When Coaching Can Fill the Gap

"Therapy seems to have become the default prescription for all forms of unhappiness," writes Dr. Harvey Lieberman in "I'm a Therapist. Not Everyone Should Be in Therapy," a guest column that ran July 5 in The New York Times (and now lives on in cyberspace).

I'm a big fan of therapy. I've had a lot of it myself. Still, Lieberman suggests that it's not appropriate for everyone, that situational distress — say, procrastination, job frustration, financial worry — isn't necessarily a clinical issue. Yet too often therapy is the go-to for these and other situational concerns: "In 2019, about one in 10 American adults reported receiving counseling or therapy," he writes. "By 2024, that figure had risen to roughly one in seven."

But is that a problem? Yes, Lieberman writes. "In many regions, therapy wait lists stretch for months, and clinicians report burnout. Patients with the most disabling conditions are left competing for the limited time, and those who are primarily seeking friendship and connection may leave feeling disappointed."

Anecdotally, I know myself that it can be hard to find a therapist who's a good fit and has openings, especially since I moved to tiny Delaware. I hear the same is true in other regions.

So what does that have to do with coaching, you ask? Possibly a lot. Coaching could fill some of those gaps, I believe. I've certainly used coaching as a complement to therapy, and it can also be used in place of it. Successfully.

But first let me offer some caveats.

• Coaching is not therapy. Coaching is not designed to promote healing. Healing may be a byproduct of sessions, sure, but coaching emphasizes setting authentic goals or intentions (choose your language) and taking steps to achieve them. It starts from a position of health and moves forward. Trained coaches know that clinical issues — true depression, for instance — deserve referral to those trained to treat them. In certain cases, such conditions can even make the coaching process difficult, if not impossible.

• Anyone can call themselves a coach. Therapists are educated and licensed in their field, with degrees and training in clinical social work, psychology, psychiatry, and the like. Legally, you can't call yourself a therapist without such training and licensure. But the internet is full of people who call themselves a coach who've received no training in the field, whose work has never been monitored. (Some of them are good coaches, but you never know.) Yes, there are licensing bodies for coaches — mine is the International Coaching Federation, under which I've earned the designation of a PCC, or Professional Certified Coach — but there's no law that says such training, licensure, and professional development are necessary to use the label "coach."

  
  

But given those caveats, can a coach perhaps meet the needs of some of these "situational" clients that Lieberman describes? I think so.

Let's imagine your job is getting you down. Or you feel trapped, stuck, not sure where to turn. Or perhaps you have a pattern of not cleaning your house and want to change. Or you want to exercise more but can't seem to get going. Or there's an interest you want to pursue but are procrastinating getting underway. Or you just need some clarity, for God's sake, for the vague dissatisfaction you feel. All of these concerns might send you to therapy.

But coaching is designed to help with just these sorts of issues. We coaches can help you zero in on what you actually want — not just what you think you want, or should want, but really want. And then we can help you design a process to make progress toward getting it, or becoming it. If something's getting in your way, we can question you to discover what it is, why it's happening, and what you might do about it to keep moving forward. And we'll help you create action steps, and at least in my practice I'm happy to help you be accountable to those steps. Coaching is activating, progressive, and, in a pure sense, idealistic.

It's also true that coaches use tools built in the field of psychology. Most of us are trained in motivational interviewing, for instance. I have an extra certification in this skill, which uses questioning in a way that (surprise!) can seek the truth and motivate. Positive psychology is behind much of coaching, as well; certainly it's part of life coaching. And I've studied existential and person-centered therapy to better inform my practice.

The degree to which any coach might use such study or tools varies widely, of course, but good coaches have benefited from the tools of therapy even though they're very clear that they're not therapists.

For some people — you? — coaches might be ideal for the forward movement they want. And as a plus, we coaches are available to clients anywhere; we don't have limits to our regional reach as therapists (subject to regional licensure) do. That means you can choose someone who's truly right for you and your needs, instead of the one left who's accepting new clients. And we're a Zoom session away.

Obviously, I believe — I really, truly believe! — that coaching can help individuals and society, that we can fill a need gap in our culture, that we're a useful resource for our times. Keeping in mind the caveats I note above (and they're big), as well as the incredible change possible through talk therapy, I invite you to consider the ways coaching — aside or instead of therapy — can also, perhaps even more so, be convenient and beneficial.

Then consider: Could coaching work for you?