Counseling or Coaching? Healing or Growth?

 
When asked:  When should I seek the guidance of a counselor, versus, work with a life coach?  I ask:  What stage are you at?
 
We need a counselor when we have emotional healing work to do relative to the past and that is keeping us stuck in the present, especially traumas.   A good counselor illuminates the healing path that allows us to come back into balance.
 
Once we have agency, awareness and alignment in our lives, coaching helps us access the multi-dimensional nature that actualizes us into the next phases of our life:  leaving our legacy and accomplishing bigger goals. 
 
Below are some distinctions to help determine which discipline is appropriate for forward movement. 
 
Envision this.
 
You wish to grow a garden full of        (only you can fill in the blanks of what your heart desires to grow)                       
 
You find the perfect land, yet it is overgrown with weeds.  You see the weeds, but can also envision this plot of land without the weeds and know it would be perfect space for a beautiful yield.  (what does this rich perfect space look like?)
 
Now, you have the land.  You have the vision.  But, if you plant your (choose your own adventure here) in the weeds, it wouldn’t grow very well without adequate space. 
 
This is where therapy comes in and helps us remove overgrowth from getting in the way of what we wish to create.  If there are emotional wounds keeping us in reactivity or stuck in a deeply rooted cycles that are not serving us, then we need a clearing.  This clearing is healing, restorative and needed to move forward.
 
Now envision you have that same plot of land and it is cleared of the overgrowth and the earth is perfectly ripe and ready for planting. 
 
What does your plot of land now look like?
 
It is in this moment of clearing that anything is possible.  This is where coaching comes in… your coach, a blank slate, seeing you as the expert of your own life and own will to create.  
 
Go there now:  What does your heart desire to create and experience that you have set aside, or believed was too out of reach to obtain?
 
A coach also challenges us in meaningful ways so that we don’t sell ourselves short and so we step fully into our vision. 

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