Coaching with therapeutic depth – what is it?

This is how I think about coaching with therapeutic depth…

You’re not in crisis, you don’t need therapy, you want coaching, but does coaching cover the intense emotions and distress you’re feeling right now about your work/career?

You’re right to think seriously about this. Professional bodies for coaching have ethical codes that require coaches to work within their competence. Faced with distress, a coach might suggest you see a therapist instead or as well, when you don’t feel that’s what you need. Or the coach might try to respond to your distress, but they don’t quite get it right and you could go away feeling ashamed of what you shared, that you took it to the wrong place.

The alternative is to work with a coach who is also a therapist. You won’t be getting coaching and therapy, as I see it, you’ll be getting coaching that can work with intense emotions and distress about your work/career. One practitioner, not two. One session, not two. One payment, not two.

Coaches who are also therapists are dual-skilled and dual-qualified professionals. We can be called coach-therapists, or we may say that we offer coaching with therapeutic depth, or perhaps that we do therapeutic coaching. With us you can process intense emotions and distress about your work/career safely, alongside creating plans and goals for the future. We are working within our competence. You get the approach (coaching) you’re looking for.  

If this is of interest to you, be sure to check out the qualifications and accreditations of each coach-therapist you consider - so that you know the practitioner is qualified in both coaching and therapy and has thought about how to integrate them and where the limits of that integration might be - because there will still be situations where it does make more sense to move to therapy only or to have a coach and a therapist. There will be people out there who have done short courses in trauma-informed approaches alongside some coaching training and this is not the same as being fully qualified and accredited as both a coach and a psychotherapist, thinking carefully about how to integrate. Neither psychotherapist nor coach is a protected title at the time of writing.

This blog tells you what it might be like to do coaching with therapeutic depth with me, a qualified coach-therapist. See if what I say here speaks to you. Please do get in touch if you have questions: hello@coachingwithdeb.co.uk.

Please also read the separate blog about what you can expect from coaching to know more about standard coaching approaches, which are also part of coaching with therapeutic depth. As I’ve written that separate blog, I’ll only touch on those approaches briefly here.

Deciding whether to have coaching or coaching with therapeutic depth

Before your first coaching session, we'll have an informal telephone call of around 15 minutes. It’s a discovery call for you to find out about coaching and a chemistry call for us to see if we’re a good match to work together on whatever you’re bringing. Before the call, please note down broadly what you’d like to work on. That is likely to change over time but you want a ROI (return on investment) from coaching, so try to be specific about what you’re bringing, even if part of that is to say that you’re not sure why you can’t pin down what exactly you want to achieve - that’s all information for us to work with.

If what you’re describing and how you’re describing it when we talk sounds like it has elements where coaching with therapeutic depth might be beneficial (plans and goals and emotions and distress), I’ll say that to you and see what you think about taking up this newer approach to coaching – or, you might have already read this blog and have come along to find out more about having coaching with therapeutic depth because it speaks to you.

You may not feel ready to say everything about the emotions and distress you’re feeling about your work/career in this chemistry/discovery call, and that’s absolutely fine, because we’ll be working at your pace, with whatever material feels right for you to bring each time we meet. You don’t need to share everything in order for coaching with therapeutic depth to be helpful.

Deciding to have coaching with therapeutic depth doesn’t mean you can’t change back to more standard coaching approaches, or vice-versa. However, if you decide you’d prefer psychotherapy/counselling, you wouldn’t be able to transfer to that with me. This is because the way I operate in coaching/coaching with therapeutic depth is different from how I operate as a psychotherapist/counsellor. I’m still the same person in both, but I tend to describe the difference between them as holding the reins very tightly as a psychotherapist - aware that whatever I say or do has an impact on a client, sometimes very powerfully - and loosening those reins slightly in coaching - without ever letting go of them - because in coaching our focus is primarily work/careers rather than primarily people’s innermost thoughts/feelings and lived experiences that may never have been shared with another human being. I’d be able to provide you with links for directory listings to source a psychotherapist/counsellor.  

Contract for coaching

After our call, I'll send you a straightforward contract and a brief information form. Please ask any questions before or during our first session.

What happens in coaching with therapeutic depth sessions in comparison to coaching

Just as in coaching, I’ll send you over a Live Issues page to complete before each session so you can plan ahead for what you want to explore. You don’t need to send the page to me, so you can write as personally as you like. We’ll begin sessions by looking at your goal for that session and we’re likely to end by looking at what you’d like to have achieved by the next time we meet. The main body of the session is directed by what’s live for you and what emerges as we talk, consistent with my person-centred theoretical approach which holds the view that you know best where you need to go. We’ll use coaching tools if they feel right for you. The way I like to work is that if you want to use a tool with a particular challenge, let me know very briefly what the challenge is at least 24 hours before we meet, and I will identify a couple of potential tools to use in the session. This keeps the use of tools focused: it’s part of a bespoke approach that I offer to you. In our discussion, questions, as well as noticing what you’re saying and bringing it to your attention (perhaps you’re consistently talking negatively about yourself), will be the main tools that I’ll use. Coaches often refer to some of their questions as ‘powerful questions’ - you are likely to feel that some questions I ask and how you answer them radically change how you see your work/career. 

In coaching with therapeutic depth, the attunement of the coach to you, the coachee/client, is vital. Coaching with therapeutic depth is relational, careful and sophisticated. I am going to be mindful at all times of whether you’re moving in a direction that is pure coaching or coaching with therapeutic depth. This is minute by minute, even second by second, tracking. If we’re purely in the realms of intense emotions, the intervention is likely to be that I stand back and hold the space ready for you to explore. If there’s more of a future-focus in play alongside the emotions, I might acknowledge the emotion and check whether you wish to stay there or not – more of a coaching intervention. Where it looks like we are only future-focused, I’ll be aware that emotions could be just under the surface. Some of our work will be entirely pure coaching.  

The delicacy of this attunement means that there will inevitably be times where the intervention isn’t quite right. As coach and coachee we will have contracted to communicate with each other openly. We’re working together in partnership. Feedback is always welcome so that your coaching/coaching with therapeutic depth can offer what you have come to seek. When you are saying that an intervention isn’t quite right, it’s a great position to be in as coach and coachee, because it shows us that we are co-creating, that we really are partners.

Dr Deborah Lee, coach-therapist

EMCC-accredited Senior Practitioner coach. Welcoming cis-gender, heterosexual, LGBTQAI+, trans and non-binary clients. Working with awareness of relationship diversity. Seeking to offer a neuro-affirmative space. Always working on developing an intersectional lens.

Counselling/psychotherapy and coaching

I also offer counselling/psychotherapy, as well as coaching. These are described in separate blogs.

Book your free discovery call/chemistry call

I hope this blog has given you an idea of what it might be like to do coaching with therapeutic depth with me. If you’d like to have a discovery/chemistry call, please email: hello@coachingwithdeb.co.uk and we can arrange a time to speak on the telephone for around 15 minutes.