You might have heard that therapists and counsellors can help you with many different life scenarios. You might have also heard that life coaches can provide help with your personal circumstances and prepare you for success too. But you might not have heard of transformational coaching, the opportunity to work with a coach and have a powerful conversation with your unconscious to transform your way of being and create sustainable changes. All of these approaches involve a creative process and help you achieve your goals, but it may be helpful to know the differences: therapist vs counsellor vs life coach vs transformational coach. Let’s explore them all in more detail to support you to understand the right approach for you.
What do coaching and counselling have in common?
On the surface the work of counsellors and coaches can seem quite similar. The terms coaching and counselling are often interrelated and are used as umbrella terms to cover an array of coaching and counselling approaches. In general they both:
- Help you with self-development, negative behaviours and personal growth.
- Help you create a life you feel better about.
- Create an atmosphere of trust, non judgement and support
- Help you identify what is holding you back
- Focus on listening and asking questions
- Help you to become more resilient
- Enable you to find the answers that will work for you
- Help you work towards life goals
- Help you to move forward in your career and relationships
- Support you to identify your core beliefs and change your perspectives
But there are many crucial differences too.
What are the differences between counselling and coaching?
A Counsellor typically helps you with mental health issues, diagnosis and assessment. Counsellors can also guide you to find solutions and provide direction in your life goals. They tend to use evidence-based tools and techniques to help their clients develop enhanced emotional skills and break unhealthy behavioural patterns. Counselling is coping orientated providing tools, strategies and techniques to use in the moment when you are feeling challenged.
If you are trying to overcome a particular obstacle, such as procrastination, a Life Coach will support you to figure out what is preventing you from accomplishing or even beginning tasks. Life coaching helps clients break free of assumptions, offers accountability, helps you find your calling and keeps you focused and motivated. Life coaches tend to work in the present. They are action oriented. Their goal is to help you set milestones, meet them and move onwards. They do not tell you what to do, they help you discover what it is you want to do.
Transformational Coaching is a form of intuitive practice where the coach will enable a powerful conversation with your unconscious and therefore can be differentiated from counselling and life coaching. A Transformational Coach will invite you to take full responsibility for the life you wish to live, the way you respond to your thoughts and the choices you make. This state of being is enabled by the coach creating a safe space for you to understand and heal the experiences of your past, break free from patterns of thinking and acting that may have been plaguing your life for some time, in order for you to change your current reality and possible future. Transformational Coaching is built upon the belief that you hold all your answers within you. A Transformational Coach’s role is to facilitate your exploration of, and reconnection with, your wisdom and resources. Often this exploration will take place at an unconscious level.
How do I know if I want counselling or coaching?
It will always depend on your personal preference. We understand that choosing someone to facilitate your self development and healing may feel like a big decision. We would always encourage you to take time to pause, sit quietly, tune into your body and ask yourself which is the right approach for me? Listen to how your body responds as deep down inside you ultimately know your answer.
At Health Wealth & Wellbeing we offer powerful conversations with the unconscious through Transformational Coaching for 1:1 personal development and as a training course for those wishing to train in this coaching modality. Our approach recognises the necessity to address all our bodies when seeking change; the mental, emotional, physical and energetic. Therefore we have considered how to relate to and integrate all these aspects in the way we work with our clients and students.
We do this through our unique method of Transformational Coaching, a holistic approach utilising our own modalities of CLEARER Coaching, Inner Child Healing, Body Wisdom Coaching and Therapeutic Support. This approach can be differentiated from counselling and life coaching.
