If you face difficulties in your life, you usually consider seeking help from a therapist, as this is the professional who will be able to guide you through your life improvement journey.

But in the past few years, it has not remained that way..
Have you heard of “Life Coaches”?

Who are “Life Coaches”?
Life coaches are professionals whose role is to help you achieve your goals, both socially and professionally, by focusing on strategies for personal empowerment, motivation, and other methods that aim to guide you to your future success.

Now, do you feel that life coaches and therapists are the same?

In this article, we will explain the difference between them, and will tell you how to choose the suitable expert for you to visit.

life coach vs. therapist

Realizing the differences between the pillars that the life coach and the psychiatrist focuses on, will help you make a conscious decision, whether you need to go to a life coach or a psychiatrist.

1- What topics do both discuss?

Life coaches always focus on setting and achieving future goals, so you should see a life coach when you have a scenario like:

• You want to get rid of harmful habits, and replace them with healthy others.
• You are looking for a specialist to guide you through your career path.
• You are struggling with major life or career choices.
• You want help in setting clear goals for yourself, so you can check your progress.
• You feel trapped in your comfort zone, and you want someone to push you to take on new challenges in life.
• You are looking for a meaning in your life, and you want someone to guide you through this journey.

What about therapists?

Therapists are focusing on the mental health side, as they are specialized in diagnosing and treating its different conditions, so you should see a therapist when you have a scenario like:

• You are unable to control or manage your emotions.
• You want to heal from psychological harm related to the past, like traumas.
• You have excessive anxiety or worry, or you feel sad constantly.
• You Consistently avoid social situations and find difficulties in relating to others.

2-What skills do both enhance?

Life coaching aims to improve people’s skills responsible for increasing their ability to achieve goals. In a life coaching session, you will work on finding your passion, and drawing a path through which you can achieve this passion.

On the other hand, Therapy emphasizes skills that are necessary to heal from mental health challenges, through techniques like mindfulness skills and cognitive reframing.

3- On which tense do both focus?

Life coaches are future oriented, but therapists are past oriented.

Life Coaches usually need to know the clients’ “source material” and life experiences, in order to form a true picture of them to help them plan for the future, but they are not specialized in treating any of the psychological problems. They only focus on pushing people forward, enabling them to reach their goals, and providing them with facilitating skills for that, life coaches are totally “future oriented”.

Therefore, therapists are specialized in the past, and what man faced to reach his current form, the emotional experiences, the traumas, and the beliefs that a person has over his life, so during therapy, you will be working on the psychological problems you had, and doing healing activities.

Based on all these differences between life coaches and therapists, you can bring a paper and a pen, and note down your goal from visiting a specialist, and from your answers, you will easily determine whether you need a life coach or a therapist’s support.

How to find the suitable life coach or therapist?

Since these two professions are different from each other, the criteria for selecting each specialist will become somehow different as well.

While searching for a life coach, try to focus on the following qualities:

• To be accredited and qualified by trusted institutions.
• To be able to inspire you and change your outlook on life.
• To be someone you can trust and talk to openly.
• To have previous successful experiences with cases similar to yours.

But if you are searching for a therapist, try to focus more on the these qualities:

• To be a specialist in treating your issue, like trauma or depression specialized therapists.
• To be comfortable opening up to him, and to find it not badly difficult to talk to him about sensitive topics.

Types of life coaching

Life Coaches can help you in different aspects of your life. Here are some of the most popular life coaching types:

• • Career Coaching:

Career coaching is useful for these who face challenges in their work, or need to make impactful decisions such as changing their career path or retirement. It is also useful for people trying to develop themselves and reach higher positions in their work.

It is necessary also for people who are looking for advice on types of jobs that suit their personalities and talents.

• • Family and Relationship Coaching:

This type of coaching helps to improve the way of communication between family members or couples, to restore harmony between family members who are constantly in conflict.

Also couples who are about to get married often go to a Life Coach to get a road map that helps them understand each other and communicate well with each other, in order to establish a happy and healthy home.

• • Finance Coaching:

The mission of this type of coaching is to help people who can not manage their financial resources.

People who find it challenging to control spendings and increase savings to afford buying what they dream of or to spend certain obligations, can ask for support from a life coach.

• • Mental Health Coaching:

A mental health coach can help with issues like anger, conflict, and grief By training clients on anger and stress management skills, and other skills related to dealing with negative emotions and managing moods.

Mental health coaching also helps people who want to build their self-confidence and identify their purpose in life.

Now, you know the difference between a psychologist and a life coach, do not hesitate to visit the appropriate specialist for your case, to be able to Interact with life events as a bundle of energy!

You can contact our professional life coaches from here