self help?
Many years ago, it used to be considered a rite of passage for boys to learn how to fix their own car and girls to become experts in the kitchen. The times change! Cars are now so complicated that very few people have the skill or time to fix their own car; Many women are so busy at work that they have to struggle to keep up with family obligations, not to mention the latest fancy kitchen gadgets.
But while these skills can be learned, a higher level of talent and focus is needed today. Today we rely much more on specialists for many of the services we require.
The same goes for mental/emotional self-help. It’s noble and uplifting to help yourself or a friend through a losing streak, or simply to be curious about your own potential for growth.
Perhaps you know that “something is not quite right” with yourself, but you are not ready to accept professional advice; you just want to browse and explore some self-help options and get some ideas. However, you know that something is definitely wrong and you need to seek some kind of relief. You can seek specific help or ask friends or family for recommendations. Or, you may have had, or are receiving, some kind of training or counseling and want to add to what you learned in the sessions.
Maybe you’re fed up with how your life is going. However, you may want some helpful exercises to combat negative emotions or bad habits or patterns. You may want to feel loved or less alone, develop life skills, make better decisions, better manage your moods, find passion, purpose or motivation, be your ideal weight, master rejection or stress or self-empowerment, etc. .
While self-help can bring great results, we must also recognize when we are no longer able to make progress on our own, when we are not getting good help from our friends and family, or when we may have serious problems that need a trained professional. professional to help.
In short: we need to know what types of assistance are appropriate for our particular circumstances: self-help, coaching and/or counselling.
What is Training?
The human potential movement and positive psychology brought coaching to the fore in the 1980s. Corporations used coaching to manage change stemming from downsizing, mergers, and acquisitions. In the last decade, we have seen coaching take off and provide people with tools to reach not only their potential and professional goals, but also personal ones.
The International Coaching Federation (ICF) defines coaching as the relationship between the Coach and his clients that helps people meet goals (generally established and specific) and improve their quality of life. A coach is basically a personal (trained and experienced) cheerleader who encourages, backs, acknowledges, and supports him until he feels comfortable enough to maintain his goals on his own. Lifestyle or Wellness Coaches are like Sports Trainers or Personal Trainers, in some ways, but differ in many other ways. For example, they focus on helping you become a winner, not (usually) on your physical performance, but on your lifestyle and work-related goals.
Coaching offers versatility to clients. Coaches must be excellent active listeners to help their clients develop insight into their resistances and take the necessary steps toward positive change.
Most Trainers have some formal training, but few have ICF Certification at this time. Coaching is a relatively young field and as it grows, more coaches will be asked to comply with ICF statutes, recertification standards and other requirements. Coaching works best before and after psychological treatment (if necessary). Helps the client recognize his resistance to change and then what he can do to achieve the stated goals.
What is Psychological Counseling?
A Counselor Psychologist, also known as a Psychologist, is a trained (at an accredited school) and licensed (by the State) mental health professional who can use one or more approaches to help clients achieve some level of self-understanding and hence behavior modification. . There are many different mental health counseling “schools” of thought and many different mental health professions that can offer effective therapy. Today, most psychiatrists (doctors who specialize in mental health) focus on symptom relief through medication management and typically don’t do much talk-based therapy beyond therapy. ongoing medical and symptom evaluation. The combination of medication management plus Psychological Counseling has proven to be very effective for many of the most difficult cases.
Counseling is a healing process, usually based on conversations, that occurs in a confidential, safe and trusting environment. The Counselor helps the client solve problems by listening, reflecting, exploring deep feelings, and asking provocative questions. Counseling offers clients a unique opportunity to reflect, understand and challenge their irrational thinking. The client learns to accept himself as he is through understanding and then making fundamental behavioral changes for the better. The goal of psychological treatment is to help the client find the strength to make these fundamental changes to deal with their unique challenges.
Some people think that counselors have white coats, beards, and make their clients lie on a couch. This is (largely) a myth along with the misperception that counseling is “only for the crazy,” the self-absorbed, or those who think they need many years of analysis. Rather, people often seek counseling when they feel something is “wrong” with their life, feel like they need relief but can no longer help themselves or turn to friends or family. This could be for interpersonal, work, or other needs. They need to receive an unbiased, objective and professional point of view at this time in their lives.
Treatment usually occurs in person and on a weekly basis, but for many clients with less serious problems, effective counseling can occur online or over the phone and does not take long to achieve results. Most health insurance policies offer coverage for psychological counseling sessions.
Even more recently, some psychologists are finding that coaching can be a very helpful adjunct for their patients both before and after counseling to identify or maintain better behaviors and thoughts.
How to choose professional help?
There are some basic areas where counseling and coaching differ. The subjects, objectives, relationships and treatments are not the same for these two assistance modalities.
Traditional counseling is primarily concerned with uncovering and understanding the client’s past emotional pain, while coaching, for the most part, focuses on stimulating a person’s positive emotions in relation to their present and future vision of themselves.
Coaches typically focus more on the client’s stated, specific life or performance goals, such as positive functioning, achievement, focused action plans, and specific outcomes. In contrast, counselors focus on deep ideas and feelings that are not always obvious and identify the causes of dysfunctional behaviors (the understanding of which provides information about positive behavior change). They may work closely with a psychiatrist, if warranted, for medication management, which can be very beneficial in some cases.
Counseling and coaching differ in function of the client relationship: counselors are experts, and coaches are co-creative team partners. The role of change in coaching is to make the process enjoyable and motivating for the client. In counseling, the process of change can be emotionally painful until the client reaches equilibrium, at which point deep personal insight and thus behavior modification can be achieved.
There are several other distinctions between coaches and advisors: for example, the amount of self-disclosure, who is responsible for the results, and how payment is treated. With coaching, the coach manages the process but the client is responsible for the results. In counseling, the Counselor is responsible for focusing client outcomes so that the client achieves the required self-understanding.
Coaches can take classes and can do an internship and continuing education, while counselors must show years of coursework, a graduate degree, and pass state-sanctioned licensing exams, in addition to taking periodic and mandatory continuing education. Many psychological counselors have a number of additional certifications, for example, Employee Assistance Programs, Substance Abuse, Eating Disorders, etc. Both counseling and coaching can play a valuable role in helping you achieve your goals when self-help and friends are no longer enough. All of the methods have a useful role to play and, in fact, work well together at appropriate times.
The full article, freely available on our website, contains a very useful “Choice Matrix” that summarizes and expands on this material. In addition, there are many other very useful self-help articles, as well as a cheap online store for more in-depth materials, and self-help exercises.
