Do I need to do coaching? Will doing psychotherapy help me more? I feel bad, I'm busy, I need to clarify, focus, understand myself, move forward, make decisions, move, set goals ... many of the people who come to see me often say these things to me.
In the following article I reflect on both disciplines, coaching, psychology and psychotherapy that can be of help if any of the readers is considering starting a process of personal growth.
In this article, I reflect on the claims that some professionals make about coaching, psychotherapy and psychologists.
Coaching is fashionable, in the US everyone who has a coach tells it, like someone with a personal shopper, it is cool and everything that is cool is published, made public, and more so now, in the era of technology and social networks. It seems that we lack time to make public what happens to us and what we do.
Sometimes I wonder, Is our society more prepared for coaching than for psychotherapy?, Are we still afraid or ashamed to go to therapy and more to the psychologist's consultation?.
From the health field, all psychologists and psychotherapists would have to make an effort so that society does not see us as the "shrinks", or perhaps the effort would have to be directed, as a colleague says, not to "psychologize it " everything. Therefore, it is important meet the verbal demand customer, what do you want? and be honest with our way of working. There are common life situations that do not require therapy or medication
Not all psychologists are psychotherapists, in the career of Psychology we learn theories, but practice is not learned, one does not learn about oneself, this is learned in training as a Therapist.
There are many coaches and therapists who are not psychologists.
Who tells their acquaintances that they go to psychotherapy sessions? Today doing psychotherapy is still a taboo, it is frowned upon, it is not shared, we do not talk about it. It seems that if you count that you do psychotherapy it is that you are “to lock yourself up”, there are still people who believe that psychotherapy is for when I am sick, Perls said that therapy is too beneficial to limit it to the sick.
Psychotherapy is not just for people with long-standing or chronic problems. Psychotherapy is a space for exploration, creativity, meeting with oneself, with its essence, a space to reflect without judgment and to open new perspectives.
From my point of view, coaching is a very valuable personal growth, it is a tool to become aware, to mobilize, to make decisions. However, in my opinion, not all the "demands" of clients can be addressed from coaching. Coaching is oriented to action, to achieve objectives, if a person tells you that they are lost, they first need to find themselves and then get moving.
You can't go to a place if you don't know where I want to go. A coaching process remains on the surface of the BEING, there is no deepening because for coaching a review of the biography or the past is not necessary.
Coaching helps people define clear goals, and set a specific time frame to achieve them. And the goals can be from overcoming a personal interaction problem, to reaching professional goals..
For me it is undeniable that a psychotherapy process is a more complex process than a coaching one, with all that this entails, reviewing the past, stirring up painful events, talking about the biography, ... and sometimes we are not prepared or do not want to go into the past. Coaching works towards the future, the past is not reviewed.
... I want to succeed, I want to know why I feel so bad, I want to stop feeling like a failure, I want to have a partner, I want to stop suffering, I want to discover what I like ... are common demands among my clients and patients.
There are people who do not want to stir up the past, who feel that if they talk about their family they are judging their parents, and they do not want to look back. We must respect the demands of patients and clients.
On Gestalt psychotherapy We work with the emotional world of the person, who can identify their needs, express them, favor self-support, responsibility in life, focus on the present, more than on the future or the past. Reflect on the essence of oneself and the meaning of life.
In Gestalt therapy you work from the present, from the present you visit the past, if a patient tells you about the difficulty with the bosses, one way to work it would be to ask for the first authority, the parents How did this happen that you count with your father and your mother?
The end of psychotherapy is when a person has managed to mobilize and leave where he was, sometimes this movement is practically internal and externally there are no differences, for example, the person continues in his work, but as an internal change has been generated, he relates in a different way with his colleagues and does not need to leave his job.
Coaching always involves external, visible movements, therefore objective and measurable, that is why some people give it more value, they believe that by making external changes (changing jobs, partners, home ...) they get better. It is true that external changes help, but they are temporary, of course it makes us feel better, lose a few kilos, if this is our goal or live in a bigger house ... but if there is no internal change, sooner or later, the unsatisfaction, complaint and need for more will come into the person's life.
There are more and more “schools” that train coaches, for me a professional is not trained in three months, a good coach needs extensive knowledge about himself. How many years does it take to train as a doctor or as an architect or as an administrator? It is impossible to understand and accompany a person if one has not done a process of self-knowledge and does not know who he is and what he expects from his life.
I have seen many professionals reorient towards coaching because of the profit and reputation that comes with it. Also many psychotherapists train as a coach, and realize that they had been using certain coaching tools, without giving it the name of coaching..
Behind this word COACH, there must be a professional with extensive knowledge about the human BEING, about psychology, also be a professional with skills such as empathy, the courage, honesty, ability review, Capacity for hold emotionally, capacity of communication, and most importantly, a person with a high self-knowledge, that he has experimented with himself, that is, that he has undergone a psychotherapy process, which has provided him with development and internal growth.
Although many can put their hands to their heads, I believe that a good coach needs personal work of his own, just like a therapist. All humanistic psychotherapists, Gestaltists and also psychoanalysts have performed therapy. When one has gone down to his hells, he has seen his shadow, he has stood up to his ego, he is more willing to accompany another human being in his process.
As coaching is fashionable, in some cases prices are abused, and in many cases the prices of coaching sessions are much higher than psychotherapy sessions.
In the philosophy of coaching is to go towards the future, towards our objectives. There are Coaches who literally following this philosophy, transmit to clients that in their life they can achieve everything they propose, that is almost like affirming that life can be controlled and planned, the important thing is not what, but the what for. I think we can all think of many examples of going "crazy" chasing something that when we achieve it does not fill us, it leaves us cold, inert, disconnected and we get back to the next "goal".
It is good to learn to differentiate, the egoic objectives, those that the ego demands and the authentic needs and desires. The ego does everything to compensate for deficiencies.
A coach has to know how to distinguish between achievement goals and those of compensation. Of course it is important to have goals, objectives, and dare to wish, since it is the engine of life, it is also learn to manage our emotions when our dreams don't come true.
So, coaching or therapy? Well, it depends, it depends on several factors, the client's demand, the client's rush, the depth to which they want to go, the objectives they want to achieve, their character, their "mental health", his capacity for introspection ... and a long etcetera.
Parents harm their children through their own unconsciousness. If one knew that saying certain things to a child could harm them, they would not say them or would not do certain things. Therapy is to be able to accept the past, what happened, happened. In therapy we don't talk about blame, but about responsibilities. Feeling guilty is useless.
The psychotherapist is not an expert in the life of his patient, like the coach. The psychotherapist is an expert in his life, and how he has worked inwardly in his own therapy process resonates with his patient..
Gestalt therapists do not diagnose or plan any treatment. The responsibility for the content of the sessions is the patient. The therapist in session accompanies, helps to reflect, points out inconsistencies, encourages, confronts, recognizes, ... The Gestalt therapist and the patient are on the same level.
There are many psychotherapies, and some are longer than others. Of course, a therapy process takes more time than a coaching process., a process of self-knowledge requires time and observation skills. Each person is willing to make an X investment in their process, both financially and in time and effort. Therapy is a place for the brave, I always tell my patients this, it is brave to look at the shadow, breathe it and see that nothing happens. We have all built up an idea of what we are like and in therapy realizing that you have told yourself a "lie" is hard. If you consider yourself very generous and that is your self-image, when you see your selfish part, oh, how ugly, how bad ... well no, nothing happens. We are beings with imperfections.
Both coaching and Gestalt psychotherapy are tools focused on the present, on what happens. In therapy, we observe why it happens and coaching focuses on solutions and your learning. Psychotherapy is effective and helpful not only for those struggling with serious clinical problems, but for anyone who feels trapped or needs a change in perspective.
Professional athletes who are exceptional in their field have coaches and physical trainers who point out small or large adjustments that the athlete can make to help them reach their potential. With psychotherapy something similar happens, sometimes people can go to be well or excellent.
Well, then? Coaching or therapy? Well, it depends on what you are looking for, if you want something oriented to action, with a marked beginning and end, and more punctual than a long process in time, clearly coaching . If the person seeks internal rather than external changes, is open to reviewing his biography, his past, he needs to place the relationships of his life, understand certain events of the past, etc., then I would recommend a therapeutic process.
What many professionals do is put the tools that we are coaches and also therapists, we put ourselves at the service of the process and the change of the client or patient. I usually affirm: "Without putting labels", "I'm going to use what I know and how I know how to do it, and also what I think can help you, but I'm not going to label it".
One of the essential elements in a personal growth process, where the client or patient opens his privacy, his heart, is vulnerable, It is the evolution of the therapist or coach, the evolution as a person, that is why before I commented on the importance of both the therapist and the coach doing a personal process.
I end with a few words of words by Guillermo Borja Memo that reflect very well what I want to say:
“If you don't have a minimum of ten years on your personal path, you will distort any technique you receive. The techniques have been developed by those who have completed personal development. A therapist who has not advanced on that path, the more he trains, the worse. It will end up underdevelopment, little inner growth and megalomania of outer development. The growth has to be simultaneous, coherent, otherwise the techniques are going to be assimilated mechanically. The technique is insensitive, what vivifies it is the personal development of the therapist. The technique works if the therapist is fully alive ".
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