Understanding the differences between coaching and psychotherapy

When talking about the process of going to a professional who cares for people to help them better manage their emotions and/or behavior patterns, it is relatively common to confuse the concepts of “coaching” and “psychotherapy”.

However, not knowing how to distinguish between the two goes beyond a simple confusion of technical terms, and can even be harmful and lead to problems, as we will see below. So, let's see what the specific differences are between psychotherapy and coaching .

Learn to distinguish between psychotherapy and coaching

These are the main aspects that will help you to know the difference between psychotherapy and coaching if you consider using this type of service.

1. Psychotherapy can only be offered by psychologists

The first difference, and perhaps the most important, is that the exercise of psychotherapy performed by psychotherapists is a regulated practice and can only be legally offered by specialized psychologists and/or other duly accredited health professionals through university training and registration in official entities such as the COP (in Spain). In contrast, coaching in general is not regulated, and practically anyone, with or without training, can offer this type of service, which leads to problems. Now, keep in mind that many psychologists offer both psychotherapy and coaching; In these cases, there is a guarantee that the professional is trained in behavioral science.

Thus, training in coaching is much less complex than training as a psychotherapist , since the latter must have at least a 4 or 5-year Bachelor's degree (depending on the country) and post-university training, while there are training programs in coaching sessions open to anyone and lasting just a few weeks.

2. Psychotherapy focuses its field of application on mental health

As a general rule, psychotherapists are fundamentally psychologists or specialized doctors, who base most of their work on treating patients who present some form of discomfort. In many cases, this discomfort takes the form of a diagnosable disorder (and as such is described in the manuals used in Clinical Psychology and Psychiatry, such as the DSM-5 or the ICD-11), and in other cases it does not become psychopathologies, but they are also a reason to start a therapy process (for example, a couple crisis, extreme shyness, etc.).

On the other hand, coaching is not applied as a form of treatment for psychological disorders, and in fact, if someone offers this type of service to intervene in that class of problems without being accredited in the field of psychotherapy, that is denounceable as a form of labor intrusion. Thus, coaching is applied above all to needs that are not considered as a source of discomfort , but rather as needs for personal or professional development: desire to learn leadership skills, interest in learning self-motivation techniques to prepare for oppositions, etc. .

4. Psychotherapy has more specific action protocols

As the psychological intervention offered by psychotherapists is oriented towards mental health problems, this type of procedure is more standardized, trying to follow a control of what is done so that it adapts to the strategies and techniques that have proven to be effective based on scientific investigations. On the other hand, coaching, if it is understood as a practice carried out by people who do not necessarily have training in psychotherapy, does not have this type of criteria to control the effectiveness of what is done.

5. Coaching has an important deployment in the field of the company

In practice, a good part of the coaching processes offered to clients have to do with the field of professional performance . Thus, several of the main branches of coaching are executive coaching, focused on helping medium and high profiles of companies (CEOs, Department Directors, etc.) by boosting their communication and leadership skills; sports coaching, offered to professional or semi-professional athletes; or team coaching, which is applied to departments or groups that usually work hand in hand on a day-to-day basis, to help them better communicate with each other, resolve conflicts before they escalate, motivate themselves, etc.