If you are interested in executive coaching and therapy with me and aren’t sure which one to choose, I have reviewed some of the similarities and differences to help you choose. Right now, I have a waitlist for therapy, but my rockstar psychologist team at Momentum Psychology can help you!
What You Will Find In this Article:
What Do Therapy and Coaching Clients Have in Common
How Are They Different?
“I want to improve my relationship with my partner.”
“I think I might be burned out.”
“I’m burning the candle at both ends.”
“I just can’t balance it all.”
“I really struggle to manage conflict at work, especially with more emotional or volatile people.”
“I want to be more present as a parent.”
As a clinical psychologist and a performance coach, I often hear these things from both prospective coaching and therapy clients.
You’re not sure what you need. You just know that you need something besides what you hear from others in your professional or personal relationships, which are usually all altogether unhelpful—things like:
“Well, what you should do is . . [insert helpful idea - e.g., workout more, go to bed earlier, get a mentor, listen to the Daily Stoic / Jocko / Brene Brown / Andrew Huberman, read this book]
“I used to struggle with that. You should try . . .”
“That’s just the way it is. Life isn’t supposed to be easy.”
“You can’t have it all.”
Partnering with an encouraging person who is dedicated and committed to your well-being and who is trained and qualified to help you make positive behavioral changes can be life-changing.
Yet how do you know what you need? Therapy or coaching?
There is a guru for everything these days trying to sell us some quick fixes on wellness and happiness.
The behavioral health and coaching industries don’t make it clear.
Even for those who are licensed as psychologists and certified as coaches, these distinctions are complicated, as you’ll see.
Hopefully, these tips will help make the choice easier!
What do therapy and coaching clients have in common?
High-achieving and high-performing folks are my people, so both my coaching and therapy clients are in similar roles and have similar educational and professional backgrounds.
For instance, I have worked with therapy and coaching clients who are lawyers, entrepreneurs, creatives, physicians, executives, celebrities, and athletes. In terms of demographic variables, there aren’t alot of differences.
How are they different?
In my experience, coaching and therapy clients differ in several key ways (click on links to jump).
GOALS
Therapy and coaching clients differ in terms of their goals.
When talking about their goals:
Therapy clients describe goals that return them to baseline in how they are doing at work and in relationships with friends and family, while
Coaching clients look more to optimize and enhance for what Fred Kauffman, a founder of Linked In, calls success beyond success.
However, what if a therapy client gets beyond baseline and wants to continue to optimize and enhance? Do they have to stop working with me since I’m already trained as a coach? Not necessarily.
As long as their are goals appropriate for therapy, then it can go that way.
An example of where I couldn’t help a therapy client with coaching would be if they want to have ready access to me through Voxer or email, they need executive assessments or for me to work with their team or organization, or they would like to be able to be in my masterminds or group programs later. All of those things are only available to coaching clients.
On the other hand, 1:1 coaching can blend into group coaching and masterminds, strategy sessions, workshops, and retreats because there aren’t as many ethical and legal requirements to keep all of those things 100% separate as there are in therapy.
CONCERNS
If there is any history of trauma or PTSD or severe mental health issues like major depressive disorder, OCD, eating disorders, or thought disorders, this is definitely an issue for therapy.
My coaching clients usually come to me for help with integrating work and life better, advancing at work or in their business generally, and often very specific things like enhancing communication such as negotiation or conflict resolution skills at work, time management, and procrastination.
However, about 90% of the time, my coaching clients end up working on communication in relationships at work and life as a major part of our work.
If you are having relationship difficulties, general issues can be addressed in coaching. In terms of working on parenting and relationships, I am an expert in those areas, and I can do that in either place but it must be appropriate. I can only do parent and relationship coaching in coaching, not therapy.
If it's more that you need clarification on your values as a parent and a partner and then some ninja skills, that can be either. If I need to work with another family member’s therapist, that would also be therapy.
FUNCTIONING
Functioning is mental health jargon for how you do in your day-to-day life at work, school, and in relationships.
Overall, therapy clients are having more problems with day-to-day functioning.
If you are experiencing problems that are interfering notably in any of those domains, then that is likely best addressed in therapy.
In what other ways are therapy and coaching different?
CONFIDENTIALITY
Therapy offers more protection to clients. In most states, there is a patient-psychologist privilege that it usually takes a subpoena to break. The duties of confidentiality and requirements of HIPAA are more protective. With therapy, I use a HIPAA-encrypted electronic health record and videoconferencing. Coaching is confidential, but there is no legal privilege, and I don’t use HIPAA-encrypted technology.
However, I do remain a mandated reporter in both roles.
A psychologist’s duties of confidentiality cut both ways though.
Therapy requires much tighter boundaries because psychologists can’t have “dual” roles with their clients. For example, I’m working on some offerings with coaching (e.g., courses, masterminds, and memberships). None of my therapy clients can do those things due to confidentiality–for at least for two years after they’ve stopped doing therapy with me.
SERVICES
One of the main reasons that coaching is more expensive (see below) is because it allows for more contact. For example, my coaching clients get unlimited (during regular business hours and I'm in town) support with Voxer or email. For ethical reasons, therapy doesn’t allow this level of contact. Also, things like some assessments and interpretations are included usually. Some special assessments are more but you would have to opt for that.
COST
Executive coaching is usually more expensive than therapy, and is typically offered in packages, not hourly rates. I offer 3-month (10 sessions) and 6-month (22 sessions) packages.
There are discounts for full payment, but payment plans are available. The primary reason for this is the difference in services and availability as described below.
To save on costs, there are different strategies for each:
Coaching can be a business deduction. Therapy is not.
You can file for out-of-network benefits for therapy or use an HSA. Coaching is not a healthcare expense.
ASSESSMENTS
Coaching packages include at least one paid assessment and interpretation.
I send electronic questionnaires regularly to monitor progress for both therapy and coaching clients. I review progress graphs with clients routinely to assess how they are doing on key variables related to our goals.
Those are some of the ways that therapy and coaching compare. If you are looking for more information, you can check out this more detailed blog article here.
Ready to get started?
Given the demands on my schedule, I do not offer free consultations.
Executive Coaching
Although all of our psychologists are all certified coaches, I’m the only one offering executive coaching at this time.
If you already know that you would like to pursue executive coaching with me, please complete my application for 1:1 coaching here, and my team will follow up in approximately 2 business days. You can read more about my coaching there.
Currently, my consultation fee for 1:1 coaching is $395, which includes up to 5 business days of Voxer support.
If you want to get on my waitlist for other coaching offerings, please subscribe here.
Therapy
If you are interested in therapy through my practice, Momentum Psychology, our psychologists are available for therapy. If you haven’t already, please complete an appointment request here.
(Currently, I am running a wait list for therapy, but I do have some openings every year for high-achieving professionals who struggle with more complex trauma- and anxiety-related problems like PTSD, panic disorder, phobias, social anxiety disorder, and OCD.)
For therapy, my intake rate is $325. My hourly rate is $295/hour for individual.
These rates are consistent with my years and depth of training and experience in specialty areas that require more complex skills (e.g., exposure-based therapies). PTSD exposure sessions are usually 75 minutes+ and are priced accordingly. I no longer provide forensic assessment services. You can see rates for the other psychologists at MP on our FAQ, but they are lower than mine.
If you are looking for free resources, you can also subscribe to my podcast here.
Thanks for your interest in working with me!
I hope this has helped. If you have any more questions, please contact my team here.
Dr. J
P.S. The main issue for psychologists doing both is that we have to pick one or the other.
At the same time, as we are all trained as both, if a therapy client is meeting their goals and it ends up that it looks more like coaching, that is fine, but there is a difference than therapy with a coaching style and executive coaching. Most importantly, once you are a therapy client, you can’t transfer to an executive coaching individual or group program with that person for over two years, if at all. So, it is very rare that you could do that.