When does a client need coaching vs psychotherapy?
I am a trained Psychotherapist and Coach. I started my coaching journey back in 2010, and shortly after my training I offered my services for free to build up my experience. Quite quickly, I realised that I was energised by helping my clients to achieve their goals.
I love the part of the work when I feel like I can help my clients to transform through discussion around their challenges/goals. Psychotherapy has helped me to go a bit deeper, and sometimes that is what is needed in order to help clients to transform.
I have been a part of Coaching Reading since the first meeting back in 2019. It has been really great connecting with a group of coaches who are just as passionate as me when it comes to helping people. I am writing this article to help people that have an interest in coaching or who may want to receive coaching, to understand how to determine whether a client needs psychotherapy instead of coaching.
There is an overlap when it comes to both professions, in that the client will want to achieve a specific outcome, so I use different questions to help me to gain a clear picture of the needs of the client.
I’ll start by looking at the differences between coaching versus psychotherapy:
Coaching
Action and goal orientated
Helps clients to become unstuck: having a coach means the client will take action and achieve their goals quicker
Coaching goals can be for areas like getting a new job/to change a behaviour/start a business or work through business challenges/goals
Focuses on the present and future
Psychotherapy
Helps clients who are feeling overwhelmed or who are struggling to cope with everyday tasks
Helps with depression
Helps to overcome mental health issues
Helps with self-harm and suicidal thoughts
Helps clients to understand what in their past is showing up in their present day issues
Depending on the type of therapy, the work focuses on the past and present
The process I go through to identify if a client needs coaching or psychotherapy is to start with a fact-finding initial consultation. This is to capture as much information as possible about their situation and needs.
Here are some of the questions I find useful:
Have you had coaching or therapy before? This is to gain an understanding of the client’s history, how they feel their previous coaching/therapy went, whether they thought it was a success. Understanding if the client has had previous therapy will give me the opportunity to ask more questions and learn more about them.
I am trying from this question to gain a general overview of their life history. I would ask about their childhood, family and relationships. I am also listening for words like: ‘I have really bad anxiety, my moods are really up-and-down, I am grieving, I feel suicidal, I feel sad or depressed’. All of this information will help me to decide how I will need to support the client. Childhood trauma is an area where the client will need specialist support, and I would signpost the client to a trauma specialist, if I felt that they needed that type of support.
Are you on any medication or is there anything else that you need to make me aware of e.g. family history? This is to gain a better understanding of the client. If they are on medication, I would delve deeper to understand what the medication is for, and how long they have been taking it for. I may also do my own research of the type of medication that the client has mentioned.
What are your current eating, sleeping and exercise habits? This will help me to gain an understanding of the client’s lifestyle, and whether they have any eating or sleeping issues.
How are you feeling about your current goals? This question is to find out if the client has any concerns/fears around what they are hoping to achieve, for example they may say that they are anxious and this would be an opportunity for me to delve a bit more into the scale of their anxiety. This question also helps me to know exactly where the client is in terms of the goal that they are hoping to achieve.
I have found these questions useful because they help me in the first session to understand the person in front of me. It also helps me to be clear on what the client needs, as sometimes clients may reach out to a coach thinking that they need coaching when in fact psychotherapy might be more appropriate.
Pauline Toussaint Coaching Reading member