Counselling or coaching?

What’s the difference?

In my own grief, I worked with a bereavement counsellor for over a year and I found this support to be immeasurably helpful in giving me the space to process the shock, trauma and devastation that I had been through. In the early and acute stages of grief, I was unable to think or talk about the future at all. All I wanted to do was re-live the past and talk about what I’d lost. While this can look a lot like depression, this is not depression. This is the reality of extreme grief. While you are in this stage of grief, I would personally always recommend counselling over coaching. Counselling allows you to process the past where coaching is much more future-focused.

Around eight months after the loss of my partner, I realised that I couldn’t live the rest of my life wedded to my sadness and that I needed to think about how I was going to live without him. At this point I sought out the help of a coach and coached him in how to help me; there were some questions that I couldn’t answer and some prompts were still too painful. (What do you want? I want him back!) However, eventually I found a new path. Coaching is about setting goals and making plans. Gradually for me it was about seeking out the aspects of my life that still brought me joy or meaning and building on them.

I can’t tell you how to rebuild your own life, but I can be alongside you and gently encourage you to find your own new normal. If you would like to talk about whether coaching could help you, please get in touch.