Counselling or Coaching: Which Is Best For My Relationship?
One of the things my clients value is that I am both a qualified and experienced psychotherapeutic counsellor and a coach. This dual expertise ensures a holistic experience in our sessions, allowing us to address all aspects of your well-being.
My coaching clients appreciate my background in therapy because it provides me with a deep understanding of human behaviour and psychology. Conversely, my counselling clients benefit from my coaching skills, which bring a level of directness to our sessions.
But what exactly is the difference between coaching and counselling? Are they distinctly different at all?
This post will explore the differences between counselling and coaching and how to choose the right approach to support your relationship.
The Best Way To Tackle Relationship Issues
The importance of personalized, one-to-one expert support becomes apparent at times of relational crisis and impasse. Reaching out to a professional is not just a suggestion but a necessity in these moments.
This is when you might consider engaging a counsellor, psychotherapist, or coach. I have positively benefited from individual and group psychotherapy and coaching for different areas of my life.
A qualified counsellor, psychotherapist or coach who is experienced and specialised in relationships or marriage will effectively support you and your relationship.
What is counselling?
As an Integrative Psychosynthesis counsellor, I believe counselling and psychotherapy, collectively called therapy, nurture the soul.
The acknowledgement of the soul’s needs becomes evident when we find ourselves grappling with psychological and emotional distress. Therapy serves as a means to navigate, manage and care for our pain, as well as make meaning of our emotional problems and learn how to sense sacredness in them.
Some sources of distress are outlined clinically in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5)[1]. These may encompass conditions like depression, anxiety, stress, and PTSD. Although therapists in the U.K. don’t prescribe medication, Talking Therapies play a vital role in attending to mental unwellness.
Therapists extend support for a range of life experiences, such as abuse, grief, illness, and infertility, recognising their interconnectedness with and impact on mental health.
Soul pain manifests in many ways. Therapy can support you with an existential crisis or the unravelling of your soul’s journey,
What does a therapist do?
A therapist serves as a guide and witness, assisting you in untangling the complexities of your thoughts, feelings, and actions.
They help unveil valuable insights into your identity and how you connect with others, often exploring your formative years when your personality and understanding of life developed.
Therefore, therapists are crucial in revealing deep-seated aspects like attachment styles and experiences we may have overlooked. These elements shape how we navigate adult relationships, especially in romantic contexts where therapy becomes instrumental in addressing conflicts rooted in pre-existing issues.
It also involves understanding the subtleties of conscious and unconscious communication, bringing hidden thoughts and patterns into our awareness.
Beyond providing support, therapists share tools and strategies to manage, enhance, or alleviate the impact of symptoms, aiming for positive changes that contribute to a more fulfilling, integrated and soulful life. Those tools can awaken your imagination and creativity.
Heart & Soul
The therapeutic relationship is at the centre of all therapy. Ultimately, for me, in my practice, counselling is about heart, soul and care. Through the therapeutic relationship, a client can experience and practice being in a healthy relationship in real time.
Heart and the therapeutic relationship are at the centre of counselling and psychotherapy.
What does therapy achieve?
Sound therapy, therefore, replicates a secure attachment, i.e. a safe space. One way it does that is with the structure of therapy, same time, same place, every week. Another way is setting boundaries through fees, cancellation policies and keeping to the session times.
Effective therapy will not foster codependency but will support a client to use the tools learnt and practised in the therapeutic relationship out in the world beyond the therapy room.
Therapy is an opportunity to reconnect and integrate all of who we are and reclaim our authenticity, agency and autonomy.
There are many benefits of counselling and psychotherapy. These include:
- Resolve the pervasive underlying causes of your problems.
- Learn how your symptoms are catalysts for growth and transformation.
- Heal from early childhood trauma and abuse.
- Gain freedom from self-destructive thoughts and behaviours.
- Build a toolbox of coping and life skills.
- Facilitate healthy, lifelong changes.
- Establish a strong foundation for healthy relationships.
- Increase self-esteem, self-worth, and self-confidence.
- Reconnect with your true self.
- Discover value, meaning, and purpose in life.
Therapy can be short-term or long-term, i.e. weeks or years.
Who is my therapist?
Qualified counsellors and psychotherapists undergo extensive training, lasting up to 5 years before qualifying. In addition, many therapists will have further training in an area of expertise, such as couples, trauma, or addiction, using particular tools such as Shadow Work, Dreams, or EMDR.
In the U.K., anyone can call themselves a counsellor and set up a private practice, so it is crucial to find a therapist who you know is fully qualified.
Depending on their training, therapists will likely keep details of their personal lives or experiences private from you.
What is coaching?
At its core, coaching is based on goal-oriented, solution-focused therapy models. While using many tools, the coaching approach focuses on moving individuals forward, emphasizing its proactive, interactive, engaging, and challenging nature.
The ICF (International Federation of Coaching) defines coaching as:
Partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximise their personal and professional potential. The process of coaching often unlocks previously untapped sources of imagination, productivity and leadership.
Coaching falls into two main camps: performance coaching and self-development coaching. At the centre of both is change.
Coaching supports you in reaching your specific life goals, whether related to leadership, business, money, health, finding love, enhancing your existing relationship or navigating a divorce.
Whilst coaching is not an intervention for mental illness, trauma, or deep-rooted issues, it can improve overall mental health. Improved resilience, reframing outdated beliefs, problem-solving, and believing in ourselves all improve well-being.
What does a coach do?
A coach is your supportive ally, working collaboratively to identify, articulate and achieve your goals.
Not too different from counselling and psychotherapy, coaches facilitate a process of self-discovery, helping you gain clarity on your aspirations and challenges.
A coach helps break down complex issues into manageable steps through active listening and thoughtful questioning. While our past is always present, coaching primarily focuses on the present and future, offering practical tools and strategies for achieving specific objectives.
A coach will also explicitly hold you accountable for doing what you say you will do to work towards your goal.
Coaching will keep you focused on achieving your goals and hold you accountable to keep you on track.
What does coaching achieve?
Effective coaching will facilitate personal growth and enhance your skill set to attain your goals.
Coaching tends to be short-term, 3-6 months and offered as a package
It empowers you to overcome challenges and blind spots, build confidence, and make informed decisions. The ultimate goal is to achieve a positive and tangible impact on your life or career.
Those tangible outcomes may include enhanced self-awareness, improved decision-making abilities, and a greater sense of fulfilment and purpose. All of these have an impact on relationships, which is an example of coaching’s intangible impact. When you integrate coaching, you will see a clear impact on all areas of your life.
The most apparent benefit to coaching is that you are likely to see quick, positive results. Other benefits include:
- Understanding your values, priorities, and aspirations to set clear goals.
- Reflecting on yourself helps you discover strengths and areas for improvement.
- Setting goals boosts confidence, making it easier to face challenges.
- Get the tools to make intelligent decisions in your personal and career life.
- Better communication means fewer conflicts and improved relationships.
- Coaching gives you ways to handle stress and bounce back from challenging times.
- Learning to balance your time and set boundaries for a happier life.
- Having a clear goal makes you more motivated to work hard and succeed.
- Coaches help you decide what’s essential and manage your time wisely.
- Coaching enables you to stay positive, focusing on what you’re good at and what’s possible.
Who is my coach?
A coach supports and inspires you to unlock your full potential. A coach is not a qualified mental health practitioner.
Life coaching is not regulated in the U.K., so anyone can work as a life coach if they have the necessary skills and qualities. I participated in an ICF-accredited coach Training course with CreativeMind University. This was deep and advanced-level training.
While coaching organisations such as the ICF, the A.C. (Association for Coaching), and the EMCC (European Mentoring & Coaching Council) have worked to define the skills and competencies coaches should have and provide structure for ethics and best practices, coaches do not have to receive supervision and oversight of their work.
Personal experience
Many coaches use personal experience as the basis of expertise, i.e. a successful entrepreneur providing business coaching. In such instances, that is hugely supportive and aspirational and forms the basis of an empathic connection with a client.
However, experience does not necessarily mean expertise in other areas, such as relationships, love, and divorce.
A divorce coach, leading with their own experience, can support you with the divorce process and your general well-being.
They will not be adequately equipped to process your relational wounds or any anxiety, trauma, depression or mental health issues you experience at this time. Without supervision, there is also the risk of the coach’s experience unconsciously becoming intertwined with the client’s.
Counselling and coaching are both effective in helping you solve your relationship problems.
Counselling or Coaching?
Our relationship problems do not exist in a vacuum. In the UK, approximately 1 in 4 people will experience a mental health issue each year, with 1 in 6 reporting common mental health problems like anxiety and depression weekly.
Does this mean you can’t engage in coaching? Absolutely not.
Let’s address the elephant in the room. The language around coaching and therapy may appear similar, but the key distinction lies in the intensity of distress, challenges, or the impact your mental health struggles have on your life.
If you are dealing with the effects of addiction, abuse, or trauma and haven’t started the healing process, or if you’re not ready to discuss these issues, counselling is crucial as the foundational step before potentially transitioning to coaching.
Even if you’re already in therapy and have ongoing mental health issues that are manageable, coaching might be the ideal choice if your focus is on achieving specific goals or improving areas like relationships or personal development.
The best of both worlds
Here’s the good news! I offer therapeutic coaching, a hybrid approach that combines coaching with counselling techniques as needed. This method allows you to swiftly work towards your goals while having the flexibility to address underlying emotional or psychological issues that become apparent and are stopping you from achieving that goal.
With therapeutic coaching, there’s no need to consult two separate professionals at once.
Whether you choose, counselling, psychotherapy, and coaching all work towards you experiencing a better future.
Over To You
If you’re stuck in your relationship and considering how counselling and coaching can help strengthen your marriage, get in touch for a clarity session. I offer video sessions online via a secure platform.
Or call me today on 07535 864836.
Leave a comment below; I’d love to hear from you.
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© Sandra Harewood 2023
About Sandra
Soul Centred couples therapist, counsellor and Jungian Shadow Work coach Sandra Harewood specialises in working with women and couples stuck at a crossroads in their marriage. Relationships are precious; this is your chance to begin a new journey and experience the connection and intimacy you most deeply desire.
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