How Does Life Coaching Vary From Counseling and Psychotherapy?

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Everyone needs help from time to time as they try to find their way in life. That guidance can take several forms. For people with deep-rooted mental or psychosocial issues, psychotherapy is often the most effective solution. The counselor’s job is to advise and guide their client to a better quality of life. But there’s another professional that can help people attain their goals. That person is a life coach.

Psychotherapy, counseling, and life coaches are similar in many ways. However, they also have some significant differences. Psychotherapy is the medical intervention for people who display sign of mental defect or weakness. The psychotherapist, a medical professional that effects are healing over the course of some a therapeutic session with the troubled individual. The psychotherapist’s goal is to make significant changes in their personality. Counselors generally act as advisors. They make suggestions and attempt to change a person’s behavior in a few sessions.

A life coach is more focused on the personal development of the individual. The person seeing a life coach is generally assumed to be well mentally but needs help identifying, setting, and achieving professional and personal goals. The life coach uses some techniques drawn from counseling, leadership, and sociology to help clients understand their strengths and weaknesses, identify and clarify their goals, and create a plan and a series of related actions designed to help the person attain those goals.

The essential difference in each case is the nature of the relationship. In psychotherapy, the relationship is one of doctor and patient. The therapist identifies a problem, decides on a course of action to bring about healing, and explains to the patient the actions they will be taking. Counseling generally calls for a more collaborative relationship between the client and the counselor. The counselor is supportive, offers advice, suggestions, and direction, and relies on the person seeking help to participate in discussing the issues and deciding on solutions actively.

The life coach’s relationship with their client is significantly different than those of the psychotherapist and the counselor even though some of the techniques they use are similar. Life coaches work to help clients become skilled at maximizing their potential and offer life training which helps the client to become more confident, determined, and focused. Their goal is not to cure illness, but to help people fulfill their potential and find success, financial security, and happiness.

5 Reasons Why An Addict Just Can’t Stop Using Drugs

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A primary component of drug and behavioral addiction is that an addicted person will continue to use even after physiological or psychological damage has occurred. The following are 5 reasons supporting that continued addictive decisions can be affected by pathology. These impaired decision processes also estimate the chance of whether an individual will maintain the ability to improve their choices (Heyman, 2009).

1. Genetic Vulnerability

Why do some people become addicted to substances but others didn’t? There is significant evidence supporting that some individuals have a genetic predisposition to develop an addicted personality (Kreek et al., 2005). Several studies of twins and adopted kids show that about 50% of a person’s susceptibility to alcohol disorders is inherited. It’s also likely that heavy alcohol consumption causes major physiological alterations in the brain.

2. Self-Medication

When intolerable situations in someone’s life such as a tragedy create emotional distress and suffering, a simple, fast solution provides instant gratification and a temporary escape from pain (Khantzian, 2012). Alcohol can help someone relax and easily forget their problems. However, with continuous heavy drinking, the brain adjusts and develops tolerance, creating anxiety and irritability. Eventually, an alcoholic will no longer drink for pleasure, instead, to feel normal.

3. Lack of Alternative Rewards

When someone lacks other, non-substance rewards, they typically turn to drug use. Profess Hart saw that those living in poor neighborhoods are deprived of options, so there’s definitely rationality for using a substance that provides pleasure. Nowadays there are several studies revealing that giving alternative rewards to those who certainly were deprived of them could improve addiction recovery. This is because it’s been proven that environmental factors play an extreme role in the development of drug addiction as well as treatment.

4. Impaired Insight

Continuous drug abuse is linked to impaired self-awareness scientifically known as dysfunction of the insular cortex, which develops as a denial of addiction or severity of drug use and the refusal of treatment (Naqvi et al., 2007). This is why there are very few alcoholics who admit they have a serious drinking problem. This is another explanation as to why individuals continue to abuse a drug despite knowing it’s destroying their mind, body, and lives. Mindfulness was revealed to be an efficient method to increase awareness and inhibitory control (Paulus and Stewart 2014).

5. A Love-Hate Relationship With The Drug

Continuous drug use can develop an inability to distinguish the expected feeling of reward from a drug and its true pleasure (Kringelbach and Berridge, 2009). For people struggling with addiction, an extremely compulsive craving for a substance does not mean they receive enjoyment from its consumption. This is because a developed tolerance to the drug creates reduced and even no pleasure but an addict will likely still feel an overwhelming urge to use. They intensely crave the drug even after it is stopped bringing them pleasure.