Image modified from a photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash.
Recently Medium published a highly negative article on life coaching. The article cited sources for statistics such as industry size and number of coaches. But the article drew heavily on the author’s experience with her friend, who seems to be a spectacularly bad example of life coaching.
We need to be suspicious of life coaches. But we also need to be suspicious of anyone we pay for a service…any service, especially those claiming to work on our bodies or our minds, whether they’re licensed or not.
(1) Many life coaches are also licensed as counselors.
They’re held to the same ethical standards as counselors as long as they keep their licenses.
(2) Many licensed therapists do harm. I’ve never heard of life coaches getting sexually or romantically involved with their clients. A lot of therapists give pretty awful advice, too. Here’s a thread from Reddit:– worst advice from a therapist
I am in a Facebook group for single people who don’t want to date or marry. Every so often, they report seeing a licensed therapist who tells them, “You need to get into dating.”
Remember Dr. Ruth? She once said she wasn’t afraid to live advice as an unlicensed advisor, because people would be cautious about accepting it.
Most of these experiences wouldn’t qualify as violations that would lead to a formal complaint. They’re just a waste of time and money.
(3) It’s hard to measure the effectiveness of licensed therapy.
The New York Times ran an article reviewing the effectiveness of therapy.
They concluded that it’s hard to determine objectively if therapy was effective or not. It’s even harder to find the effects of meditation: people who are motivated to meditate are different from those in a controllled experiment.
If you google “measuring the effectiveness of therapy,” you’ll find dozens of articles arguing about the best way to measure effectiveness of therapy. Enough said.
(4) Life coaches don’t offer therapy.
The life coaches I know don’t want to deal with severe mental problems, unless they’re also licensed as therapists. People with problems just are not as much fun.
Life coaches choose to work with functional people who want support in reaching their goals. They have goals, not problems.
It IS true that many life coaches don’t explain what they do clearly…but then neither do many therapists.
Since the US has about 25,000 life coaches, if the industry were really bad, we’d expect to see lots of lawsuits. So I googled “lawsuits against life coaches.” Most results were lawyers offering to represent coaches who were sued.
In one lawsuit, the US government sued some coaching groups for deceptive marketing practices. Among other things, they claimed to have many clients who were eager to hire them. The total amount: $380,000. They sent out 1177 checks, or about $325 per person.
While other cases have been reported, the numbers seem to be very small.
(5) Regulation gives protection only if you take the time and energy to file a complaint.
It won’t protect you against stupid advice. You can get that from anybody. No license required.
BTW, my book on moving was approved for continuing ed for therapists through some organization, for some time. I don’t remember the details: it may have been in certain states. I’m not a therapist. Enough said.
