THERAPY VS COACHING
Therapy or coaching?
Both can begin with the same sentence: “I need to make a decision about work.” The useful question is what kind of problem the decision has become.
Professional coaching is for a bounded professional issue that can remain primarily professional. Psychotherapy gives us more room when the apparent work problem is tied up with anxiety, self-worth, relationships, grief, shame or a pattern that keeps repeating despite good advice.
When coaching is enough
Coaching works well when there is a real professional decision to make and the work can stay focused on that decision.
You might be deciding whether to leave a role, take an opportunity, go independent, deal with a leadership situation or compare two options with meaningful trade-offs.
The work looks at what changed, what you are hoping the alternative will fix, what makes staying attractive and what you would lose by moving. Assumptions can be tested and options compared before making something irreversible where that is practical.
The conversation can remain practical without pretending the decision is emotionally neutral. Leaving a well-paid job may still involve fear. Going independent may still involve uncertainty. That does not automatically make the problem a psychotherapy problem.
A bounded professional problem can still be difficult, expensive and emotionally charged. The distinction is not that coaching deals with rational problems while psychotherapy deals with feelings. It is whether the work can stay usefully organised around the professional situation itself, or whether the same difficulty is pulling us repeatedly into other parts of your life.
When psychotherapy gives us more room
Psychotherapy becomes more appropriate when the same professional question is carrying substantially more than the decision itself.
You have enough information and are still researching the same choice six months later. A manageable setback feels humiliating. Every career move turns into panic about disappointing people. The same relationship with authority appears across different companies. Work is affecting your relationship, sleep or sense of worth. The reaction seems larger than the immediate event and you want to understand why.
At that point, another strategy can be useful and still not touch the part that keeps recreating the difficulty.
Psychotherapy allows us to work with the immediate situation while also following anxiety, self-worth, grief, shame, relationships and earlier patterns when they are relevant.
A work question can change scope
A career decision can begin as a coaching question and turn out to contain deeper psychological material.
You may start by asking whether to leave a job. The difficult part may be salary, equity and the effect on your family, in which case the work can remain primarily professional.
In other cases, every possible move becomes tied to whether you are successful enough, loyal enough or disappointing somebody. That is where psychotherapy may offer a more useful scope.
The reverse is also true. A badly designed role, a poor manager or a financial constraint can be exactly what it appears to be. Not every difficult feeling needs a psychological explanation.
How the two services differ
Coaching stays organised around the professional question. Product, growth, customer research, Jobs to be Done and consulting experience are directly relevant to that work. The focus is evidence, assumptions, options and action.
In psychotherapy, the professional context remains relevant but does not define the boundary of the work. If the decision connects to anxiety, self-worth, relationships or earlier patterns, there is room to follow it there.
The two services are separate. If the scope needs to change, that is discussed explicitly rather than allowing coaching to drift into therapy or therapy into consulting.
If you are not sure
You do not need to classify the problem perfectly before contacting me.
Tell me what is happening, what decision or difficulty has brought you here and where you are currently located. I will tell you whether individual psychotherapy, professional coaching or another option seems the better fit.
For a broader explanation of what psychotherapy itself is like, see Considering Therapy.
Contact
If you are not sure which category fits, describe the situation rather than choosing the service first.