When to Choose Coaching for Healing Trauma vs Therapy
This is advice on how to know if you’re ready for a coaching relationship within your journey of healing trauma or when therapy could be a better option.
Coaching is a non-clinical relationship meant to support you in moving forward.
When you add trauma-informed support to the mix of coaching, you get a non-clinical relationship meant to move you forward that also takes into account the impact of trauma in your life and gives special consideration for moving forward in the best way in those complex circumstances. This applies to my trauma recovery coaching as well.
It’s not a substitute for therapy, counseling, or other types of mental healthcare. So, in this article, we explore signs or things that might mean you need mental healthcare treatment instead of trauma-informed coaching or in addition to trauma-informed coaching.
As a trauma-informed coach, I don’t diagnose or treat mental health conditions, although I do work with clients who are diagnosed and being treated or not being treated for mental health conditions. (I coach the whole person, not the diagnosis.)
So, to be clear, while coaching can definitely improve your mental health and wellbeing, as well as other areas of your life, it’s not actually mental healthcare. That’s an important distinction when you’re deciding if you need coaching versus therapy or some other modality.
We’ll also explore signs and indicators for when trauma-informed (and trauma recovery) coaching would be a great choice for you in your self healing journey.
I’ll preface this by saying my suggestions are based on my own experience of one-on-one coaching clients with trauma and being a trauma survivor myself who had to navigate mental healthcare at a time I didn’t know much about trauma. You may find different opinions if you talk to other coaches or clinicians.
Here are the topics we’ll cover:
Let’s get the elephant in the room out of the way first.
Not everyone who is traumatized will need therapy in their life. But some people do. And of the people who do, not everyone will seek it out and use it to their advantage. And of the people who do seek it out, not everyone will have a great experience, while a lot of people will.
(When I say therapy, I’m talking about psychotherapy with psychiatrists, psychologists, and mental healthcare clinicians. I’m none of these things as a coach.)
I personally believe that’s because historically, in our society, mental healthcare hasn’t always been something we talk about. It’s not something we feel safe talking about because in the past needing it has often come with shame, harmful labels, and has even been used against the person needing help by people who are manipulative and power hungry. It’s been used in power dynamics in not only personal relationships but also as the ruling classes’ way to keep their power.
While we’ve made huge strides around demystifying mental healthcare in today’s world, making it available, and changing the narrative around whether it’s good or bad, there are still a lot of stigmas and fears to be worked through for some.
And, the direction of prescribing pills in psychology seems to have swung to the extreme end of the spectrum. I know that when I’ve tried to see a therapist in the past, I was denied because at the time I was breastfeeding my son and that particular doctor refused to see anyone who couldn’t be medicated. This was actually a real thing that happened to me in 2014 in Nashville, TN. It almost seems unbelievable. I felt helpless and like finding help was impossible at a time that I truly needed it the most. So, if you feel jaded about mental healthcare, I see you.
To admit you need mental healthcare can be a loaded, complex process backed by fears that have been reinforced through experience.
But, there are also plenty of mental healthcare providers out there, including counselors, who don’t prescribe and only prescribe when it’s absolutely necessary as a stepping stone to healing and not as a bandage that doesn’t get to the root of the issue.
With that said, we can’t deny that there are some mental health diagnoses that do require medication to manage. So in those cases, medication is helpful.
Now, I do have the utmost respect for my clinical counterparts. And I’m actively working to build relationships with reputable counselors, physiatrists, and psychologists who I can refer clients to when needed.
With all that being said, let’s dive into the rest of this article assuming that if you do find that you need therapy, you are capable of equipping yourself with the knowledge needed to find the right kind that helps rather than hurts in your specific situation.
Ensuring that you find the right clinician so you can get the correct diagnosis and the right treatment can be time consuming. And when you’re exhausted from trauma, that task can seem daunting. Be encouraged though, because you have the power to be your own health advocate and can educate yourself on how to find a good clinician. For example:
Therapy is important and helpful when the clinician you see is interested in treating the root of your symptoms rather than the symptoms. And, if you have a history of trauma, finding a therapist who is trauma-informed goes a long way — they’ll take that into account when diagnosing. Whereas someone who doesn’t know much about trauma won’t, and you could be misdiagnosed because trauma symptoms can so closely resemble the symptoms of disorders such as bipolar disorder or borderline personality disorder.
What questions can you ask a clinician to find out if they can get to the root of the issue and also to find out if they’re trauma-informed?
Plenty of people can benefit from coaching without having had therapy or who are not currently in therapy. Whether you’ve had therapy or not isn’t an indicator of whether or not coaching would be successful for you at this time.
What could give you a clue if coaching would produce the outcomes you’re looking for are these indicators:
On a scale of one to ten, how ready do you feel to do the work required to heal? If you answer an 8 or above, you’re serious enough about doing the work that you’d see results one way or another.
Are you blaming someone else for where you are in life? If so, it’s not quite time for coaching. If you are ready to take responsibility for your own life, even if bad or horrendous things happened that were out of your control, then you’re likely to see positive results from coaching.
Do you have patience? All types of coaching, trauma recovery coaching included, takes time. And the results you get from it depend on how ready you are to learn the answers and make changes.
Other questions to answer include:
Are you willing to be dedicated to your healing?
Are you willing to embrace change?
Are you willing to feel your emotions, to a degree?
Are you able to be okay with reconnecting to your body?
If you said yes to any of these, you’re likely ready.
Other indicators that coaching could help you are:
Something is holding you back or you feel blocked in life and you want to move forward and gain momentum.
You’re ready to not live in the past because you know life really does have so much to offer, even if you can’t feel excited about it right this second or motivated all the time.
You feel ready to make meaning of your difficult experiences and know that there is some deeper meaning for your life there.
Even if you have a diagnosis (or not), you have some strategies in place to ground and center yourself when needed.
And, you’re not currently in danger or living with an abuser or harmful situation.
That last indicator can have some gray areas however.
For example, perhaps the industry you work in or the employer you work for is toxic, but you need a job and any other job you could go to within the industry would be toxic as well — this is a harmful situation you’re in, but I personally would be willing to coach you because we could find strategies for dealing and could parse out your options for incurring the least amount of toxicity while building your support system and changing what’s within your control.
However, if you’re being abused by your partner, there are better suited practitioners out there to help you get to safety and then deal with the aftermath.
There are plenty more gray areas we could talk about, so if you have questions about your specific situation, feel free to schedule a free consultation with me and we can talk through it to decide if coaching is right for you at this time.
As I go through indicators that you might not be ready for coaching, keep in mind that I attach no judgement to these indicators. I’m simply describing a point where you may be in your healing journey. Each person heals in their own time and in their own way. Many of these indicators are trauma responses and/or coping strategies that are normal. You are still whole and unbroken. You’re doing the best you can and that is good enough. Now, let’s dive in.
Some indicators that therapy might be a better option for you at this time are:
You live in blame and victimhood — you’re just not ready to take some responsibility for where you’re at in your life or your emotions.
You can’t seem to tap into your imagination to see a way forward.
Becoming triggered could physically harm you. For example, if you become evoked and your nervous system goes into its fight, flight, freeze, or fawn response, does anything happen that could physically harm you, like seizures or passing out?
You’re in active addiction.
You’re suicidal.
Natural and alternative methods of calming anxiety aren’t working at all for you.
You’re experiencing uncontrollable autonomic dysfunction.
You have severe insomnia.
You want someone to give you the answers or tell you what to do.
Additionally, here’s a list from the International Coaching Federation (ICF) (a global ethical and competency professional organization that sets coaching standards) of indicators that many (not all) general life coaches look at to determine if they should refer you to therapy rather than moving forward with coaching.
While trauma-informed coaches may take on more healing support work than a general life coach, I personally still look at this list on a case-by-case basis as well to help me decide. Note that not all indicators apply to me because as a trauma-informed coach, most of my clients won’t always be upbeat or always have the ability to focus, for example. Most of my clients also feel guilt.
So, many of these indicators would have to be happening for you to a great extent for me to refer you to therapy, but it may give you a loose idea of when therapy could be more helpful than coaching.
If you are currently in therapy and think you’d benefit from trauma-informed life coaching or trauma recovery coaching, be sure to talk it over with your therapist.
Then, once you feel confident in moving forward, coaching can help you set goals, find strategies that work for you in the context of your life, and be held accountable while you’re taking action.
If I was your coach, I’d work with you to learn what you’re covering in therapy and see how we could build from there rather than covering the same ground. We could also focus on ways to practically integrate into your life what you’re learning from therapy.
Trauma-informed coaching (and trauma recovery coaching) doesn’t help therapy when you’re at a place where you’re not ready to move forward. Maybe you’re at a place where all you can do is try to process your past. To take it even further, maybe processing your past puts you directly back into experiencing your trauma like it’s happening right here and now (like a flashback, for example), then you might need to hold off on coaching until things like that are more manageable for you.
Healing is such a cyclical process — it’s not linear at all.
So, uncovering that you might want or need therapy after you’ve already started a coaching relationship is nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, it’s a huge win, in my opinion.
My ultimate goal as a coach is for you to have the right support at the right time to move you forward into the life you want, and if therapy is the tool that you need to start or return to as part of that process, uncovering that is monumental!
In fact, as a coach, if I think therapy would be more helpful to you, I’m obligated to bring it up and offer you a referral. And I’m happy to help you research or find someone who can help even if that means you’ll be pausing your program with me or supplementing your program with me. For real.
At the end of the day, the most important thing is that you take a step to get help if you need it.
No matter where you start, nothing is set in stone, and you can change course as needed. So, if you start therapy and realize coaching would be a better place for you, you can make that happen. And vice versa is true too.
Once you pick a starting point to get support in your healing process, you’ll gain insight and clarity.
The next best step often appears as you’re walking toward it.
You Might Also Like to Read: Modalities that Can Help with Healing Trauma
Questions or Comments?
Feel free to let me know if you have any questions in the comments, or you can schedule a free consultation.
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I’m Brandi Fleck, TICC. I’m a private practice, certified trauma-informed life coach and trauma recovery coach. All genders, sexualities, and races are welcome here. I primarily serve clients via one-on-one coaching and self-paced trauma education.
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