coaching or therapy
People ask me this directly, and it’s a fair question given my background. I’m a Chartered Counselling Psychologist, registered with the British Psychological Society and the Health and Care Professions Council, and an accredited EMCC Senior Practitioner Coach.
introduction
I’ve worked as a psychologist for more than twenty-five years, fourteen of them in NHS psychotherapy and psychology services, where I led Cognitive Analytic Therapy and Mentalization-Based Therapy provision within the Lewisham Integrated Psychological Therapies Team at South London and Maudsley. I still see clinical clients, considerably fewer than I once did, and most of my work now is coaching.
What I don’t do is mix the two. What I bring to coaching is a psychological understanding of people built over a clinical career. What I don’t bring is therapy.
From the outside they can look similar. A good listener, a considered conversation, real attention. But they’re doing different work, and the difference is finer than most comparisons suggest. The two have their own territory, and they also overlap more than people expect, so what’s being talked about doesn’t always tell you which one you’re in.
how I understand people doesn't change between the two
I don’t hold one view of people as a psychologist and a different one as a coach. In both, I start from the same place. We’re all born into circumstances we didn’t choose, and those shape the beliefs, values, and ways of relating we take on over time. Some serve us well. Others become limiting. I don’t think anyone can become anything they want through effort alone, because that ignores the reality of people’s circumstances and the real limits any of us face. I also don’t think anyone is fixed by where they started. Within those realities there’s usually more room to move than people give themselves credit for.
How I work follows from that, and it doesn’t change either. I’d rather help you think than think for you. I hold what I notice lightly rather than handing you my version of you. I’ll ask questions that stretch you, but inside a relationship that feels safe enough to take them.
So the difference isn’t in how I understand people. It’s in who’s in front of me, what they’ve asked for, and who’s carrying the direction of the work.
One thing worth clearing away first. Coaching isn’t a lighter version of therapy. It can go a long way into how someone thinks, what they take for granted, and why a situation keeps landing the same way. And how well someone appears to be doing tells you very little about which one would suit them. Much of my clinical career was spent with people functioning well by any external measure, and people arrive at coaching carrying real difficulty, because change and responsibility usually come with some. What someone has come for tells you far more than how they look from the outside.
what people bring to each
Therapy
People come to me for therapy because of emotional distress and difficulty. That’s what they’re asking for help with, and it’s what makes the work clinical. It begins from the distress and stays there on purpose. That isn’t a limitation of therapy. It’s the point of it.
I work relationally and towards goals, but the thing under examination is the difficulty itself: how it developed and what holds it in place now. From an initial assessment I build a formulation, a shared working account drawing on early experience, key relationships, personality, and the ways you’ve learned to cope and relate. It’s a hypothesis rather than a verdict, and it guides the treatment plan. My approach is integrative and draws on two evidence-based models I’m accredited in, Cognitive Analytic Therapy and Mentalization-Based Therapy. CAT is the one I most often recommend, on the premise that current difficulties are frequently the visible end of familiar but unhelpful relational patterns, most of them learned early and for good reason at the time.
The aim is to ease the distress, to make those patterns available to be changed rather than simply repeated, and to arrive at a more integrated and less symptomatic sense of yourself. That’s a clinical path, and I’d call it one plainly. It carries assessment, formulation, clinical records, formal risk assessment, and a duty of care.
Coaching
People come to me for coaching wanting something else. They’re moving through a change or a transition. They’re carrying more responsibility than they were a year ago and haven’t quite caught up with it. They’re facing a decision that matters and want to think it through properly. Or something in their work or their life no longer feels aligned, and they’d like to understand why before they act.
What most of them have in common is that they want space to think. Not advice, not a formula, and not encouragement. Space to think carefully about themselves, their work, their relationships, their decisions, and where they’re heading, with someone who can help them do that more clearly than they would alone.
So the premise isn’t a difficulty to be understood and eased. It’s something you want to move towards, or something standing in the way of it. The work is development rather than treatment, and it builds on what you already have rather than repairing what’s gone wrong: your judgement, your experience, the things you’re good at that you’ve stopped noticing.
Much of it is about finding what’s blocking you and getting it out of the way, and in my experience a good deal of that turns out to be internal rather than circumstantial. An assumption you’ve never tested. A standard you’re holding yourself to that isn’t actually yours. A story about what you’re capable of that stopped being accurate several years ago.
Twenty-five years of clinical work teaches you a great deal about how people form patterns, why they hold onto them, and what makes them possible to change. All of that goes into the coaching, but in service of the goal you’ve brought. It isn’t there to be applied to you. It’s there to make the questions better, and to help you arrive at your own understanding rather than mine.
That’s what I mean by psychologically informed coaching. Not therapy under another name, and not a blend of the two. It’s reflective and relational rather than formula-driven, and it isn’t performance coaching or motivational coaching. If what you want is someone to optimise your output or tell you that you can be anything, I’m not the right person for it.
the difference of intention
Put those side by side, and most of the time the subject matter differs, because distress and a decision aren’t the same thing. But they overlap often enough that it isn’t the dividing line. What settles it is intention, and intention follows from what you’ve asked for. Not what comes up, but what I do with it.
In therapy, if something painful surfaces, I’ll stay with it and follow it, because that’s the work rather than a detour from it. I also carry a good deal of responsibility for where the work goes, based on assessment, formulation, and a plan we’ve agreed on.
In coaching, difficulty still turns up, and it should, because real decisions and real change usually carry some. Sometimes a piece of coaching passes through a genuinely low stretch, when someone comes to see that something they’d wanted isn’t going to work out the way they hoped. There’s a loss in that, and it deserves to be taken seriously. I won’t rush you past it. I’ll give it room, say what I notice, and stay with you in it. But I’ll visit it rather than settle there, and I’ll keep an eye out for the movement back towards what you came to do, even a small one. It’s the same understanding I’d use in therapy, put to a different purpose.
One thing doesn’t change between the two. If you’re upset in front of me, I’ll meet that with care, as one person to another. That isn’t a technique, and it isn’t therapy quietly breaking out. It’s what you do when someone’s having a hard time, and it costs the coaching nothing.
what that looks like in practice
Therapy has an architecture, and the architecture says something about the intention behind it. Assessment over the first couple of sessions. A formulation. A treatment plan. Fifty minutes at the same time each week, usually across sixteen to twenty-four sessions. A clinical record throughout.
Coaching has none of that. No assessment in the clinical sense, no formulation offered, no treatment plan, and no clinical record. Sessions are longer, ninety minutes to two hours, usually two to four weeks apart, and online. The spacing is deliberate: much of the useful work happens between sessions rather than in them, and that’s where reflection turns into something you actually try.
You set the agenda at the start of each session. I’ll use a structure such as GROW to give the conversation shape, but it’s scaffolding rather than a route I’ve chosen on your behalf. That’s the EMCC’s framing put into practice: you’re the expert on the content and on what gets decided, and I’m there to guide the process. The difference in who carries the direction isn’t a matter of atmosphere, and I’d expect you to feel it.
practical differences worth knowing
Psychological therapy is delivered under a title protected in law. I’m registered with the Health and Care Professions Council as a Practitioner Psychologist and chartered with the British Psychological Society.
Coaching isn’t statutorily regulated in the UK, and the word itself isn’t protected. My EMCC accreditation is a real professional standard, and I hold myself to it: a Code of Ethics, continuing development, supervision, and a complaints and disciplinary procedure if you ever had a concern about my coaching. But it’s voluntary rather than statutory.
Therapy can usually be claimed through private health insurance. Coaching can’t, though some employers will fund it as development. None of this makes one better than the other. They’re different arrangements, and it’s worth knowing which one you’re in.
holding the line is something I do, not something I state
My background means I notice things a lot of coaches wouldn’t. A pattern in how someone describes a relationship. An assumption sitting underneath a decision that hasn’t been said out loud. A shift in tone that suggests more is going on than has been said.
In therapy I’d follow that based on my clinical formulation and therapy model, and following it would be the work. In coaching I deliberately don’t. I hold what I notice lightly and use it to shape a better question, rather than to steer the conversation towards it. I keep checking: is this helping you think, or am I drifting into something because it interests me psychologically. If it’s the latter, I pull back.
That takes ongoing attention rather than a definition applied once at the start, and I’d rather say so plainly, because it’s what the whole thing rests on. It’s also the honest answer to the worry people have about working with a psychologist. The risk isn’t depth. It’s drift. Watching myself against that line is how you get the benefit of the background without ending up somewhere you didn’t ask to go.
Never both, with the same person.
coach or therapist, not both
I practise in both roles, but I don’t hold both roles with the same person. I don’t offer therapeutic coaching, or coaching with a therapeutic strand, or any of the hybrids advertised under those names. If you come to me for coaching, coaching is what you get.
If, during coaching, I came to think that therapy would serve you better, I’d say so. That’s part of what you’re paying for, and it’s probably where my background is most useful to you. But I wouldn’t then become your therapist. I’d help you think about what you’re looking for and, as far as I’m able, point you towards someone suitable. The same applies in the other direction.
Two reasons, and I hold both equally. The first is ethical. The two roles carry different responsibilities, different roles, different ways of working, and a different intentional approach from me. Running them together muddies all of it; it blurs the boundaries and, in my opinion, undermines the work and my effectiveness as either. The second is practical. The value of clear work is that both of us know what the conversation is for, and that clarity is a good part of what you’re actually buying. It doesn’t survive being blurred.
not sure which one you need
A rough guide rather than a rule, and plenty of people can’t tell at the outset.
If what’s most present for you is emotional difficulty that needs understanding and easing, particularly something long-standing that hasn’t shifted through insight or effort, therapy is probably the better starting point. If what’s most present is a decision, a direction, a transition, or a change you want to move towards, coaching is more likely to help.
And if you can’t tell, that’s a perfectly reasonable thing to bring to a first conversation rather than something to settle beforehand. I’ll be straight with you. If it sounds like therapy would serve you better, I’ll say so, and where I can I’ll point you towards the right kind of support.
If coaching sounds like the right thing, the Discovery Call is a free thirty-minute conversation online, with no pressure attached. It’s a chance to talk about what you’re looking for and to get a sense of whether working together feels right.
Common Questions
What happens if I get upset in a coaching session?
We take whatever time’s needed, and I’ll meet it the way anyone reasonable would. What I won’t do is turn it into an extended exploration of where it came from. If it seems important to what you’re working on, I might ask you to say a bit more, and then we carry on with what you came for. Being moved by something in your own life isn’t a sign you’re in the wrong room.
Do you offer therapeutic coaching?
No, and I’d be wary of the term. I offer coaching that’s informed by a psychologist’s understanding of people, which is a different thing from a blend of the two. Blending them muddies what each is for, and the clarity is a good part of the value.
Do I have to talk about my past in coaching?
Only as far as it’s useful to you now. History does come up, because assumptions have origins and seeing where one came from sometimes makes it easier to put down. But it comes up in service of where you’re going, and how far we go into it is your call.
Can I have coaching with you while I'm having therapy with someone else?
Usually yes, and for some people it works well. What matters is that both pieces of work are clear about what they’re for, so they don’t end up pulling in different directions. I’d want to talk it through at the start, and with your agreement I’m happy for your therapist to know that coaching is happening.
Is coaching regulated in the UK?
No. There’s no protected title and no statutory register. Professional bodies such as the EMCC set standards and accredit coaches against them, and I’m accredited at Senior Practitioner level, but membership is voluntary. It’s worth asking any coach what they’re accredited by, and what would happen if you had a concern about the work.
Can I claim coaching on private health insurance?
No. Psychological therapy is claimable through the major insurers, but coaching isn’t. It’s paid for directly, though some employers will fund it as development.
How do I get started?
Send a short message about what’s brought you to coaching using the form below, or contact me directly by phone or email. You don’t need to prepare anything in advance, and I usually respond within two working days.
