Coaching vs Therapy: What's the Difference?

Both coaching and therapy involved a trained professional, setting goals, and working toward positive change. While they share much overlap, they serve distinct purposes.

Therapy focuses on healing. A therapist helps clients address mental health challenges, process past experiences, and develop coping skills. The work often looks backward into the past to understand patterns and resolve emotional pain, with the goal of restoring emotional well-being.

Coaching, on the other hand, is future-focused. A coach partners with clients to identify goals, clarify values, and create actionable steps toward personal or professional growth. While emotions may come up, coaching is not designed to treat mental health conditions—it’s about building momentum, skills, and confidence to move forward.

We could dwell in more complexity, but I find this distinction to be the simplest:

• Therapy heals the past to improve the present.

• Coaching leverages the present to build the future.

If you're unsure, both professions are trained in their scope of practice and can assist you. In fact, many clients choose both therapy and coaching as way to leverage the skills within both fields and maximize growth. Prism Coaching exclusively offers coaching at this time, but we'd love to discuss what best suits your needs and provide some perspective in a free discovery call.