If you’ve spent time researching personal development or looking for support around behavioural patterns, mindset, or emotional regulation, you may have come across a relatively new term: therapy coaching.
And if you’re confused about what it is—or whether it’s simply therapy under a new name—you’re not alone.
The lines between therapy and coaching have started to blur, especially as more professionals work in the space between the two. But blurring lines can lead to blurred expectations, which isn’t helpful when trust and safety are key.
This article explains, in clear terms:
- What therapy coaching is (and isn’t)
- How it compares to traditional therapy
- Where it fits within the personal development and mental wellbeing landscape
- Who it’s for—and who it’s not appropriate for
Let’s start with the basics.
What Is Traditional Therapy?
Therapy—also known as counselling or psychotherapy—is a clinical intervention aimed at helping people with psychological distress, mental health conditions, or unresolved trauma. It is typically delivered by trained and licensed professionals who follow a regulatory or ethical framework.
Therapists work with a wide range of issues including:
- Depression and anxiety
- PTSD and complex trauma
- Eating disorders
- Grief, loss, and bereavement
- Relationship issues
- Childhood abuse or neglect
- Personality disorders
- Emotional regulation difficulties
Traditional therapy is often open-ended and can involve long-term exploration of past experiences, family systems, and ingrained thought or behaviour patterns. While there are many different therapeutic models (such as CBT, psychodynamic, or person-centred), most work by creating a safe space to explore issues, understand their origins, and support emotional healing.
What Is Therapy Coaching?
Therapy coaching is a hybrid approach that blends aspects of coaching and therapeutic insight. It is not a form of therapy. Nor is it a replacement for therapy.
Therapy coaching is best described as coaching with psychological depth—designed for people who are functioning well in their day-to-day lives, but who want to understand and change deeper patterns of behaviour or emotion that are no longer serving them.
Unlike therapy, therapy coaching does not work with mental illness, chronic trauma, or high-risk emotional instability. It focuses instead on the root causes of limiting behaviours that get in the way of self-leadership, confidence, or performance.
This may include:
- Fear of visibility or speaking up in meetings
- Avoidance of feedback or conflict
- Self-sabotage in work or relationships
- Overwhelm, people-pleasing, or perfectionism
- Imposter syndrome that persists despite success
A key distinction is that therapy coaching clients are typically high-functioning individuals—often high performers—who are ready and resourced to do self-exploration, but not in acute emotional distress.
Is Therapy Coaching Just Coaching With a Fancy Name?
No—but it’s a fair question.
Let’s be honest. The coaching industry is unregulated, and many practitioners throw therapeutic language around without training, frameworks, or boundaries. That’s not therapy coaching.
A qualified therapy coach will:
- Understand where the ethical boundary lies between coaching and therapy
- Be trained in psychological models and techniques that work with the nervous system and emotional regulation
- Have a robust method for identifying when deeper exploration is appropriate—and when to refer on
- Use intentional techniques to work with event-specific triggers or learned behaviours
- Know how to safely explore the past without destabilising a client
It’s not about talking endlessly about your childhood.
Nor is it about diagnosing problems or offering pseudo-spiritual “healing.”
Instead, therapy coaching is structured, practical, and usually short-term. The goal is clarity, freedom from emotional triggers, and sustainable behavioural change.
Where Do They Overlap?
It’s true that therapy and therapy coaching can look similar on the surface.
Both may involve:
- Talking about past experiences
- Exploring emotional patterns
- Working through triggers or blocks
- Increasing self-awareness
But the intention behind the work—and the level of depth—are different.
Therapy often holds space for long-term processing. It can include crisis support, deep emotional holding, and the management of ongoing mental health issues.
Therapy coaching, on the other hand, moves with a different pace and purpose. It aims to help clients:
- Pinpoint specific moments that shaped their behaviour
- Understand how those moments created limiting patterns
- Use cognitive and biological tools to neutralise those responses
- Move forward with greater freedom and leadership
So How Exactly Does Therapy Coaching Work?
Most therapy coaches will begin by taking a comprehensive history—not just to gather information, but to ensure they are operating ethically. If a client presents with symptoms that suggest therapy is more appropriate, a good coach will pause the work and refer to a qualified mental health professional.
Once it’s clear the client is within the remit of coaching, the work begins.
Here’s a simple, anonymised example:
A client regularly feels fear when asked to contribute ideas in meetings, despite being an expert in their field. They describe going blank, heart racing, and a sense of dread.
Rather than labelling this as “mindset,” the therapy coach gently explores the origin of the fear.
Through structured inquiry, the client recalls a memory from school—being called on unexpectedly by a teacher, stumbling over their words, and being laughed at by peers.
That specific event becomes the focus. The coach uses a technique like Havening (a psychosensory method that calms the amygdala) to neutralise the emotional response connected to that memory. No reliving. No analysis. Just processing.
Within a few sessions, the fear in meetings starts to lift. The nervous system has re-learned that speaking up is safe.
The Biological Side of Therapy Coaching
Most traditional coaching approaches focus on thinking—changing beliefs, shifting mindset, reframing language.
But what happens when a client knows their fear is irrational, yet still feels it?
What happens when logic isn’t enough to override the reaction?
This is where therapy coaching takes a different path.
It recognises that many limiting behaviours are not rooted in thought—but in the body.
Specifically, in the nervous system.
When someone has a strong emotional reaction to a situation—panic, shutdown, withdrawal, anger—it’s often because their brain is flagging a threat. Not a real one, but one that’s been learned and stored from a past experience.
The problem?
Most of these reactions live outside of conscious thought.
You can’t reason with the fight-or-flight response.
That’s why therapy coaching incorporates biological tools—such as psychosensory techniques, somatic work, or grounding practices—to help the nervous system re-learn safety in situations where it previously sensed danger.
When paired with cognitive insight, this can create rapid, lasting change.
Not through willpower.
Not through mindset hacks.
But through regulation and re-patterning.
Common Misconceptions About Therapy Coaching
As therapy coaching grows in popularity, so does the confusion around it.
Let’s address a few of the most common myths:
1. “Therapy coaching is just unqualified therapy.”
No. Ethical therapy coaches know their boundaries. They do not treat mental illness or deep trauma, and they refer when needed. What they do offer is trauma-informed, psychologically-aware coaching for emotionally healthy people with deeper patterns to explore.
2. “It’s just another coaching buzzword.”
The term is newer—but the practice isn’t. Many experienced coaches have worked at psychological depth for years, just without the formal label. The rise of the term simply reflects a shift: clients are asking for more than surface-level work.
3. “It’s not safe to bring the past into coaching.”
It can be unsafe—if done without the right tools, training, or boundaries. But avoiding the past altogether isn’t the answer either. Therapy coaching isn’t about excavation. It’s about working with specific, relevant moments and helping clients move forward.
Therapy or Therapy Coaching—How Do You Know What You Need?
Here’s a simple way to approach it:
Therapy may be right if:
- You’re experiencing significant distress, anxiety, or depression
- You’ve experienced complex or recent trauma
- You’re struggling with emotional regulation in everyday life
- You’ve been advised by a GP or psychiatrist to seek mental health support
- You want to explore your inner world at depth, without a goal or timeline
Therapy coaching may be right if:
- You’re functioning well, but something keeps tripping you up
- You’ve done coaching before, but need more depth
- You want to understand and change stuck patterns (like avoidance, people-pleasing, perfectionism)
- You’re a high performer, but privately feel held back by internal blocks
- You’re ready to link your current behaviour to past experiences—with boundaries in place
The key is readiness. Therapy coaching works best when the client is resourced, stable, and curious about their patterns—not in crisis or needing emotional stabilisation.
Why Qualifications and Boundaries Matter
Let’s address the elephant in the room: coaching is an unregulated industry.
That means anyone can call themselves a coach, and even offer therapeutic-style services, without training or supervision.
This is where therapy coaching can become dangerous—not because the approach is flawed, but because it’s misused.
A qualified therapy coach will:
- Be trained in techniques that integrate safely with coaching
- Understand the biology of stress, trauma, and memory
- Use screening and history-taking to protect the client
- Know when to stop and refer
When done well, therapy coaching is powerful, ethical, and effective.
When done poorly, it can confuse, harm, or re-traumatise.
As with any support relationship, it’s vital to ask questions, check credentials, and trust your instincts.
Summary: Key Differences Between Therapy and Therapy Coaching
| Feature | Therapy | Therapy Coaching |
| Primary Focus | Healing distress or dysfunction | Changing unhelpful patterns and behaviours |
| Client Readiness | Often in emotional pain or instability | Functioning well but feeling stuck |
| Time Frame | Often long-term and open-ended | Shorter-term, goal-oriented |
| Use of the Past | Central to the work | Used intentionally to free present behaviour |
| Approach | Supportive, diagnostic, clinical | Insightful, structured, non-clinical |
| Tools Used | Talk therapy, clinical models | Coaching + psychosensory/biological tools |
| Boundaries | Therapy regulated; diagnosis/treatment | Coaching boundaries; no mental health diagnosis |
Final Thoughts
Therapy coaching isn’t therapy.
But it’s also not surface-level coaching.
It’s a middle ground for high-functioning individuals who want more than mindset work, but who don’t need or want clinical therapy.
It’s for those who are ready to look at the moments that shaped them, not to dwell—but to understand, rewire, and move forward with more clarity, calm, and confidence.
