coach. We have had amazing mentors. But a mentor-mentee relationship is meant to show you what’s possible and to give you wisdom and guidance. Mentors are NOT for accountability. They’re often not for details and nuances either.
Masterminds- We’ve participated in a few masterminds over the years. Anna: I’m currently in a leadership mastermind, I was in a writing mastermind last year, and I did a Chief of Staff mastermind several years ago. Think of these as a bridge between a coach and programs (see below). Both the impact and price point are in the middle too. Masterminds are best when there’s 6-8 people in a small group setting meeting regularly with a leader. The leader/coach/guide will teach a lesson, then the group will discuss. The leader may choose 1-2 people each call to share their experience and how they are or will apply the lesson. Others learn from their peers on how to apply it. The idea is that you get wisdom from the entire group, normalizing and applying the experience, and you still get wisdom from the leader on the topic of interest.
Programs - We’ve done a number of programs that are self-paced and have moved the needle for us in terms of growth and understanding. These are great options 1. When you can’t yet afford a coach and 2. When you want to build better daily habits and practices. Programs require you to be a self-starter. You get out of it what you put into it. This is why we created The Evolved Vets Membership.
Close friends and family - Above all, our close friends and family have been instrumental in listening to us vent, challenging us, showing us a better way, and loving us unconditionally.
Hopefully this is helpful to even one person who is navigating where to go for help. Asking for help is a good thing. Let’s do more of it.
And in case you want to learn more about 1:1 coaching with The Evolved Vets, book an Alignment Call, and let’s chat about what your goals are.
