S02 E09 - Life Coaching and Therapy

How do you know when therapy is needed and how do you know when life coaching is helpful? When is it appropriate to find a coach for your kids/teens/yourself? I’ll also give you the details on where you can find some amazing coaches online. Life Coaching and therapy are both so needed in our world today. There are several medical experts that can help when the need arises: psychiatrists, psychologists, counsellors etc. We chat today about where coaching fits into all of this.

What we talk about:

• What life coaching is
• When you know you need more than coaching
• How to find an amazing coach

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I would be honored to be your coach and help you get the changes you want to see in your life. I have come so far, completely turned around my life and my relationships with my children, I know what it takes and how to make it happen. You can use the links below to get more of my content and learn about my monthly program By Design, where I provide monthly training and live coaching to help you build radical connection in your life.

Link to membership: By Design

Find me on the ‘gram: The.Parenting.Coach

My website: coachcrystal.ca

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Want help finding a coach? Email me at [email protected]

Episode Transcript

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Hey, I'm Crystal, a certified life coach and mom of four. In this podcast, we combine radical connection and positive parenting theories with the How-To Life Coaching Tools and Mindset Work to completely transform our relationship with our children.

Join me on my journey, unleash your inner parenting expert, and become the mother you've always wanted to be. Make sure you subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast and rate this podcast on Apple, and check out my transformative monthly membership for moms in the show notes.

Episode 9, Life Coaching and Therapy.

What is life coaching?

All right, so this is kind of straying away from the whole parenting theme of this season, but it's a question that I get asked often; and I think is really critical. And it's, what's the difference between life coaching and therapy? 

Precursor question that I get is, what is a life coach? So, that's where I'm going to start. So, there's life coaches for anything on the planet, you could imagine. I've heard of life coaches that are coaches for podcasts – to help people produce podcasts. 

There's life coaches that help you make more money and change your money mindset. There's life coaches for parents. There's life coaches for kids and for teens, for people transitioning in business – or having struggles with faith or relationships. There's literally anything on the planet, any problem on the planet you could name, and there's a life coach for that. 

So, I'm going to first tell you a little bit about what a life coach is, and then what kind of life coaching it is that I do. 

So, life coach is anybody that's going to help, kind of, shift your mindset, and help you through some struggle or difficulty that you're having – in order to help you to thrive again, and to build an intentional life that you want. 

The kind of coaching that I do -- I was trained at what's called The Life Coach School; you can go check it out, they have a great podcast as well. And so, what the Life Coach School teaches is called The Model; and The Model is all based on Causal Coaching. 

So, Causal Coaching means figuring out the root cause of behavior. So, I'm not a kind of coach that's going to be like, 'Okay, you want to, you know, lose 50 pounds. All right, I'm going to text you every day; and I'm going to see what you're eating, and we're going to talk about it and, you know, I'm going to make sure that you're doing all of these actions and whatever.' That's not what we do. 

What we do is figure out why you're not doing that in the first place. So, why are you not feeding yourself healthy, nutritious meals? Why are you not getting up to exercise? What's going on behind that behavior? 

And, the root cause is always a thought. It's always some, sort of, belief or story or thought that we have about ourselves. And so, it's uncovering all of those thoughts. 

An example that I used to use when I first started life coaching, all the time, because I thought it was fascinating, was hoarder. So, if you've ever heard-- I don't even actually know what the show was called, I just know that there was a show about people that were hoarders. 

And they would, you know, collect all these things in their houses; and this show would come in and they would clear everything out, and everything would look amazing, and they would get rid of everything. 

And then, you would see in the tabloids or hear, you know, somewhere on social media that, you know, their house was just full of stuff again, that it would just kind of come back again. 

And the reason that this happened is because there's something going on in their mind and their thoughts and their behavior that's the cause of that. And so, they're not digging up the root cause, they're kind of just putting a Band-Aid on it. 

And so, there's a lot of different examples in which this happens. So, that's kind of where life coaching can come in. 

When you know you need more than coaching

Now, the difference between life coaching and therapy is that life coaching is, kind of, everything above what I call baseline. So, baseline would be, you know, 'I have a job' or, you know, 'At least, I'm looking for a job, I can get out of bed and get to work every day.' 'Maybe I'm not super happy in my relationships or in my life, but I'm at least baseline, I'm surviving.' 

And so, below that is when I think that therapy in different forms of counseling can be so helpful. So, the three kind of areas that I feel are really helpful when it comes to therapy and coaching – therapy and counseling, rather, is; 

1. When they're having ruminating thoughts and they're really stuck in those thoughts

When they're having ruminating thoughts, and they're really stuck in those thoughts. So, you might feel like you just can't get past this one thing, this one belief that keeps coming up, this one thought that keeps coming up; and no matter how it goes, it just keeps coming up. 

And so, I've had clients like this where it'll be weeks on end, and we'll be coaching on the same thing and saying the same things over and over again; and it's not really moving forward.

That's usually a little red flag for me to think, 'Okay, wait, there's something going on here that maybe needs more attention and more professional opinion than what I can give. And so, that's when I would then refer out to a counselor or to a therapist.

2. Any sort of suicidal ideation or suicidal thoughts, tendencies, behaviors, & self-harm

Number #2 any sort of suicidal ideation or suicidal thoughts, tendencies, behaviors; also, just any kind of self-harm. If that ever comes up, that's an immediately like, 'Okay, yep, definitely is beyond kind of my scope of practice and what I can-- what I can help with.' 

3. Current trauma, current abuse, current disordered eating

Number #3 is current trauma, current abuse, current, you know, disordered eating. Maybe it's a diagnosis that needs to happen, or medication that needs to happen, or, you know, trauma therapy; those are things that life coaches are really not qualified to work with or for. 

And so, that would definitely be more in the counseling/therapy/psychology/psychiatrist field. So, if you find yourself in that situation, it doesn't mean that you can't also do coaching; some people will coach you at the same time. But I find that it's really helpful once you've already gone through this, that coaching is kind of the next step. 

In fact, I've talked to a few people who feel like, you know, they were kind of at that baseline, maybe a little bit below baseline through either medication or, you know, therapy or different kinds of things; they were able to get to that baseline or a little bit above, and they were feeling pretty good. 

And then something crazy happens like a pandemic or their boyfriend breaks up with them or I don't know, something random that's difficult and hard and stressful, you lose your job; and those kinds of things can kind of drop you back to below baseline. 

What's the difference between life coaching and therapy

So, the way that I view life coaching is we take that baseline, and we get you to thriving; and thriving is well-above baseline. It's setting and achieving goals. It's feeling good about your life. 

It is, even when things are difficult – that you still feel like you can handle them; having the tools to be able to handle those difficult situations. It's having great relationships, finding success in your relationships, kind of living intentionally. 

And I don't think that a lot of people, in general, in the world really live in this top few percentage of people that are living in that space. And obviously, not all of us are going to be living in that space all the time, anyways. 

But the goal here is to get kind of close to that thriving or in that thriving space so that you have the tools necessary and needed to be emotionally resilient so that when something difficult does happen, you have the tools to help you. And even if you do kind of fall out of that, you're not going to fall way back below baseline again, is the goal. 

I mean, obviously, that's not always going to happen because there's always chemical hormones and imbalances and other things going on behind the scenes, so we can't prepare for every single thing, obviously. But that's kind of just my general gist of how I interpret life coaching and therapy. 

And so, like I said, therapy would be ruminating or kind of stuck thoughts that can't move forward with, suicidal ideation or self-harm. And then current trauma abuse, current disorders that need to be treated and dealt with. That's when I would definitely refer to a counselor or to a therapist. 

There are some people that do life coaching and therapy. I've seen people, you know, offer both coaching and therapy – and you can get either/or from them – or therapists that then became coaches. So, that's definitely a possibility as well. 

What thriving might look like

So, I want to talk a little bit about what thriving might look like. So, I said, you know, living intentionally and having good relationships, but what does that actually look like? 

Well, that might look like, you know, you set a goal to run a half-marathon; and you can actually achieve that goal. So, you write down, you figure out what you're going to do, maybe you fail for a while – but you don't make it mean anything about you – you still kind of go forward. 

Maybe it also means that you have a healthy relationship with your partner – that even though you might argue and not see eye-to-eye all the time, that you can kind of apologize and reconnect; and you feel pretty happy and secure in that relationship. 

In parenting, this might look like you feel like you're doing a pretty good job, that even though you're not perfect, you're okay with it not being perfect and you're just kind of able to handle those day-to-day tasks and not make it mean something about you when you fail. 

Which obviously, again, we're not going to do 100% of the time; I'm not saying that we're all going to live in this like top sphere of thriving all of the time. But that's just kind of a little snippet of what thriving might look like in some different areas. 

How do I know the type of coaching that I need?

So, another couple questions that I get about this is, 'Well, if I am interested in life coaching, then how do I know what I need help with?' So, I would kind of write down your top few struggles. So, maybe, one of your struggles is money mindset, money management. Maybe another struggle would be parenting, maybe another struggle would be self-love or self-confidence. 

And so, I would find a life coach specific to that.

How to find an amazing coach

Obviously, I'm biased towards The Life Coach School because I think they're awesome. But there is a directory there, so it's called The Life Coach School Directory. So, you can go onto the webpage, I will have it linked below as well. 

And you can find a directory, and you can type in anything there. Like you could type in therapists, and it'll tell you the therapists that are also life coaches. You could type in business, you could type in parenting, and you'll see everybody that pops up. 

You can also filter it by things like, you know, somebody who runs a membership program like I do, or somebody who coaches one-on-one, which I also do, currently. So, just looking into those kinds of things. 

And then, I would just schedule a call. Almost every life coach that I know, I haven't come across very many that don't offer what's called a free consult call or discovery call. And basically, that's just getting to know them. So, they're getting to know you and you're getting to know them, and you're getting to know their style; and that's a great thing to do to find a good fit. 

In fact, I would suggest to do this with a therapy therapist and a counselor as well because there's really, really great ones – and there's some ones that aren't as effective as what they do; just like there is any all across the board in any profession. 

So, I would just not make it mean that just because you saw a therapist once, you have to stick with them even if you don't feel like you connect and it's not going well; it might take a few times in order for you to, kind of, get to know them a little bit. 

But definitely take the time to kind of shop around. Another place you could look is-- Jody Moore has a list; she has a directory of coaches that have taken her advanced training. Her advanced training is called Advanced Certification in Faith-based Coaching tools. So, you can go check that out. 

And feel free to reach out to me for ideas as well. So, if your struggle isn't parenting or if you don't feel like you vibe with me, I am not going to take offense to that at all; I know several other amazing parenting coaches that I could easily refer you to. And also, if parenting isn't your struggle and if there's something else you're having a hard time with, I can definitely shoot a few referrals your way. So, make sure you reach out to me on Instagram or via email. 

What about coaching for kids?

So, another question that I get is, what about coaching for kids? I want to preface this by saying, I'm not saying do not get a life coach for your kids, but I would always suggest working on you first. 

1. Before you think of a coach…Get your relationship with the child in order

I think that the biggest strides will happen in their behavior when they can have a right, connected, attached relationship with you first. 

So, before I would jump to like, there's a problem here and they need a life coach and that like, they need the problem, right? Like I thought with my child, I was like, 'They're the problem.' 

And what I realized, it wasn't them that was the problem, it was me that was the problem. And when I started working on me and kind of working through my own thought-drama and getting, I guess like healing really, it's that inner healing that happened, then our relationship really soared by leaps and bounds – and their behavior that was difficult in the past, really decreased. 

So, I would say number #1 kind of get that relationship in order first. 

2. As your relationship shifts, sit down and teach them what they need to learn

Number #2, as that relationship shifts and you kind of see that things are changing and they're feeling more seen and they're feeling more heard and more emotionally safe, and as things start to change and you have that great connection, there probably will still come a point when you feel like you want to be teaching them those things.

So, one way is just to sit down and teach it to them, right? You can do it yourself. You can listen to these podcast episodes, and the Life Coach school has a great podcast – and I'm sure there's lots of other amazing positive parenting podcasts or growth-mindset podcasts, Big Life Journal. There's another one called Go Zone. 

You can check out all of those; and just kind of use them, and teach your children as well. That's a great way to do it.

Coaching for teens

I also have a digital course called Your Superpower Brain. And I love when parents go through it with their kids so that they can have more of a conversation. I'm not just sitting and watching the 10-minute video and then doing the work in a PDF sheet by myself; I'm having an engaging discussion where we're going to talk about these kinds of concepts – that can be really helpful as well. 

But if you do still feel like a life coach would be helpful, I know some really great teen groups. And I would check out a teen group – either teen group counseling or teen group life coaching; both are possible. That is a great way to do it or a one-on-one coach can also be so helpful. 

And I know really, really great coaches for your teen, so make sure that you reach out to me if you feel like your teen could use a great one-on-one coach; that is not what I do. It's not my specialty, but I do know some amazing coaches that it is their specialty, so I can definitely get you in touch as well. 

And I think it is great to have an outside mentor that helps with goal setting, that helps with indecision and self-doubt; and it can be super, super powerful. I've seen it in a lot of other people's lives. So, definitely reach out if that's something that you are interested in with your teen. 

So, I hope that kind of cleared up what life coaching is, what Causal Coaching is, the difference between life coaching and therapy, when you might need a therapist versus when you might need a life coach. And then my thoughts on, you know, coaching kids and coaching teens; and when it's kind of necessary, and what to do first.

So, feel free to shoot me a message and let me know what you think; maybe you have different thoughts about that than I do, and maybe you're interested in learning a little bit more about life coaching to become a coach or to have your children work with a coach. And so, reach out to me and we can chat about that as well. Have a great week. 

I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Make sure that you give it Five Stars on Apple, and check out my monthly membership for moms in the show notes.