Season 1 Episode 2 - Coaching vs. Therapy
Hey, it's Katy and I'm here to help you befriend your mind, body and soul. If you stick around with me long enough, you might find that you're a mindful soul too. Hello, I hope you are doing well today.
Today I wanted to come on and riff a little bit on mental health and really why I created my online courses. So obviously I've worked in the field of mental health for 15 years as a licensed therapist and I've pivoted into coaching and so I sort of straddle two worlds and the first thing I want to say is that every human on this planet has mental health.
We all have mental health and you don't have to have a mental health disorder or medical diagnosis to need to take care of your mental health. Just like you don't need to have a physical health diagnosis or problem to take care of your physical health.
So typically you go to see a therapist if you're having a diagnosable problem with your mental health and so coaching is a little bit different. It's not focused on that. Well, it's very different. There's a lot of things that separate them but there's also very gray areas.
Whenever I've heard people try to tell the difference between the two there's always this gray wavy line. Obviously the mental health industry is regulated. If you're a licensed mental health provider, your license is regulated, you have to fit a number of qualifications and blah, blah, blah, all of that.
So in my years of working as a therapist I can't tell you the number of times that clients came to me and said, you are the first therapist who's ever taught me anything. Like they've been to many different therapists before and the therapist would listen and validate their feelings and there's something therapeutic about that.
We know that having someone hold space for us and listen and acknowledge our experiences is totally therapeutic and there's the next step that's often missing which is what do you do next? What are some concrete skills or tools or ways to problem solve that can make a situation better or help you reach your goals more effectively?
So the other thing I wanted to quickly mention here is the concept of what is therapeutic and there are many things in life that can be therapeutic. So therapeutic experiences and something being therapeutic is not simply reserved for the therapy space.
Friends, conversations with friends can be therapeutic. Being out in nature can be therapeutic. There's things we can learn from books or yoga practices or I mean there's like an infinite number of things that can be therapeutic.
That just means it helps us feel better, it shifts something within us and so I just wanted to highlight that the coaching process can be a therapeutic process. It's not therapy, but it can feel therapeutic.
My business coach has been therapeutic for me. She's not a wellness mindset coach, she's not a therapist, she's a business marketing and sales coach and she's legitimately been therapeutic for me. So I want to kind of differentiate that term and it doesn't just belong in the therapy space if that makes sense.
So in my work as a therapist, you know, I really realized and through a lot of my training that it's important to give people skills and tools and the truth is I don't personally believe that you should have to go into therapy to learn these really valuable skill sets and tools that we know benefit our mental health and our well -being and the truth is right now in the United States, our healthcare system is fucked.
It's just fucked. And then if you try to go into the mental health system, that system's even more fucked. Accessibility is a huge problem. If you're even lucky enough to be covered by insurance that covers mental health or behavioral health treatment, the next question is can you find a provider and does that provider have an opening even within the next month?
And then if you meet with that provider, is that even a provider that's going to be a right fit for you? So, you know, we have to shop around to find a good therapeutic fit sometimes. This goes for coaches and friendships and literally everything.
We're not meant to fit with every single human, right? So there's a huge barrier to accessing mental health services to begin with. As of March 2023, it's estimated that 160 million Americans live in areas with mental health professional shortages.
And the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Association estimates that we're 1 .8 million therapists short of what's needed to effectively treat mental health in the United States. And so there's a reason why therapists are burning out at alarming rates and leaving the profession.
But that's a conversation for another day. So when I created my online courses, I have my mini course, A Guide to Taming Anxiety, my larger Mindful Soul School, I created it with that in mind and wanting to get these really powerful life changing skill sets into the hands of as many people as possible for way less money.
It's like way cheaper to take an online course and learn all of these skills than it is to pay to work with me hourly. It just is. And it would take many, many sessions usually for me to teach my clients the skills that I teach in these courses.
So it's just a much quicker way to learn these skill sets that are valuable to everyone. Again, not just in mental health treatment where people might be struggling with a diagnosis or a disorder, but these are skill sets that are valuable to everyone who has a brain, who has mental health and who wants to live a more balanced, joyful, fulfilling life.
So online courses are not therapy, right? It's just a completely different format. Therapy has very specific rules around how it happens. You know, there's a full comprehensive bio -psycho -social assessment that happens where we get all your lifetime information and conceptualize what's going on with you.
We create a treatment plan and goals. We're assessing for different things. Therapy is a medical service and it's a very distinct process. So of course, an online course is never going to be a replacement for therapy.
And I think that's really important. However, I do think that people should have access to the evidence -based tools and skill sets that can be easily learned in a course format, can be practiced at home.
And they could do this in conjunction with working with a therapist or even working with a coach. Again, it depends on what your needs are and what specific service you're looking for because coaching is also not therapy.
Coaching is not a regulated industry. And one way I like to think about it is the intensity of need. So once you cross a certain threshold, you're likely going to be in need of a therapeutic service from a licensed provider who's been trained to treat certain issues.
If you're not over that threshold and you're not looking to be treated for a mental health diagnosis in that way, then a coach could be a possibility. I always recommend just meet with a therapist. They can help you determine whether what you're wanting to focus on is best suited for the therapeutic relationship and traditional therapy model or whether coaching might be something that could...
help you when you're not needing the traditional mental health treatment. And the truth is not everybody is looking for that. Some people are more interested in more holistic alternative forms of healing and I believe strongly that that should be available to people to explore.
Just wanted to come on and share a little bit behind why I created those courses and differentiate a little bit between you know therapy and coaching and also just the word therapeutic. It's important for every human on this planet to experience therapeutic relationships whether it be with friends or family or even spiritual group leaders and learn to also provide yourself therapeutic experiences.
And the skills that I teach in my courses really are about that. How do you become your own quote unquote therapist? I mean obviously go see a therapist if you need one. A therapist is like it's not replaceable but we each can benefit from learning how to apply things to help ourselves feel better, to help ourselves live a more peaceful satisfying life.
And so with all my clients whether I'm working as a coach or whether I'm working as a therapist my goal is actually always to work myself out of a job. And I know in the coaching world that's like what don't you want your clients to resign with you and stay on with you as long as possible because it's financially better?
And I don't really care about that. My goal is to help people stand on their own two feet and learn things that they can take with them and they can practice on their own and apply for the rest of their lives in my absence.
So this is really important. really what's behind what I've packed into both of my online courses. What I saw and learned over 15 years were the most potent evidence -based tools and strategies to address stress and anxiety and just enrich our life, right?
Mindfulness in a big way is about enriching our life and having a more peaceful, fulfilling life. So hopefully this gave you a little more clarity about the difference between coaching and therapy and also what you can learn in your own time in the form of an online course.
Feel free to reach out to me. I'm always just a DM away if you have any questions about the services that I offer. Alright friend, that's it for today. Be well.
