How is coaching different from therapy?

This is a common question, and understandably.

Coaching and therapy can feel similar. You talk, we listen (ideally). Often there’s some emotional discomfort involved.

In both scenarios, the client is seeking a neutral party to help them resolve something or feel better. However, coaches and therapists have different scopes of practice.

The degree to which a client is struggling—and what they’re struggling with—determines whether therapy or coaching is more appropriate.

Therapists generally have more training than coaches. They treat diagnosable mental health disorders.

Coaches, who come from a wide variety of professional backgrounds, help functional clients improve their outcomes in life.

Certification is not required for someone to call themselves a coach. And, many coaches have extensive training (in coaching and adjacent disciplines).

3 distinctions between coaching and therapy

Beyond training and scope of practice, some key differences between coaching and therapy lie in the content of the conversations.

Here are three distinctions between coaching and therapy. (These are intentionally over simplified for the purposes of this article—there are exceptions on both sides of the equation.)

The central question

Therapists ask, “What’s wrong and how can I help you fix it?”

Coaches ask, “What do you want and how can I help you create it?”

The primary intention

In therapy, you process to understand.

In coaching, you process to move forward.

The main focus

Therapy examines the past.

Coaching explores the future.

The airplane metaphor

This may be a helpful metaphor for understanding the difference between coaching and therapy.

When we fly coach, we take a back seat, literally. We sit behind the people in first class (the VIPs) and the cockpit (the pilots).

Coaching is kind of like that.

When you work with a coach, you’re the VIP and the pilot.

You’re in charge, driving the plane. Your coach is in coach, behind you the whole way.

In therapy, there’s an assumption that the therapist is an authority who holds answers. You might say, they’re the pilot.

While in coaching, the assumption is that you hold the answers.

Coaches use active listening, powerful questions, and a host of tools to help you uncover what you already know.

Why coaching matters

You might be wondering, If I already know the answers, why do I need a coach?

Great question!

For many of us, the answers we’re seeking are buried.

They’re deep down there, under layers of ingrained thought patterns, limiting assumptions, and cultural and familial conditioning that prevent us from creating the life we want.

We get stuck in grooves that no longer serve us but we don’t know how to get out of them.

This pattern becomes exhausting because we’re endlessly chasing an elusive truth, one we sense is there but can’t seem to access.

Coaching helps you connect with that truth, with the version of yourself that’s ready for your life to take off.