What is a Life Coach?

A coach is someone who relates to the client as a partner, not an expert, authority or healer. The coach and client together choose the focus, format & desired outcomes for their work. Coaching uses information from the past to move the client forward but does not depend on resolution of the past for this to happen. Coaching assumes the presence of emotional reactions to life events & believes that clients are capable of expressing & handling their emotions. A coach makes a request of the client to promote action toward the client’s desired outcome, not to fix the client’s problem or understand the client’s past. Coaching is designed to provide clients with a greater capacity to produce results & a greater confidence in their ability to do so. ( International Coaching Federation)

Most of us received indirect or direct personal messages that we were not good enough. If we don’t become aware of the ingrained childhood messages that automatically govern out thoughts and actions we will continue feeling not good enough. If, however, we consciously look at beliefs established in childhood, we have the opportunity to see their impact from an adult perspective. We can then choose new beliefs about ourselves. Life coaching supports clients in choosing new perspectives and establishing new beliefs. It also calls them to identify and live from their strengths. They learn to celebrate all of who they are, even the parts they used to label as weaknesses. They find the gifts in all aspects of themselves. (Coach Training Alliance)

With a coach the adults that grew up with addiction can co-create together what the client would like to have in their life today. The coach and client partner-up and work as a team to strategize and plan how to achieve the client’s goals. The coach will be there to listen, encourage, support, and help the client be accountable and responsible for their wishes to come true. This will move the client into the future with clarity and choice to be all that they can be.

How is therapy different than coaching?

Therapy usually focuses on the past and the client usually is in discomfort and comes to be healed or to have a problem fixed. The client may see the therapist as an expert with the answers and themselves as a patient; whereas, coaching is future oriented and is a co-creative relationship engaging the client’s own possibilities and goals. With therapy there may be a diagnosis and sometimes insurance reimbursement; with coaching it is self referral and always self-pay.*

*Some clients are able to write off coaching as a medical expense. Contact your accountant to discuss

“A coach is someone who gets you to do what you don’t want to do,
so, you can be who you want to be.”
(Tom Landry, Football Hall of Fame)