Why would someone trained as a therapist choose to work as a coach?

Because coaching is the work I wanted. My training is clinical, and what I love is the active side of this work: building a working relationship with a couple and taking the live pattern between them apart, in the present, practically, with a plan. That is coaching, exactly. Treating illness belongs to licensed care, and when that’s what someone needs, I say so early and help them find it. I’d rather do the work I love under its own name than a different job under a grander one.

Is coaching regulated?

Basically no, and you should let that shape how carefully you choose. Anyone can call themselves a coach; almost nowhere requires a license. That’s exactly why this site shows you the whole approach, the training, and the method before asking anything of you: when a field isn’t regulated, being completely open is what you offer instead of a license number. Read the approach , read the background , and judge the thinking for yourself.

Will insurance cover this?

No. Coaching isn’t health care, so it isn’t reimbursable, and I don’t give you paperwork to submit. The upside that comes with that: nothing about your relationship goes into a medical record, no diagnosis gets stuck to either of you, and no outside company is told anything at all.

What if therapy is what we need?

I tell you, early and specifically. I check for this in the first conversation and keep checking the whole way through: thoughts of suicide, untreated trauma, addiction, a mental health condition driving the pattern, these need licensed care, and I’ll help you find it rather than coach around it. Sometimes the right setup is both: a therapist for the clinical part, this work for the pattern, done in the right order.

Coaching vs Therapy: The Honest Difference

The plain comparison

What therapy is for: conditions. Depression that's flattened someone. Trauma that keeps intruding. Addiction. An anxiety disorder. Thoughts of suicide. Anything where a person needs treatment. Therapists are licensed by states, carry legal duties, keep medical records, can diagnose, and their work is often covered by insurance, because it's health care.

What this coaching is for: patterns. Two people who are basically doing okay but are stuck in a fight that survived the books, the tools, and often good counseling. A couple rebuilding after an affair. A person deciding whether to stay. Someone working on their marriage alone. The work teaches you how your own pattern runs, it happens in the present, it follows a clear plan with a set number of sessions, and it makes no medical claims of any kind.

What they share: more than either side likes to admit. Across all the research, most of what helps in any kind of counseling is the relationship with the person helping you, and having a clear way of understanding your problem that you both believe in. Those aren't owned by a license. What a license owns, and should, is treating illness.

The paragraph most people in my position won't write

I trained as a therapist, and I coach on purpose. The work I love is the active, practical kind: two people in the room, the live pattern between them caught while it runs and taken apart in the present. That work is coaching, and it's the work I'm best at. A license owns what it should own, diagnosing and treating illness, and when treatment is what someone needs, I say so early and help find it. What I won't do is blur the two words so one can borrow the other's authority. The work here is coaching, its limits stated in daylight, with a clear path to licensed care built in. You get to weigh that choice yourself, which is why it's printed here instead of hidden.

Choose therapy instead if

Any of these is true: one of you is having thoughts of suicide or self-harm; there's violence, threats, or fear in the relationship; drinking, drugs, or another addiction is active and untreated; trauma symptoms, flashbacks, zoning out, dissociating, are running the show; or a possible mental health condition, serious depression, mania, an eating disorder, has never been looked at. In those situations the right choice is licensed care, full stop, and the right doors are a licensed couples or individual therapist in your state, your doctor, or, in a crisis, 988 (call or text) and the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233. Come back here afterward if you still need the pattern work. It'll keep.

Asked right about here

One more time, plainly: coaching, not therapy. I don't diagnose or treat mental health conditions, and this isn't a replacement for licensed care. The terms are on the terms page.