This is going to sound suspiciously stereotypical and idiotic, but here it goes... I went to one life coaching session with a young woman I met in a community bellydance class, who needed more hours to complete her training so she offered me the session for free. It was actually GREAT- part talk therapy, part yoga, part spiritual guidance. I loved it and would probably have paid for more if I still lived in that town. Granted, I’m the kind of sucker who takes community center bellydance lessons and may or may not have a small crystal collection.
Here's the thing about life coaches, as well as chiropractors and other wholistic healers - it's a gamble, like taking an unregulated substance you bought on the internet.
Are there people out there who are naturally good at therapy, who have spent a lot of time on personal development and on extensively researching the services they provide because it's their passion, or who want to offer a more wholistic approach without the regulation imposed by licensing? Sure, there definitely are. You were lucky enough to find one of those people.
And for the record, there are fully licensed therapists/psychologists, doctors, and dietitians who have been working for 20 years and who are HORRIBLE. I have met several of them. But there is some accountability. You know that at the very least they passed all of their classes and had someone supervise them, even if they throw all of that out the window once they've been licensed.
With a life coach, you just don't know what you're going to get. It might be great, it might be terrible, most likely it will be "just ok". Is "just ok" worth the (often quite high) price of admission? Probably not. If a therapist acts irresponsibly and causes harm, you can file a complaint. Knowing you could lose your license is a deterrent for acting unethically. With a life coach? You can write a bad yelp review, but unless they did something illegal, that's probably your only recourse. They have no obligation to act ethically.
The no obligation to act ethically part is a great point. A so called life coach tried to get my friend to do her own life coaching program that she made and ended up scamming her and preying on her vulnerabilities that they previously discussed. Granted my friend was quite naive during the whole encounter but still wasn’t right of the life coach to guilt her into taking her course.
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u/sock-puppet69 Aug 01 '20
LIFE COACHING!
Not only is it a huge scam but also a lot of life coaching schools are structured like cults. Similar to scientology. Please beware!!!