158: Coach or Therapist: Which Do You Need & How Can Therapists Benefit From Coaching?

Andrea Liebross: Welcome to the Time to Level Up Podcast. I'm your host, Andrea Liebross. Each week, I focus on the systems, strategy, and big thinking you need to CEO your business and life to the next level. Are you ready? Let's go.

Hello, my friends, and welcome back to the Time to Level Up Podcast. I’m up to Episode 158, which seems like a long, long time ago when I started this podcast. The first episodes were released in December 2020, December of 2021? I guess December of 2020. Yeah, we have been around here for three years. Can you believe it? Wow.

Well, that is not what this episode is about. This episode today is, again, a result of a lot of conversations that I've been having with clients, and again, I want you to hear straight from the horse's mouth what they are going to have to say today about what coaching is and specifically how coaching helps people that are in the mental health industry or vertical.

Sometimes, I think someone thinks that coaching is therapy, coaching is counseling, or coaching is psychiatry. Coaching is not. It might have elements of each of those, but it is not any of those. In fact, I have a bunch of clients, more than five, maybe even more than eight clients who are in mental health industries but own their businesses.

Today, I wanted to bring them on to help continue to foster the discussion which I started in an earlier episode, I want to say 129, about the difference between coaching, counseling, and consulting. But I also want you to see how coaching really is a tool to help you become better decision-makers, better planners, access what you want if you want to be in the future.

Those elements are not included in therapy. They're not part of therapy. Therapy serves a different purpose. No wonder therapists can benefit from coaching. No wonder social workers can benefit from coaching. No wonder doctors can benefit from coaching. No wonder psychiatrists can benefit from coaching.

Let's kind of dive into that. We're going to hear, again, from some of my clients. I've had a bunch of prospect calls from people who think that maybe they don't need coaching, maybe they just need counseling. I thought that people within these industries could speak to that better than me, better than I could.

I also have clients who think they should be able to figure all this out themselves, because they are in a mental health industry, at times they think they should be able to figure this out themselves. If they're engaging in coaching already, they know that's not true necessarily, but they might tell themselves that message. Then I have prospective clients who think, “Well, I'm in the mental health industry, maybe I don't need this.”

We're just going to kind of talk around that topic, and I asked several of my therapy practice owners to share why coaching is so important, in general, and so important to them, even if they’re in the mental health profession. If you're in an industry, any industry where you think that you should probably know all the answers as to how to handle situations and move forward in your business and in life, here is a newsflash, you should not know all the answers.

You might have some answers but not all the answers, and coaching can really help you. It is an element of what all big thinkers need. It would fall under the securing support. When I did the episode last week on motherhood, I talked about how one of the elements that all big thinkers need is to be able to come up with thought options.

I can go back to my acronym TRUST, which stands for T thought options, R real problem, U uncertainty, S secure support, and T take action. Today, I'm bringing you this episode, really because in order to be a big thinker, you need to secure support no matter who you are, even if you think you should know all the answers, even if you're in a mental health industry, no matter what.

Let's dive in. But let's first just answer the basic question of what's the difference between therapy and coaching. Now, I did address this again, it was episode 123, not 129. But now you're not just hearing my take on this, you're hearing directly from therapists themselves. Here we go. Here are a few clips.

Cadence: I’d say on a very basic level, therapy is focused more on your past and coaching is more on your future. If you have had things that have happened in your past, like most of us have at some point, but that are maybe keeping you from being the person you want to be in whatever facet of your life, then therapy is probably the place to start.

Then I tell people oftentimes, sometimes when you sort of have reached your goals in therapy and you've healed whatever past issues you needed to heal, then you might then move forward with a coach. It can be like you've done with therapy at least temporarily, maybe forever but maybe temporarily, and then a coach might be able to help you focus on how to move forward in your future goals now that you feel prepared to do so.

Andrea Liebross: Okay, so if someone was trying to figure out “Which one do I need?” is it kind of more based on what they're thinking about the most in a sense?

Cadence: Yeah. Like what are they looking to get out of whichever one they're considering? If somebody called me, I do coaching as well, and if somebody called me for coaching, but in our phone call, they were talking about like an abusive ex-relationship or difficulties with boundaries with their family and things like that, that's telling me, “Okay, what you actually need is therapy, what you're talking about is more therapy oriented.”

Whereas if they're talking about like, “I know I need a new job and I just can't make myself look for one and I'm scared I will get fired or be able to get paid the same,” or whatever that kind of stuff, then maybe that's more of a coachable thing.

Melanie: We have a life coach on our team. When a client calls and they're sharing why they're calling and they're looking for support with their anxiety or they're not getting along with family members, they experienced something traumatic, I immediately know that they need a therapist because they're looking to heal from something that happened before in their past or learn some skills around some sort of relational dynamic or something like that, like have a psychological issue.

If they come to us, and they are figuring out what they want for their future, how to manage what's happening in life right now, then I'm thinking about maybe they need coaching. If they're already managing life, if things are not psychologically challenging, they're not talking about traumatic events, then I'm thinking about, “Okay, maybe a coaching relationship might be better for them.”

Those are the areas I think of, therapeutically, we're going back more often in order to do some sort of psychological healing or skill building in order to move forward in a new way. The coaching starts where we are. Maybe we're working on one area, whether it's professional, transitions, or other areas that are very singular-focused going forward.

Rebecca: First, let me say there are different types of coaches and there are different types of therapists so this is a very generalized information. It's very generalized information. But in general, therapy is more about analyzing thought patterns or the past.

Somebody usually comes into therapy with some sort of distress, dysfunction. We help move them from that to function. If we were to say in coaching, it might be they're already at a place of function, but moving them to more fulfillment. That was definitely true for me.

I was like, “Nothing is really going super wrong, I'm functioning, but I want to be more fulfilled and do more things that have changed my thinking about it.” Therapy and coaching both work on the ways that we think and view ourselves and others, but therapy is more about analyzing in general, analyzing to gain insight, viewing patterns of the past, and how they affect the present as well as the future usually comes in with something that's really difficult, a deep pain, or wound and the goal being healing versus coaching, looking more like, “Okay, here's why not, and what are the current results and where do I want to go for the future?”

You learn from the past, what's going on presently, but more focused on future and personal growth. That’s kind of how I’m looking at it, like what's worked well, like coaching like, “Hey, what's worked well and where do we go from here?” That's a lot of what you and I do or our coaching group does. Both can be collaborative. I work very collaboratively with my clients. But not every type of therapy modality does.

Some are like, “Hey, I'm the therapist. I'm the expert,” but I look at it like, “Yes, I'm the expert in these things that I'm going to have training in and you are the expert in your life client. Together we're going to work collaboratively to get you where you need to be.”

But not every therapist works like that. It depends on the modality. It's kind of process-oriented, process-focused in general in therapy. But again, some types of therapy modalities are more like directive, “Here's what we're doing and here's why we're doing it based on your goals,” within that can still be an analysis and processing pattern.

Andrea Liebross: Alright, so let's get to our next question. Remember, keep in mind, big thinkers secure support of all kinds. They also identify what the real problem is, and the real problem usually is just that they don't want to feel a feeling, they don't want to experience something negative.

I asked my clients, “Do you think someone in therapy can also be in coaching at the same time?” What I'm helping you with through coaching tends to be very future-focused. It can be enhanced with being at peace with your past, which therapy is helping you do. I don't see why not, why you couldn't engage, why not engage in both therapy and coaching at the same time. Why would it be a problem?

I think that many of my clients have therapists and coaching can have some therapeutic benefits as therapy can include a bit of coaching. But if you think about the purpose of each of them, they are different. They're both helping you identify a real problem, which is that you don't want to feel negative about the past or about the future.

Big thinkers can quickly get to that place of maybe why they're not taking action is because they don't want to feel uncertain. They don't like to feel out of control. Again, another reason why I think that you should be able, willing, and certainly could engage both at the same time, but let's hear from the source.

Cadence: Yeah, so I have had clients that have been in that position.

Melanie: I do. So, yeah.

Andrea Liebross: Yes. It's not a one or the other situation. It doesn’t have to be a one or the other.

Melanie: It's not a one or the other. Right. It's actually very different in my experience. Yeah, the other stuff, the therapeutic side of it is, like I said, we're talking about my stuff that comes up while I'm managing life, how to regulate that. The coaching helps me to simplify the stuff so that I can move forward.

Rebecca: Most definitely. I know some therapists are also coaches for different things, like coaching in this one specific area. There are those different things that a therapist can diagnose that coaches cannot. It depends on if you're wanting to be different. Then maybe a coach ideally could point out that, “Hey, that might be something for therapy. Let's focus on this, that part of the therapy, and then we can bring it in certain ways.”

Andrea Liebross: Alright. Now, here's the twist. Can therapists benefit from coaching? Well, obviously, you've heard me say I have a bunch of therapists that are clients. I guess the answer is yes, therapists can benefit from coaching, just like humans can benefit from therapy and coaching at the same time.

But my relationship with my therapist clients is really to be their Sherpa or the guide as they grow their business, to guide them up that hill that they've never been on before. They've never grown a business before. They don't teach you this in school. I walk beside them as they walk on that trail toward the top of the mountain, toward growing that business that they want to have. In that direction, I'm right beside them.

A therapist isn't walking beside them. Remember? Because a therapist is really just concerned about helping you navigate your past and other things, but that's their main focus. Moving into that future, climbing the mountain, that's not happening in therapy. Therapists can't guide themselves. No one else can either. Coaches can't guide themselves. Coaches need coaches. The answer here is yes, therapists can benefit from coaching but again, let's listen in to what they have to say.

Cadence: Yes, I do. And also they can benefit from therapy. I think this can be true of any therapist, but I think particularly those of us in private practice like myself, I tell my colleagues all the time when we have peer meetings that the best part, some of the best parts about being in private practice and working for yourself is that you get to make all the decisions. You decide who you see, what you charge, what days you work, how many hours, all the things you get to decide.

Also, one of the hardest things about being a private practice is that you have to decide all the things, who you see, when you work, how much to charge, and it's 100% up to you. That can be really difficult to try to make all those decisions on your own.

Andrea Liebross: Yeah, it can be. I can agree with that because I think any solopreneur or entrepreneur, that's what we experience.

Cadence: Yes, absolutely. Like you're saying, that can be for many, many fields of entrepreneurs. It's funny, I think that most therapists, I certainly fall into this category, do not think of themselves as entrepreneurs when going into private practice.

Andrea Liebross: What did you think when you [inaudible]?

Cadence: Just treat ourselves as therapists, just a therapist. This way, different than working for a group, an agency, or wherever you went to work before, it took me a while, a few years, I think to think about myself as a business owner, an entrepreneur.

I think it's easy to only put people doing multiple things into that category if you're a therapist, but you also wrote a book, have a podcast, whatever, or doing something else also, then you sort of can fit yourself in that category. But I think it was a mindset shift for me to think about myself as an entrepreneur and business owner.

Melanie: Therapists can be the worst clients ever. We know the stuff, it’s hard to do it for ourselves. Yeah, as a mom, as a business owner, as someone who's managing my own stuff too, the coaching has helped me to formulate where to put my energy and it's helped me make things simpler because there are so many balls in the air that my tendency is to try to juggle them really well all at once, and that just doesn't work.

When I want to scale my business and I want to give all my kids what I can, and they're ranging from ages 8 to almost 18 so they have very different needs, I have a partner, we moved a year ago, so there's that transition that just happened, you can't juggle every single ball really well all the time. The coaching has helped me to simplify, realize I don't have to do everything, ask for more help. That's been huge. Really asking for support, not the supermom thing. That's really something I'm happy to release. Also, my business asking for help as well.

Andrea Liebross: Okay, so sometimes I've heard a therapist say, “I should be able to figure this all out myself.” Kind of like, “I should be able to manage my mind around all of this. I should be able to make decisions. I shouldn't need any of this.” But what do you think about that? Here's what they had to say.

Cadence: I mean, I understand that sentiment, because again, kind of going back to ultimately it is all my decision, how I run my business, who I see, and all those things, and it's very easy to second guess yourself a lot, it is kind of contradictory in some ways thinking about yourself as a therapist and a business owner because the therapy is about the relationship with you and your clients, you care for them, and all of these nice, neat things, and the business side is like, “But also you no-showed so I have to charge you, and because it is a business and I need to follow my own policies, and if I didn't charge for the things that I said I’m going to charge for them, I wouldn't have a business anymore.”

Andrea Liebross: Okay, so it's almost like coaching helps you with your relationship with your business.

Cadence: Definitely. Yes.

Andrea Liebross: It's like the relationship isn't with another human, it's with the business and that's something that you're not trained on. They did not teach you that in grad school.

Cadence: No, although I will say I think that there are a few programs that are adding in some minimal business side of things. I know a therapist/business coach who taught a class at her alma mater just recently. It's creeping up. I don't necessarily think that every single therapist in private practice requires a coach but I think everyone could benefit from having a coach.

Andrea Liebross: Because you can make decisions, we all can make decisions, but I think when you've got that business hat on, like, “Yeah, but is this the right decision?” or you're dragging your feet on making a decision, you're just not deciding.

Cadence: I'm doing that right now as far as what I'm going to do about 2024, and I made a decision but I didn't inform my clients of that yet. Now I'm second-guessing it.

Andrea Liebross: Oh. We should talk about that.

Cadence: I mean, I mostly figured it out but it's not done until it's in writing.

Andrea Liebross: Yes, yes. Then what's going to happen? Are they going to like your decision? Are they not going to like your decision? Then know how does that impact you? This is where it all sort of spirals.

Cadence: Right. That goes back to the relationship piece, the decision is about raising rates. I am within a couple of insurance companies right now and I am definitely staying through the end of April which was a commitment that I made but I am deciding whether or not I'm going to continue after that.

I don't need to make that decision by the end of the year, but I'm sort of letting any new people know that that's the situation. You currently take your interest, but I'm not sure I’m going to be taking it past April.

Andrea Liebross: So you've made that decision in your head, but you haven't told them yet.

Cadence: Right. When it comes to raising rates, it's always a little tricky, because you have some clients that you mostly do know, kind of, at least to some degree, the financial status of your clients. We know a lot about them. People that I know are already having a hard time paying my fee, it's hard to decide to [inaudible].

There's always the risk of losing clients when you do that, and that does happen, but it doesn't happen as much as most therapists fear is going to happen. People fear that they're going to lose all their clients and that's not going to happen.

Andrea Liebross: That's not going to happen.

Rebecca: The first thing that comes to mind is like doctors need doctors, lawyers need lawyers. I just left from a lawyer's office about a will. Then we were talking about like, “Well, what does that look like for business, having a business succession plan?” I might need to talk to a real estate attorney for that. They need their own lawyers because things are so specialized in our world, especially now.

The doctors also need doctors. They may be able to figure out enough, like, I have some clients and they've done an amazing job of figuring out the type of therapy modality that they need. Unfortunately, I felt bad that they had to do that, and also really proud of them for taking action, advocating for what they need, and asking for what they need.

Andrea Liebross: Okay, that's a good answer. I never thought about it that way.

Rebecca: Coaches need coaches, I hear it from you too.

Andrea Liebross: Yeah. But I mean, I always say that coaches need coaches. I have a coach, so what's up with that?

Rebecca: I have a therapist, I'm a therapist.

Andrea Liebross: Yes, it's interesting. It's interesting.

Rebecca: I want to say one more thing to that. It's like the blind spots, right? Just like we have friends in our lives and we look in a mirror, we can't see what's on our face unless we look in the mirror. Sometimes we need somebody to reflect back to us what their experience is of us, our business, or things like that, and point those things out that we can’t tell. We see ourselves every day so we can’t actually see our growth but somebody else can point it out to us and that can be really helpful.

Andrea Liebross: Here's another thing I often hear people say, sometimes I get prospective clients thinking that they need to work with someone in their own industry because they think that a coach should understand their industry inside and out in order to help them.

But I would like to position that as just a thought option. Another thought option might be that it can be a huge benefit to have a coach that was not in your industry. Because when you have a coach that's not in your industry, they can see things from the outside. They're not in your peanut butter jar. That allows for faster growth and easier growth, having that outside of the peanut butter jar perspective.

Regardless of your industry, I think it's beneficial to have a coach that's not in your industry to get that out of the peanut butter jar perspective. Here is what they had to say.

Cadence: No, I don't but I do think it's helpful if they have some experience working with them. But in some ways, I think that it could be better to have a more diversified background of who you coach because it can be easy to get through a tunnel vision, I think and even being in group coaching and hearing people in completely different industries, some of the challenges are completely different, but a lot of them could still be I'm like, “Well, I could see how that fits into my work, how to utilize this.” You just have to switch it around a little bit.

But there's definitely a lot to be learned from other industries as well. There's a lot of both spoken and unspoken so-called rules in the therapy world. People throw around the word ethical far more often than is reasonable in my opinion. They talk about ethics as if they are laws and it's more on the lines of there's your ethical code and yes, you have to follow that, but then anything outside of the ethical code is more about like your own personal values and choices. It's not really ethics per se. There's a lot of controversy there. I think working with somebody outside of the field that doesn't have that sort of what would you even call that?

Andrea Liebross: Almost like seeing things through a different set of glasses.

Cadence: Yes, you have a wider range in your mind of what's possible and what's okay. It's up to me to decide, “In this particular case, I can't do that or I wouldn't do that because of these reasons.” I can see why somebody in a different field would. But still, it can make me or any other therapist sort of question their own decisions in a positive way.

Melanie: That's a good question. That's not my experience. I don't think so. I would say as business owners, there's a shared experience in being a business owner. I connect with mental health professionals in other ways and have met others there but this business owner life and identity is so much newer for me, and the skill set that I'm not as comfortable with even yet. I would say no to that. I don't think that’s necessary.

Andrea Liebross: Okay. You just brought up something else that I hadn't really thought about but I think if someone said to you to introduce yourself and say we put our profession into that that's like our identity into that, but oftentimes, we don't put in “And I’m a business owner.” It's kind of is it inherent in the conversation or not? But that's like a whole different identity that sometimes we don't even give enough airtime to.

I think it is interesting too to think about how coaching helps us in our own businesses deliver our own services. Think about that. How can coaching help you deliver your own services even if your business is in the mental health vertical like therapy?

So I asked my therapist clients, “How is your coach, the coaching that you've received from me, helped you deliver therapy to your clients?” The answers are fascinating. I want you to think about this. What if you had another source to draw from in order to help you serve your own clients? Here are their answers to “How has coaching helped you as a therapist?”

Cadence: Well, first of all, I think that when you feel more comfortable with your business decisions, you're going to be a better therapist, because you're just more confident.

Andrea Liebross: So true. That's a great way to think about it. Yeah.

Cadence: Time is a huge factor. I mean, I don't think there is any replacement for experience. No matter how much coaching I got, if I was in year 4 of doing this work instead of year 14, I would still want to have the same amount of confidence that I do when being challenged by clients about raising the fee or something like that, or my no-show fee or the hours that I work, any of that stuff, and I am very confident in those areas now as far as I want to make the decision, I will stick to it. It's just all the more important to make the decision that's right for you. I think coaching can really help solidify the confidence in those decisions, which then shows up in the therapy room.

Melanie: Yes. I hear your voice often because I so respect you. When I'm in my life, I think of what we talk about, and when I'm in session either so I hear myself saying, “What would your future self say?” I hear myself saying that to clients. That's helped me so much.

What we learn in life we take into our other areas. Yeah, I do hear myself bringing coaching concepts. I bring in structures with folks that have anxiety and do the thing with all the balls, it helps to have a structure to simplify things. It doesn't have to be focusing on the emotion so much, maybe isn't always as helpful so sometimes we look at a structure or just the facts and that's very helpful. I've learned and practiced more of that in coaching.

Rebecca: Yeah. I have definitely brought in different examples that we've talked about, and it's interesting to see kind of like themes or patterns of conversations with the clients in sessions like you and I had had or the group has had and then how that comes up in therapy.

The river of misery, I think that’s what you call it, that has definitely come up. Even just the conceptual idea I've used of like you're here and you want to get here, but it can't be this big jump. It didn't happen in a day. Where you're at and how you're feeling and why you're feeling that didn’t happen in a day, it's not going to be generally fixed in a day. That'll be great if it did, and there are some types of therapy that’s pretty quick.

It's helped me with that to give them some visual or different way to think about it because as I'm getting coaching, I'm looking at what is my current function and how can I get to supplement so I'm helping them to do that.

Even with as we work through PTSD, the flip side of that is post traumatic growth. It's not necessarily only linear, like kind of like grief is not only linear. We might kind of go around and back, stuff like that, but I can still keep some of that post-traumatic growth piece or the fulfillment coaching aspects in my mind and kind of insert it in here and there. That's been really good.

It just helps me because I tell my clients, “I'm not going to ask you to do anything I haven't done or would be willing to do.” If I'm not growing and learning, how can I ask them to grow and learn? Even though mine may look different, there's definitely been lots of overlap.

Andrea Liebross: Alright, my friends, and here's what I want to leave you with. If you are a business owner, any type of business owner, a therapist, a landscaper, an educator, or a designer, securing support is a crucial element required for growth and big thinking.

As you move into 2024, have you secured your support to help facilitate that growth? Have you secured support that's going to help you identify real problems, which are usually just feelings? Have you secured support that's going to help you dive into the unknown?

To wrap up, I asked my clients, “Is there anything else you want to add to our conversation?” and here's what they said.

Cadence: No, just like I think if this is true, and I think any therapist who might be listening to this knows that clients wait until they needed therapy like last year, not even yesterday before they actually go and look for one. I think that therapists do the same thing as far as finding coaches. I know that was true for me.

I think when you're really thinking about it and considering whether or not you might be able to use a business coach or could this be helpful to you, then you should probably just give it a shot. Don't keep putting it off.

Melanie: My coaching experience has been so rich, and I knew I needed it for a long time and I searched for a long time and had other coaches that ended up focusing on different areas that I realized, “That's great. I don't really need that piece that I saw that I've been looking.”

Working with you has fulfilled what I have been looking for which is very direct, there's a space that's held where I feel like I'm held accountable in a way that I needed as a business owner. That's really been helpful.

Andrea Liebross: Good, I love that.

Melanie: Not many people hold us accountable as business owners. We’re the boss.

Andrea Liebross: It's true, like we're the boss and we think that we should be able to do it all right and figure it out. But then yet we don't take the time to figure it out sometimes. We don't give ourselves that space because of all the other things that are going on in life. I find that when I'm working with my coach that it's just like a place physically and mentally like the space is being held for me to make some decisions to move forward.

Alright, my friends, who is your coach? If you don't have a coach, I would be honored to be yours. Now is the perfect time to get things lined up for 2024. If you want to dive in and really hit the gates running in January, you need to set up a consult call right now today, go over to andreaslinks.com right now, and set up that complimentary consult call that's really worth thousands of dollars.

Because here's the thing, what are you going to get from that consult call that is complimentary free? You're going to get clarity about what's going on and what needs to change. You're going to get the confidence you need to do something about it. We're going to determine if coaching is the right thing and we're going to determine if it is the right thing, what kind of coaching.

Now if it isn't the right thing or if I don't offer the kind of coaching you need, I'm going to help you find what you need. Trust me. But if it is the right thing, then we're going to get you going now so that in January, you can really not have any lag or delay. You can really just cruise with ease into January.

Now, depending on what coaching program you enroll in, you might have a ticket to She Thinks Big Live included in your package. She Thinks Big Live is a live in-person event I'm doing in January all day in Indianapolis on January 19th. If you don't have your ticket for that, you need to also go to andreaslinks.com right now before the prices go up and get your ticket if there are any left, not sure and I'm recording this ahead of time. Maybe there are, maybe there aren’t.

But you need to be there. You need to be in that room full of women business owners, feel that energy. It's not just any room. There's not going to be a room full of employees there because their boss told them to be there. You're going to be in a room full of people who want to be there, who are ready to create an extraordinary 2024. That's what we're going to work on.

Yeah. Alright. So, andreaslinks.com, set up your consult call. Why not? I saw someone ask that, “Why not?” Set up your consult call and grab your ticket. Okay, my friends. Now is the time to level up. It's mid-December, we gotta do this. Have a great week. I'll see you next time. Bye for now.

Hey, listening to podcasts is great. But you also have to do something to kick your business up a notch. You need to take some action, right? So go to andreaslinks.com and take the quiz. I guarantee you'll walk away knowing exactly what your next best step is to level up.