We’re asked pretty regularly from queer adults looking for support, “What’s the difference between a therapist and a life coach?”
While the roles are both focused on helping your personal development journey, there are a few main ways that life coaches and therapists differ in their approach and focus.
The Past, Present, and Future
Therapists focus on the past to help their clients create a better future.
By helping clients unpack their past experiences and work through trauma, therapists focus on what we call, “shadow work.”
Shadow work is the process of reconnecting with the innermost parts of yourself, and finding ways to cope with how you were treated in the past in favor of a more actualized identity.
In therapy, you talk through your experiences and how they have come to affect your mental health and coping mechanisms. Your therapist, then, offers tools to help you cope with future triggering events, sometimes as they happen, that may bring up these past traumas or send you spiraling into damaging patterns.
Life Coaches focus on the now.
We help clients fully understand their past experiences and put them where they belong: the past. Only then can you look at the actions you took to get where you are now, and find ways to end those patterns in favor of a future you’re excited about.
While therapists work with you over a longer period of time and walk with you on your journey, life coaches focus on short-term action: giving you the tools to end toxic patterns now and create the life of your dreams on your own.
When to hire a Life Coach vs. a Therapist
Life Coaches are perfect for those who are ready to change their own lives now by taking control of their life.
We give you everything you need to put your desires into action and move toward the future you want for yourself.
Therapists are best for those who need long-term support in changing self-destructive habits while diving deeper into past experiences and trauma in favor of a future with healthier coping mechanisms.
What makes the Coming Out Happy Team different than maybe other support you’ve worked with in the past is that we come from a queer lens, truly understanding what it’s like to walk the path of coming out, embracing who we are, and creating aligned, queer relationships. Keely & I (Dani) are not only coaches/partners in business, but have created our company based on the authentic romantic relationship we share together.
Many of our clients feel like we just “get them” because of our expertise and that we’ve created our program, Pride Amplified, specifically for LGBTQ+ adults who want to create a life they’re excited about while figuring out how to create beautiful relationships along the way.
We’ve created a step-by-step system with a clear path, and have seen so many successful students graduate the program being more confident in who they are.
We find that some of our most successful clients work with a therapist as well, so they are getting the full spectrum of care and assistance in creating a realistic, actionable plan for their future and executing it, too.
We've brought life coaching, Somatic Attachment Therapy, and EFT Tapping principles together in our own practice, and it's changed lives for thousands of LGBTQ+ adults around the world.
Click here to learn more about how you can work with us, too!
With Love,
Dani & Keely
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