Counselling, therapy, life coaching… what’s the difference?
This is a question that comes up regularly in both enquiry calls and in general conversation.
And little wonder: it can be confusing. So I’m going to try and address it in simple terms here.
In reality there’s little difference between counselling and therapy. The terms are used interchangeably, especially in the UK, where there’s no legal definition assigned to each job description.
In fact, some people are rather shocked to hear that anyone can call themselves a therapist or counsellor because it’s an unregulated profession here in the UK. That’s why it’s good to check that someone is a member of an ethical body and is qualified and insured before starting a therapeutic relationship with them. The BACP, UKCP and the NCPS are the main ones, but there are others, too.
There is a brief overview on The Counselling Directory website here which explains the situation in greater detail. Some people think that psychotherapists are better qualified/trained for longer, and that can be the case, but that doesn’t stop someone using the term. Others think that counselling means short-term work whereas therapy is longer term, but that’s a fairly arbitrary distinction. The ‘work’ lasts as long as a client wants it to and as long as they’re benefiting from it.
What about coaching?
Coaching is different. While there are some similarities with counselling/therapy – you get listened to, your needs are assessed, you work together to identify key issues BUT coaching tends to be more goal and future focused. One description I’ve seen is that a coach will look at your present situation and help you to create the future you want, whereas a therapist might also spend some time with you looking at the past, including patterns of behaviour, social conditioning, family and relationship dynamics. But even that is very simplistic.
A coach will also have different qualification to a therapist, but just to confuse, some coaches are dual qualified and have counselling qualification alongside coaching ones. Someone like my former colleague Karen Alford is probably best placed to explain further. She’s a qualified life coach who is currently training to be a counsellor too.
“I would describe coaching as being about self-improvement and working towards change from a lifestyle/habits/work perspective whereas counselling is about self-improvement from the perspective of addressing an emotional/relationship-based problem,” Karen says. “There can be crossovers between these helping professions and people can benefit from both. For example, someone could have counselling for support after a relationship breakdown and also have coaching to work towards a future career change.”
With both counselling and coaching you can work towards a goal, Karen says. However, I often find that in the counselling room, the goals (and goalposts) change: what people think they need help with is often not the key issue: but it’s the issue they’ve been able to identify at the starting point. This can – and does – change as sessions go on. And I’m sure this is the same with coaching, too.
I hope this has helped to explain a bit further, but it is confusing, and you can read more discussion about the difference between counselling and coaching on the BACP website here