After telling people I am a Certified Holistic Life Coach, I often either get blank stares or a response something like, “Oh, so like, you’re a therapist?”
Somehow, in the eyes of the general public, the role of life coach has incorrectly become synonymous with “psychologist,” “therapist,” or “counselor.”
When someone is feeling vulnerable or struggling, it can be difficult for them to reach out for help. When you add to that an extra layer of confusion around the difference between these two professional roles and how exactly they serve to help people, it can make getting the proper help even more difficult. What’s worse is that it can lead to the individual unintentionally seeking results from one that the other provides. This can cause the individual to believe that either the modality they chose is ineffective, or more damaging it can lead to the individual to spiral into depression and feel helpless and hopeless because they may personalize the experience and develop the belief that they are not able to be helped.
Both life coaching and therapeutic counseling can be extremely effective, but if you choose the wrong one for your target goal, it can be much like boarding a boat when what you really want is to fly over a mountain.
In recent years both, life coaching and therapeutic counseling have gained widespread recognition as effective tools for personal development, self-discovery, and improved mental health. While they share some similarities, they are fundamentally different in their approach, goals, and techniques. So, as a professional in the personal development and wellness industries, I feel that it is important to clarify what exactly a life coach is, the similarities, and perhaps more importantly, and differences between life coaching and therapeutic counseling so that individuals can more effectively navigate their own personal development or mental healthcare journey.
So What Is Life Coaching?
Life coaching is designed to be a collaborative personal development experience between a coach and a client based on the belief that people have the ability to learn how to command positive changes in their life through self-exploration and progressive actions.
The coach guides the client to complete an honest life assessment as well as personal inventory of current behaviors and patterns that are negatively impacting their life or impeding their own progress toward desired outcomes. With the coach’s help, the client learns how to create effective actionable steps and sustainable adjustments to move the needle in the direction of their desired outcomes. Through this process, the coach and client explore personal perspectives and incorporate tools and techniques to aid the client in clarifying and establishing goals, overcoming challenges, and creating strategic achievement action plans targeted to generate positive progress toward their desired life outcomes.
Through the coaching process, the client becomes empowered and gains greater control over their current situation. Additionally, they can learn how to apply ongoing life management techniques leading them to sustain their gains and continue to further their progress. Because of this, they also typically report experiencing more life satisfaction and joy.
Life coaching can be used to address a wide variety of areas such as personal and professional development, relationship guidance, career planning, business development, improving health and wellness, and spiritual growth. It can be conducted in person, over the phone, or through video conferencing, and may involve actionable homework assignments such as journaling exercises, goal targeting, and other tools to support the client's forward progress.
Unlike psychotherapy, life coaching does not focus on diagnosing or treating clinical mental health illnesses or personality disorders, nor does it deep diving into recounting significant past traumas, or provide acute care for immediate mental health crises. Rather, the life coach guides the client on an action-oriented personal growth journey focused on beneficial forward progress toward desired goal attainment.
Simply put, life coaching assesses the present, may briefly consider where and how challenges and impedances may have rooted themselves in the past, but the significant focus and bulk of the work is on making adjustments in the present and layering them over time to affect positive change and create a better, more fulfilling future. Whereas psychotherapy or psychological counseling is more predominantly focused on the past to better cope with the present-day life.
What is Therapeutic Counseling?
Therapeutic counseling, also known as psychotherapy or counseling, is a clinical approach to mental health that involves working with a psychiatrist, psychologist, or therapist to diagnose, treat, and manage mental illnesses and severe emotional problems. Psychotherapy can be used to address a wide range of issues, including anxiety, depression, trauma, addiction, personality disorders, and other conditions.
Therapeutic counseling typically involves exploring the client's past experiences, thoughts, emotions, and behaviors to gain insight into what may be causing their current mental distress. The therapist may use various therapy techniques to help the client to manage symptoms of mental health issues, explore and understand the root of their emotional challenges, develop coping skills to provide relief from acute emotional distress, and improve their overall mental health well-being.
Essentially, the majority of the results come from ruminating on the past in effort to become better adjusted to the present. Although the therapeutic perspective is typically theory-based and, in practice, facilitated through the therapy theoretical orientation that the psychotherapist is trained in, the journey itself is more often conversational and client-led. Therefore, therapy may result in requiring a longer term treatment commitment for the client to experience noticeable positive results if achieved at all as statistical data shows. Life coaching can be short-term or long-term, depending on the client's targeted outcomes.
Coaching Statistics
Statistics show that life coaches have a success rate of approximately 88% of individuals working with a life coach reported “significant positive changes” after undergoing Life Coaching. (Life Coaching Statistics - 35 Key Figures that You Need to Know, Lovepixel Agency, August 2023)
Coaching also offers high client satisfaction rates at 96%, return on investment up to 344%, and improved workplace relationships for 79% of clients (ICF Global Coaching Study 2016 & 2012 respectively)
A study of 391 people shows that one-on-one coaching can improve coaching clients’ psychological wellbeing and mitigate threats to mental health in the form of excessive and prolonged stress, low resilience, and poor satisfaction with life. (Journal of Medical Internet Research)
Life coaching can lead to a 57.1% decrease in anxiety levels and a 44.3% decrease in depression levels. (Life Coaching Statistics - 35 Key Figures that You Need to Know, Lovepixel Agency, August 2023)
73% of coaching clients say that coaching helps them improve their relationships, communication skills (72%), interpersonal skills (71%), work performance (70%), work/life balance (67%), and wellness (63%). (2009 ICF Global Coaching Study)
Life coaching can improve health outcomes for certain patients. A limited analysis of two randomized controlled trials found that coaching methods that aim to improve self-efficacy and self-empowerment can improve health outcomes especially for people who don’t benefit from intensified interventions. (BMC Health Services Research)
A case study of women leaders who participated in coaching shows that leadership coaching can help coaching clients improve their self-awareness, self-confidence, self-leadership, leadership style, and their relationship to power, conflict, and personal life. (International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring)
70% of coaching clients improve work performance, communication, and relationships thanks to coaching. (Institute of Coaching)
According to a study, individual and group coaching can help to reduce procrastination and facilitate goal attainment. (Frontiers in Psychology)
Coaching has positive side effects on performance and skills, wellbeing, coping, goal-directed self-regulation, and work attitudes. (The Journal of Positive Psychology)
75% of coaching clients say that the value they get from executive and leadership coaching is “considerably greater” or “far greater” than the money and time they invest. (International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring)
3 times more people lose weight when they work with a health coach compared to other methods. (Obesity, Silver Spring)
Health coaching can help lower healthcare costs. (Medical Care)
Happiness coaching regulates anxiety levels and can reduce depression within 12 weeks (Mayo Clinic)
Wellness coaching can reduce depressive symptoms, perceived stress levels, and improve quality of life and physical, emotional, social, cognitive, and spiritual functioning. (Mayo Clinic)
Health coaching can improve the management of chronic diseases. It can have a positive effect on people’s social life and their behavioral, physiological, and psychological conditions. People improve their weight management, physical and mental health status, and increase their physical activity. (Patient Education and Counseling)
Financial coaching can help reduce financial stress. (Urban Institute)
Financial coaching and confidence, budgeting, saving, and goal formation have been linked together. (Journal of Financial Theory)
54% of people who participated in a financial coaching program and had no prior savings, had some savings at the end of the program. (Citigroup)
48% of those with savings at the start of the project increased that amount after receiving financial coaching. (Citigroup)
55% of people with unsecured debt at the start of the program had less debt at the end of it. The median decrease was $3,005. (Citigroup)
The top five most common benefits of business coaching are increased self-confidence (80%), improved relationships (73%), communication skills (72%), interpersonal skills (71%), and work performance (70%). (Coaching Statistics: A Curated List of The Most Insightful Stats, Upcoach, 2022)
The three lowest-rated business coaching benefits included improved investment planning (15%), financial organization (27%), and corporate culture (38%). (Coaching Statistics: A Curated List of The Most Insightful Stats, Upcoach, 2022)
Over 50% of Fortune 500 companies use executive or life coaching as a leadership development tool. (2019 Global Life Coaching Market report published by GlobeNewswire Inc.)
70% business owners see direct ROI from partnering with a coach (2019 Global Life Coaching Market report published by GlobeNewswire Inc.)
Companies invest about $90 billion in training (which coaching is a major part of) annually. This is a year-over-year increase of about 32.5%. (Coaching Statistics: A Curated List of The Most Insightful Stats, Upcoach, 2022)
One study found that about 60% or 6 out of 10 companies invest in coaching for their employees. (Coaching Statistics: A Curated List of The Most Insightful Stats, Upcoach, 2022)
A study showed that 39% of CEOs have an executive coach. The same study also showed that executives in larger companies are significantly more likely to use an executive coach than those in smaller companies. (Coaching Statistics: A Curated List of The Most Insightful Stats, Upcoach, 2022)
In fact only 32% of seed-stage CEOs used a coach, while 60% of growth-stage CEOs used an executive coach. (Coaching Statistics: A Curated List of The Most Insightful Stats, Upcoach, 2022)
30% of business owners who had only had one interaction with a mentor noticed growth in their business. (SCORE)
Coaching can have a relatively big effect on coaching clients’ coping capacities and resilience, attitudes, subjective well being, goal attainment, and performance. (The Journal of Positive Psychology)
Over half (51%) of organizations with a strong coaching culture have higher revenue than other, similar companies without the same culture. 62% of employees in these organizations feel highly engaged. (Human Capital Institute)
Executive coaching can help women improve their work satisfaction, wellbeing, and performance. (International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring)
Employees who receive mentoring receive higher compensation, a greater number of promotions, feel more committed and satisfied with their careers, and are more likely to believe that they will advance in their careers than non-mentored employees. (The Journal of Applied Psychology)
62% of coachees have improved their career opportunities through coaching. (ICF Global Coaching Study, 2009)
Therapeutic Counseling Statistics
About 50-75% of people who enter psychotherapy experience some benefit from it. (American Psychiatric Association)
Studies show that 50% of therapy clients need up to 10 sessions before experiencing benefits. 75% don’t experience improvement until around their 26th session.
Overall, psychologists success rates are between 36-54%. Therapists/counselors have success rates at 75%, cognitive psychologists at 60%, and social psychologists at 50%,
The number of patients reporting unwanted effects of psychotherapy is between 3 and 15% of cases (Berk and Parker, 2009)
At least 5 percent of clients get worse as a result of treatment. (Patient experience of negative effects of psychological treatment: results of a national survey, Cambridge University Press, 02 January, 2018)
5-10% of patients deteriorate in therapy, and 35 to 40% of participants in clinical trials do not improve. (Lambert 2013)
Only around 10% of people using psychological services showed any improvement. (Improved Access to Psychological Therapies – in the UK)
Meta-analysis of cognitive-behavioral therapy and anxiety disorders that found that only 50% of patients responded to the treatment. (David Tolin, director of the Anxiety Disorders Center at the Institute of Living in Hartford, Conn.)
The success rates of coaching or therapy can vary widely depending on numerous factors, including the modality, the specific targeted outcome, the skill and experience of the coach or therapist, and the individual characteristics of the person seeking therapy. While it is challenging to provide a one-size-fits-all success rate, research and statistical evidence consistently suggest that both coaching and therapy can be highly effective in helping individuals to enhance their overall quality of life.
Which Path is Right for You?
Deciding between life coaching and therapeutic counseling depends on your unique needs and preferences. If you are struggling with a mental health condition or acute emotional distress, psychological therapy may be more appropriate to address the root cause of your issues and provide relief and long term counseling may provide continued emotional support. However, if you are looking to achieve specific goals, develop your potential, and elevate your quality of life, life coaching may be a better fit.
It's important to note that there is no right or wrong approach, and there is no one-size-fits-all solution. It's up to you to assess your situation and choose the approach that resonates with you the most.
Both life coaching and therapeutic counseling are valuable tools for self-improvement and personal growth. While they have some similarities, they are different in their approach, goals, and techniques. If you are considering seeking professional support, take the time to research different approaches and providers to find the best fit for your needs. Remember, the most important thing is that you feel comfortable, understood, and supported on your journey towards a happier, healthier life.
If you think that working with a certified coach might be the next best step to elevating your life, I invite you to explore my private coaching package plans or learn more by scheduling a consultation appointment with me. I will be happy to answer any questions that you may have, and together, we can assess if coaching is right for you.
Melissa Z. White, CLC, CHC, CNIM, REEGT, RNCST
Proud military wife, mother of two amazing and active kids, former nomadic rock climber, neuropsychology nerd, autoimmune warrior, and open heart surgery survivor.
Melissa is a Personal Power Authority, Certified Surgical Neurophysiologist, Certified Holistic Life & Health Coach, and NLP Practitioner. She holds degrees in psychology and neurophysiology, and has over 25 years specified experience in the medical, mental health, social services, corporate, and entrepreneurial industries. Her uncommon background, education, and experience provides a unique perspective and understanding of the brain, human behavior, and the link between mentality, physicality, and achievement.
She has been professionally coaching individuals around the globe to maximize their potential and live out their dreams for nearly a decade. Recognizing the intersecting relationship between all areas of our lives, she has designed and developed her signature 6-Pillar framework that can be taught and applied to create and sustain high levels of holistic life success and satisfaction.
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