The Life Coach Invasion

by healthypages on 07/02/2012 - 07:38 am |

Tag: Life Coaching

Over the last few years Life Coaches have been consistently growing in number. The principle behind a life coach is that they will help their client get unstuck in certain areas of their life such as in business and relationships or to help change certain personality traits that are unproductive.

Describing the type of people who seek a life coach, Laura Berman Fortgang who is herself a life coach explained: "We are not talking about being incompetent or weak. They are everyday, normal people who have their lives together. They realize the value of having somebody to help them think outside the box."

Employing the services of a life coach is beginning to be seen as an alternative to a psychotherapist. Men in particular seem to prefer the idea of a coach rather than a therapist possibly due to the word 'coach' being more synonymous with sports.

From the Institute for Life Coach Training in Colorado, Patrick Williams,shared the statistics: "70% of the caseload in therapy are women; 60% in coaching are men."

Popular life coach, Martha Beck put it in more direct terms: "It is OK for a man to see a coach," but "It is not OK for a man to see a therapist."

The Psychotherapy Networker magazine recently ran a review of life coaching and said that there were about 10,000 life coaches in the US.

Currently there is very little if any regulation regarding life coaches. From Kent State University in Ohio, USA, psychology professor David Fresco said, "There are no qualifications, no unified approach to coaching, no oversight board. Basically they fly under the radar screen of any sort of oversight." He also added that almost anyone can declare themselves to be a life coach.

Fortgang, described life coaching as "action-oriented, solution-oriented, concentrates on forward motion." She said that her best clients were "smart, educated people who want to make radical changes," and that they were "everyday, normal people who have their lives together. They realize the value of having somebody to help them think outside the box."

Comments

24/02/2012 - 10:51 am

I spent the past year taking a coaching qualification to add to my previous holistic qualifications. It was accredited by the International Coach Federation who have very high standards. I suspect like therapy bodies will begin to come into play but as you can still basically call yourself an aromatherapist with a two day training course I don't expect it to come that soon.
As for it being used as a replacement for therapy I think this is not healthy. If people want to work through some emotional experience and find ways of dealing with it that are positive then coaching is perfect. If by contrast somebody needs psychotherapy then a good coach should refer them.
I specialise in helping people improve their work life balance but most coaches will work in the same fashion. Helping client to identify goals, break them down into achievable steps, make themselves accountable for those steps by a set time, then reviewing and adapting the steps/goals where necessary. Coaching can be a great tool to keep people on track, but I would suggest that trying to use it as a replacement for counselling or psychotherapy could be a recipe for disaster.

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