What is Behavioral Health Coaching?
And what’s the difference between Coaching and Therapy?
If you’ve come across my website and are reading this blog post as we speak, there’s a good chance you might be asking yourself – what exactly IS Behavioral Health Coaching, anyway?
To best answer that question, it’s important for me to first help you understand what Coaching is itself and how it differs from Therapy.
To put it simply – Coaching is not Therapy!
The main difference between therapy and coaching is the focus of the work. Traditional therapy focuses on coping with underlying disorders and making sense of the past in order to achieve mental stability. Coaching aims to help individuals thrive in the present moment, work towards a desired future, and achieve their highest potential in life. The focus and content of coaching differs for each individual depending on what their presenting problems are and what they’d like to change or achieve.
Behavioral health coaching, specifically, is designed to assess your overall behavioral and mental health needs, establish specific goals for improvement of wellness, and provide you with the tools necessary for success. And by success, I mean creating behavioral change that has a positive, lasting impact on your well-being. This specific type of coaching helps clients to manage emotions as they arise, challenge negative thinking patterns, improve relationship skills, and reduce unhealthy behaviors — all of which help to improve overall mental health.
Coaching and therapy also differ in the way in which the professional interacts with their client.
A therapist will listen to your concerns and, through a set of therapeutic skills, hopefully guide you to self-discovery of underlying patterns of thinking and feeling based on your life experiences to date. A coach will do a lot of listening and provide emotional support for your current emotional state, AND offer pointed advice and hands-on guidance toward behavior change that you can put into practice in your everyday life.
Quite often, people who I know will tell me that they struggle with therapy because they go in expecting the therapist to tell them exactly what they need to do in order to feel differently and change their lives. This expectation is a problem in and of itself, because it just isn’t what a therapist can or should be doing! The role of a therapist is simply to present clients with a better comprehension of what motivates or causes them to act or think in the way that they do.
On the other hand, the role of a coach is to assess the areas of your life where there’s obvious issues in thinking and behaving, and formulate a plan of action that will actively work to (hopefully) improve these areas.
For example, if you start working with a coach because you struggle with having a unhealthy routine and lack motivation and self-esteem, you and your coach might formulate a daily and weekly schedule (giving structure to your life) that incorporates self-confidence building activities (behaviors to enhance motivation). Or, should you come into coaching with a substance abuse issue, you and your coach might work together to motivation to change this habit, create a recovery plan, get you connected to specialist drug rehabilitation services or other mental health providers (e.g., a therapist), and set you up with sober support network
Your coach can’t FORCE you to do anything. But part of their role is to challenge you to grow, especially in the moments when the needed behavioral change is particularly challenging. They will also be available to speak to you in real-time while you’re working hard to implement these changes, and help hold you accountable.
Now that reminds me to note – the way in which you work with a coach or a therapist differs as well. Typically, you will meet with a therapist on a weekly basis and your interaction with them is limited to these individual sessions. With a coach, you have these weekly sessions but also the ability to communicate with them on an as-needed basis via text or call. That is, you can speak to them when you’re struggling and really need the extra support outside of a session. For example, maybe you wake up one day and immediately feel an overwhelming amount of anxiety that’s preventing you from getting out of bed and starting your day. In that moment, you can call your coach and they will be able to empathetically support what you’re going through as well as guide you to take action to overcome your overwhelm. That might mean they take you through a guided breathing exercise to calm the anxiety in your body, and work together to make a step-by-step plan to get you out of bed and ready for the day.
I will say that this ability to have “on-call” support can’t necessarily be generalized to all coaches, because everyone operates in a different way of their choosing that feels comfortable for them professionally and personally. But this is the way that I work as a coach with my clients. I offer this type of support because I believe that the value in coaching largely comes from the fact clients can get real-time support in their day to day lives when they’re faced with real-life problems (e.g., unanticipated thoughts, emotions, or situations) that don’t necessarily occur within the confines of a pre-planned session.
One of the reasons why I know this type of support can be so beneficial is that I’ve received it myself. That’s to say, I have gone through my own personal mental and behavioral health struggles and therefore I can be considered an Expert by Experience (EBE).
Many coaches are in fact EBEs. As an EBE, a coach can support their clients in a unique way by being able to personally relate to what you’re going through in a transparent way, meaning that they can discuss how they’re struggled through similar situations and what they did to overcome their struggles. A coach’s ability to self-divulge can help form trust and strong connection with a client. We all feel better and more at ease when we’re talking with someone who has walked a day (or many days) in our shoes, and that’s one of the best things about working with a coach!
It is my opinion that experience-based knowledge is needed for developing services, changing attitudes and creating an understanding of challenges which people meet during their lifespan. Stay turned for a later Blog Post that will discuss in more detail the topic of EBEs in mental health services, and the benefits of leaning into your authenticity as a Coach.
This blog post gives you an overall understanding of what Behavioral Health Coaching is, but there is so much more to say still! To learn more about the intricacies of this varied profession and hear real-life examples from the work I do with my clients, you can head on over to my Instagram page (@bysofiacoaching) to what the IGTV Video I made on the subject.
When it comes to explaining Coaching vs. Therapy, I think it’s vital to point out that I am not saying one is better or worse than the other. The point of this post is simply to try to highlight the inherent different between these two professions and the different benefits of working with each. In an idea world, an individual would get the most full-spectrum support by working with both simultaneously a Coach and a Therapist simultaneously. In fact, this is something I quite often suggest to my clients. Part of my job as a Coach can also be to provide Case Management services to clients in order to help connect them to other physical or mental health care professionals so that they can get the right support based on their needs. You can contact me directly to find out more about my Coaching and Case Management services.
- Coach Sofia