Coaching vs counselling

The honest difference, before you spend any money

Most of the people I work with have already tried something else first. Relate. A private counsellor. A therapist who does “couples work” on top of their main practice. They have spent money. They have not seen things change.

When you search for coaching vs counselling, or marriage coach vs marriage counsellor, or whether Relate is any good, you are usually trying to make a better-informed choice than last time.

I am a Diploma-qualified Professional Coach, so I have an angle. I am also going to tell you when counselling or therapy is the right answer, because sending the wrong people my way is not in anyone’s interest.

Why I do this work

Our own marriage needed serious work in 2016

A few months after our son was born, Nikki and I were not really a couple anymore. Postnatal depression, exhaustion and me retreating into work meant we stopped really talking to each other. We were polite. We were efficient. We were not us.

I share that because almost every couple I work with has thought, quietly, that they are the only ones secretly worrying that the marriage will not survive. You are not the only ones.

What changed it for us was not a stranger telling us we were normal. It was a couple of frameworks that gave us a shared language for what was happening, and a way to actually do something with it. That is what couples therapy ought to be.

When each one is the right answer

Coaching is probably right if

• You can describe the same argument that keeps happening between you
• You want practical tools and frameworks, not just space to vent
• You want a defined start and end, not an open-ended commitment
• You have already tried talk-based counselling and felt nothing changed
• You are willing to do exercises between sessions, not just turn up

Counselling is probably right if

• You want to slow down and explore the deeper story behind your patterns
• You are dealing with grief, loss, or a long-term unprocessed event
• You are not yet ready for homework or structured exercises
• You prefer non-directive support to being taught frameworks
• You want a long-term relationship with a single practitioner

Therapy is probably right if

• You can describe the same argument that keeps happening between you
• You want practical tools and frameworks, not just space to vent
• You want a defined start and end, not an open-ended commitment
• You have already tried talk-based counselling and felt nothing changed
• You are willing to do exercises between sessions, not just turn up

For a lot of couples I work with, the cleanest answer is both. Coaching as a couple to fix the dynamic, and individual therapy in parallel for whichever partner needs it.

A note on Relate and traditional couples counselling

Relate is the most common comparison I get asked about, so it is worth being direct.

Relate is a registered charity that does a lot of good for a lot of couples. It is the right answer for some of them. It is not the right answer for everyone, and the couples who land with me have usually been in that second group.

What they tend to say is “we just talked for an hour and nothing was ever set out as a plan”, or “the counsellor was lovely but we never learned anything we could use”. That matches the broad difference between counselling and coaching, not a failing on the counsellor’s part.

How to actually choose

Two questions that cut through most of the noise.

• Do you want to talk, or do you want to change? If the honest answer is talk, look for counselling. If it is change, look for coaching.
• Is there a defined dynamic problem, or is one partner working through something individual? Defined dynamic, coaching. Individual mental-health issue, therapy. Both, both.

A short discovery call almost always tells you which one you are.

Common questions

If yours is not here, the discovery call is the right place to ask.