As an ADHD coach who works alongside (and has coached!) many therapists, "What's the difference between coaching and therapy?" is a question I've heard asked so many times, in all contexts from training groups to conferences. This is the first part of my attempt to answer it.
I am not the first person to try and write this article. I'm probably not even the hundredth. I'm guessing this blog post is quite likely to end up buried in the depths of Google search, because for whatever reason it's one that's been done over, and over, and over again.
But I want to try, because it's a discussion that often ends up lacking nuance, spreads misinformation to clients, and drives coaches and therapists apart instead of allowing us to learn from each other - and quite frankly I think we all deserve better.
The classic version of this piece is a series of binary statements which you will see all over the internet, and which are all far more nuanced than is often claimed.
I've tried to lay out the details of some of these nuances here. While I've seen other articles give an overview, the nuts-and-bolts detail of some of these feels important to me. Having said that, my conclusion is pretty much: there are tendencies that are more likely in one discipline or the other, but not a lot of hard and fast rules.
I'm also aware that in presenting it like this I haven't given you the answer to what I think we're often really asking when we ask this question - what are the actual defining, distinguishing features you might need to know to choose between them?
I think there is an answer to this question that doesn't require being (too) reductive, but I don't think it's a simple one - and it has more to do with what we do do than what we don't. So this is going to be a two-parter: now I've laid as much factual ground as I can, and in the next post I'll get into what I think really distinguishes each field, and what you might need to know to choose a coach or a therapist.
Binary claims, real-world nuances: coaching versus therapy
"Coaching is about the present and future, therapy is about the past"
The first part of this statement I can live with, with some nuance. Most coaching is indeed heavily present- and future-focused. The structure of coaching that ICF promotes involves identifying a topic and a hoped-for session outcome. We also see this in solution-focused coaching - at the start of a solution-focused conversation, we identify our best hopes for that conversation. We think forwards in time: both how we'd like things to be in the further future, and how we'd like them to be an hour from now when we're done talking and ready to apply what we've learned towards that future. At a purely mechanical level, coaching is frequently goal- or at least direction-oriented, and we can't set goals in the past - so we tend to emphasise moving forward.
Some therapies - specifically psychodynamic and psychoanalytic therapies - are, by comparison, very interested in the past, and in how traces of that past might show up in the present. A reductive summary of my understanding of the psychodynamic approach is that identifying and processing the root causes of unconscious patterns can allow us to resolve them.
But not all therapy is psychodynamic. Some therapeutic frameworks like CBT and DBT are acutely present-focused, grounded in reshaping thinking habits and applying skills without spending much time on the past at all. Others, like person-centred counselling, take the form of the practitioner following the client wherever they choose to take the conversation - which might be the past, present, or future. And I've already mentioned solution-focused coaching here, which grew out of solution-focused brief therapy - a form of therapy which also lives almost entirely in the here, now, and henceforth (and which, in Brief Coaching: A Solution-Focused Approach, Iveson points out can look almost indistinguishable from solution-focused coaching).
On the other side of the divide, we have psychodynamically-influenced coaching approaches like Jungian coaching. I'm not a Jungian at the time of writing (although never say never!) and I don't know an enormous amount about what differentiates Jungian coaching from Jungian therapy - but I do know that it's interested in the collective past, in archetypes and symbols and culture, and in how that informs our present. And solution-focused practice, for all its emphasis on the present, is interested in the past for what it can tell us about resources, strengths, and exceptions to challenges we might not have noticed - and can learn from as we move into the future.
In conclusion: the present and future is pretty much always present in coaching. Therapy is more varied, and it depends on the approach - and there is overlap between the professions.
"Coaching is developmental, therapy is reparative"
This one is actually from the largest professional standards body in the UK representing people who are dual-trained as coaches and counsellors. I do think there's some truth to it on the coaching side - but it's complicated. A lot of the work I do with neurodivergent people in ADHD coaching involves detecting what's already going better than we might have noticed, and building on it. That's developmental, in that it's a learning process aimed at changing the future - but it's also reparative for many of us. ADHDers tend to have a lower "savouring capacity" than average; we find it harder to sit with and store positive memories and successes. Developing that savouring capacity also often means repairing our relationship with ourselves.
On the other side, while I'm not a therapist, there certainly appear to be developmental aspects to present- and future-focused therapeutic modalities like CBT and solution-focused brief therapy. DBT is a strongly skills-focused modality often used in situations of higher risk or acuity than most coaches would work with - but it still seems to me to have developmental aspects.
In conclusion: sort of! But I see this as more of a tendency than a strong binary.
"Coaching is unregulated, therapy is a licensed profession"
There is some truth to this - if you live in the United States of America, which not all of us do (including the vast majority of people who click through to my website).
In the USA, therapists are licensed health professionals, like doctors and dentists and clinical psychologists in the UK. If you lose your licence, legally you cannot practise. And if you do not have a licence, you cannot call yourself a therapist. In the USA, a Masters or PhD is required to practise as a therapist.
In the UK, "therapist" is not a protected term (although there are some exceptions, like art and music therapy). Legally speaking, anyone can call themselves a therapist. But in practice there is a strong culture of voluntary self-regulation amongst therapists in the UK - robust professional standards organisations set out expectations of rigorous training, ethical practice, and scope of the profession. Not legally required, but culturally expected. To join one of these organisations, there are a number of training routes, from shorter diplomas to Masters degrees.
This next bit is something I consider important if you are considering coaching, or know someone who is: voluntary self-regulation also exists for coaches, and this is true in the USA, the UK, and all over the world.
The largest professional standards bodies for coaches are ICF, EMCC, and AC. Each has its own expectations of the scope of practice and style of coaching its members will deliver, and each has its own code of ethics. I've talked a little elsewhere about why I've chosen to align myself with ICF and EMCC.
There is less of a strong culture of voluntary self-regulation amongst coaches internationally than there is amongst British therapists. I do wonder if some of this is simply down to lack of awareness amongst both coaches and clients; when you've been told over and over that coaching is totally unregulated, you may not think to expect better, even when better is right in front of you. There is a scope and there are standards, and while we may not be legally bound by them, we can absolutely choose to align ourselves with them.
If you are a trainee coach on a course credentialled by any of the above organisations, it's worth knowing that you can become a member of that organisation and align your practice with their scope and code of ethics while you are still in training, before ever applying for a credential. I've found that not all training courses are clear about this, which means there are more unregulated trainee coaches out there than perhaps there might otherwise be.
Training expectations do differ between coaching and therapy standards bodies; coaches generally train for less time, and are therefore generally trained to work at a lower level of acuity and risk than a therapist. These time constraints also mean coaches may be more likely to be trained in a more singular coaching process, whereas a therapist will typically have more exposure to a greater range of presenting issues and approaches.
In conclusion: voluntary self-regulation is a thing for coaches all around the world, and is also the primary means by which British therapists are regulated - unlike in the USA where therapists are statutorily licensed. Training standards for therapists are more in-depth, and there is less of a culture of regulation amongst coaches - but if what you want is a coach with a clear scope of practice and code of ethics, there are in fact a lot of us out there.
"Coaching is short-term, therapy is long-term"
The answer to this is: it depends. I personally don't work to a fixed number of sessions, unless a client requests it or a funded contract is in the equation, which is frequently the case. I've worked with some clients for years, and others for weeks. Everyone moves at their own pace, and for some people having a "deadline" feels like an important structure; for others, open-ended work offers more space to explore new directions and approach new challenges as they come up.
It's certainly the case that many therapists work with clients for years at a time - this is especially common, as I understand it, in psychodynamic therapies. But if we look at programmes like the NHS's IAPT CBT programme, this can be as short as six sessions. Most clients I see through the government-funded Access to Work programme have more sessions of coping strategy training recommended than a standard IAPT contract.
In conclusion: this may have more to do with the specific modality and available resources than with any coaching/therapy divide.
"Coaching is about the conscious mind, therapy is about the unconscious mind"
Again: a modality difference. Cognitive and behavioural methods are concerned almost exclusively with the conscious mind. Psychodynamic therapists are concerned with both. Solution-focused practice is more concerned with meaning-making than with the unconscious/conscious divide. Jungian coaches are, as I understand it, very interested in the unconscious. I can't get into the details of this one without it becoming its own philosophy essay - so that's probably for another post.
Whether a practitioner even views the unconscious/conscious mind as relevant concepts is almost entirely down to the underlying modality of their training, rather than whether they consider themselves a therapist or a coach.
In conclusion: modality-related, not so much therapy versus coaching.
Where to from here?
Overall, I think the biggest differences are between modalities, rather than between coaching and therapy as such - the divisions which seem like they should be simplest are often based on misconceptions or generalisations. A Jungian coach will probably have more in common in approach with a Jungian therapist than with a solution-focused brief therapist; a solution-focused coach will likely be practising in ways that feel very familiar to a solution-focused therapy practitioner, and so on.
I also think it's important to note that there are more options for working with a coach practising within a clear scope and under a code of ethics than many people believe - and that the regulation of therapists in the UK has more in common with the regulation of coaches worldwide than with the licensing of American therapists, in some respects at least, though there are cultural differences.
In my next post I'll get into what I think defines coaching, and what you might need to know before deciding whether it's what you're looking for. In the meantime, the main thing to take away is perhaps that it's complex, differences exist but they are tendencies rather than rules, and not definitive. When we talk about this in reductive terms I'm not convinced it serves us well - so I hope this has, at least, helped to add a little more nuance to the conversation.