What is Therapeutic Coaching?
In recent years, the demand for personal development tools has expanded as more people seek ways to live fulfilling, authentic lives. While traditional coaching* and therapy have provided valuable paths for growth and healing, there’s a growing interest in an approach that combines elements of both: therapeutic coaching. But what exactly is therapeutic coaching, and how does it differ from conventional coaching or therapy?
Therapeutic coaching, also known as transformational or healing coaching, is a practice that integrates aspects of therapeutic techniques with the goal-focused approach of coaching.
It aims to help individuals achieve their goals while also addressing emotional blocks and underlying issues that may be hindering their progress. This approach goes beyond traditional coaching, which often centres on goal-setting, problem solving and action planning, to include a deeper focus on inner healing and emotional awareness. This dual focus allows clients to make lasting changes by addressing the deeper, often subconscious issues that contribute to their behaviours, beliefs, and self-image.
How is it different to traditional coaching or therapy?
Therapeutic coaching can be seen as a bridge between coaching and therapy, drawing strengths from both disciplines to offer a more holistic experience. Here’s how it compares with traditional approaches:
– Traditional Coaching focuses on present goals, skills and future achievements. Coaches work with clients to create actionable steps, encourage accountability, and often focus on developing skills or strategies to enhance performance or reach career milestones. The coach is not there to delve into past traumas or explore the root causes of emotional blocks but rather to help the client keep on track with their goals. Coaching is usually primarily work-focussed and tends to not stray too much into the personal domain.
– Therapy, on the other hand, typically involves exploring the past and understanding its impact on current behaviours and mental health. Therapists are trained to diagnose and treat mental health disorders, offering a supportive space for clients to heal from trauma, understand complex emotions, and work through psychological challenges. Therapy often involves more in-depth work on a person’s internal world and usually spans a longer period than coaching. It also tends to focus primarily on the personal rather than the work domain.
– Therapeutic Coaching combines these approaches. While it is future-oriented, it also addresses the client’s emotional well-being and psychological blocks that may be affecting their progress. It uses coaching techniques to create actionable goals and maintain momentum, while also allowing space to explore and heal from past experiences that impact current behaviour. Therapeutic coaching flows freely between the work and personal domains.
The Core Components of Therapeutic Coaching
Therapeutic coaching rests on several core principles and techniques that make it uniquely effective for personal growth. Here’s what it typically entails:
- Self-Discovery and Awareness
Therapeutic coaching encourages clients to explore their beliefs, values, and self-concept. By cultivating self-awareness, clients can identify recurring patterns and pinpoint emotional blocks that keep them stuck. Self-awareness is the foundation for lasting change, as it helps clients recognise how their past experiences shape their present actions and reactions.
- Emotional Healing
In therapeutic coaching, the coach helps clients acknowledge and process their emotions, especially those that are linked to unresolved experiences or limiting beliefs. By addressing these emotional wounds, clients can let go of self-defeating patterns and move forward with a greater sense of peace and self-acceptance. This process may involve techniques like mindfulness, somatic experiencing, and guided visualizations, all of which help clients reconnect with and understand their inner experiences.
- Goal-Setting with a Purpose
While setting goals is a key component of any coaching relationship, therapeutic coaching emphasises meaningful and aligned goal-setting. Rather than focusing on externally-driven goals, therapeutic coaching encourages clients to set goals that reflect their true values and desires. This approach helps clients create a life that feels authentic and fulfilling, rather than one driven by societal expectations or surface-level aspirations. If the coaching is taking place in a work setting, it is not unusual for clients to have high level ‘official’ goals that are agreed with the client, coach and organisation (e.g. improve senior stakeholder engagement and communication) and more detailed, personal goals that are agreed between the coach and the client – these goals support the overall ‘official’ goal – for example reduce the impact of negative self-talk that occurs during interactions with senior stakeholders. The second goal is aligned to the official goal, but is targeted at the deeper level cause of the issue.
- Transformational Conversations
Therapeutic coaches are trained in both coaching and therapy, and they aim to hold space for deeper conversations, allowing clients to explore difficult emotions and experiences in a safe and non-judgmental environment. Through these conversations, clients can gain new perspectives, challenge limiting beliefs, and discover insights that lead to personal transformation. These conversations help clients connect with their own inner wisdom, leading to profound shifts in mindset and behaviour. There are not a standard set of techniques that the coach will use – this will depend on the style of therapy training the coach will have. For instance, our Being Free Therapeutic Coaching we specialise in developmental trauma and we believe that trauma is held in the body – therefore we encourage our clients to slow down, relax and access our emotions and the wisdom that is held in their bodies. As most of us spend a lot of time in our heads, this can be both challenging and transformative for clients.
- Accountability and Support
Like traditional coaching, therapeutic coaching involves accountability and encouragement. Clients are encouraged to take actionable steps toward their goals, with the coach providing support and feedback along the way. However, this accountability goes beyond task completion; it also involves emotional accountability, where clients learn to take responsibility for their emotions, responses, and personal growth.
When Is Therapeutic Coaching Appropriate?
Therapeutic coaching is ideal for people who feel ready to make changes in their lives but realise that they may be held back by recurring emotional patterns, negative self talk or limiting beliefs. It is particularly effective for people who may have tried traditional coaching but found that it didn’t go deep enough to tackle the underlying causes of their challenges.
It’s particularly effective for those facing transitions or long-standing challenges such as:
– Overcoming Self-Limiting Beliefs: People struggling with negative self-talk or low self-worth can benefit from the self-awareness and confidence-building aspects of therapeutic coaching.
– Navigating Life or Career Transitions: Therapeutic coaching is well-suited for major life changes, such as career shifts, divorce, or retirement. These transitions often bring up deep-seated fears and insecurities that therapeutic coaching can help address.
– Healing from Past Experiences: Therapeutic coaching can help individuals process and heal from past experiences that continue to impact their present lives.
– Connecting to Purpose: Clients who feel disconnected from their current goals or purpose, or who want to pursue a more authentic path can benefit from the value-based goal-setting process in therapeutic coaching.
What are the benefits?
By integrating emotional healing with practical coaching strategies, therapeutic coaching offers a range of benefits:
– Greater Self-Awareness: Clients develop a deeper understanding of themselves and their motivations, which fosters self-compassion and resilience.
– Lasting Personal Growth: Unlike quick-fix approaches, therapeutic coaching addresses the root causes of issues, creating sustainable, long-term change.
– Enhanced Emotional Intelligence: Clients learn to recognise and manage their emotions, leading to healthier relationships and improved decision-making.
– Aligned Life Choices: With clearer values and a stronger sense of self, clients make choices that align with their true aspirations, leading to a more fulfilling life.
Conclusion
Therapeutic coaching offers a unique and powerful approach to personal growth, one that recognises the importance of both healing and progress. By combining elements of coaching and therapy, this practice helps clients not only achieve their goals but also transform their relationship with themselves. For those ready to move beyond surface-level changes and explore their inner world, therapeutic coaching may be the key to unlocking a more authentic, meaningful, and empowered life – a sense of being free.
Being Free Therapeutic Coaching
You can find out more about Being Free Therapeutic Coaching here.
