Life Coaching vs. Therapy in Ending Burnout for Good

You're listening to the empowering working moms podcast episode number 70. Well hello there, I am so happy to have you here listening this podcast today. It is the month of Halloween so I hope you are enjoying it with your children. And I want to talk a little bit about what we do inside my program overcome burnout for good.

Clients are having wins every single day, really being able to cultivate peace of mind and not go down the rabbit hole anymore, ditch overwhelm, ditch mom guilt and truly get their lives back. And if you want to learn more about this, check out my free masterclass on overcoming burnout, ditching overwhelm, and getting your peace of mind back, the link will be in the show notes.

Today I want to talk about the concept of life coaching versus therapy because some of you may not be that familiar with coaching. And I will be very frank here and say that when I first started getting into coaching, I thought it was a little hokey. I actually, in the very, very beginning, as I was getting my certification, I was a little bit embarrassed because it's not an MD like one of the degrees I have, right. And I also have a master's in neuroscience. So it's nowhere to the degree of that, a life coaching certification.

But what I learned is that life coaching truly has been a way for me to get results in my life that are way faster than anything in therapy. And that's why I really want to talk about defining and explaining therapy versus live coaching, and then you can see what you think might be a better fit for you, if at all.

So let's talk about therapy first. It's basically a service that is offered by trained therapists, often you're gonna have MSWs, meaning people with their social work degrees, or you might have somebody who had their certification in counseling, you can get your degree in counseling, also, you can have your PhD in psychology, and they also go through exams and practical exams in preparation for their work. That is their training.

And they will use things like cognitive behavioral therapy, CBT, or psychotherapy. And really, a lot of the work that's done in therapy is exploring thoughts, feelings, but often it's truly delving into the past. So what are your patterns and deeper than that, though, is how did your childhood affect where you are today?

And it's kind of funny, because in my culture, Indian culture, it's not okay to blame your childhood for anything. It's a very American concept. But of course, as we can acknowledge our childhoods really did shape who we became. And at some point, you get to pave your own way, which is more where the coaching comes in.

But basically, therapy often dives into how our parents may have affected us or certain events created trauma in our lives, and maybe challenges. And it's not so much about problem solving, but it's really to gain a better understanding of how you got here. So where did I come from? How did I get here?

And I think therapy is especially useful if you have a major challenging event. And that way you can figure out what brought you there, what is it in your past? What makes you tick, the way you tick? What were you told repeatedly as a child growing up? And so on and so forth, to really understand the context of all of your past stuff to figure out how that plays a role in today.

Now, I'm going to shift to coaching a bit. Coaching is more about the now and the future. So in my program, we get a little bit into the stories and patterns that we have that are not serving us and learn to drop those stories.

But essentially, coaching is thinking about where's my life right now? Where do I want it to go? And what is the roadmap to get me from where I am today to where I want to be six months from now? And so coaches really act as guides and given that the life coaching industry is growing, people really tend to have their own processes that they move through, and they take their clients through to have the specific result and that often comes from personal life experience.

And so for me, I use my experience in my life and all of the things that it taught me and that's how I created my coaching program overcome burnout for good, in which I've got five modules, plus bonuses, where I walk my clients through a specific process and specific tools and strategies, really streamlined strategies that are the fastest way to cultivate peace of mind and really be out of burnout once and for all.

And so why I'm so passionate about coaching is I have found that in the darkest times of my life or the most challenging or when I might feel overwhelmed, what I have learned in coaching and through my own processes, it really helps to pull me out of that place so much faster than 10s of 1000s of dollars and years of therapy ever did. So it's really, you have these efficient, streamlined ways to get you what you want in your life.

And for most of my clients that's truly ditching the mom guilt, finding peace of mind, being able to be present at home with their families, leaving work at work, enjoying the lives that they've worked so hard to build. And so really having those results with a very specific way to get there.

And what's really interesting about both forms of these mental health fields is that 10 years ago, even five years ago, people would never admit to going to a therapist, and yet I find now in conversations with many of my friends, they will very nonchalantly say yeah, my therapist said this or that. And it's much more accepted now to have a therapist, which is great. And so life coaching is a little bit newer, and I hope and believe that five to 10 years from now everyone will have a life coach. And they'll be talking about what their life coach said, which is awesome.

So if you feel like you really want to figure out how you got here, I think therapy is the best route to do that. But if you more really have a place where you want to go and you're having trouble getting there, as in a happier life, having more peace of mind, then coaching is the way because it's much more goals oriented.

You will learn how to deal with your thoughts and feelings and emotions and really be able to be present with even the negative feelings without them ruining your day to day life. And on top of that you take action to make things in your life happen. And I find that coaching really suits high achieving women and moms because we like the most efficient way to do things and coaching most certainly is that.

Now I'm gonna dive into how coaching is helpful and a great benefit for physicians because physician burnout is such a pervasive issue in this country. And physicians really show symptoms of burnout at double the rate of other careers, right, and so this is going to be worse for patients, worse for physicians, and coaching really helps combat that.

Actually a study in JAMA published in 2019 by the leading experts in physician wellness, they showed that coaching physicians improves overall quality of life. And actually the study examined the effect of six professional coaching sessions for 88 practicing physicians. And what they found was emotional exhaustion was decreased by around 20% in only five months.

Another study published in the Permanente Journal looked at the effectiveness of coaching in physician burnout. And what they found was that coaching interventions actually reduced burnout among physicians and through coaching, the physicians were able to manage their stress, improve work life balance, and really use coping strategies. So this, of course, led to more job satisfaction and improved patient care.

So we have here, right, like I've talked about studies that show the efficacy of coaching. So hopefully that shows you how great and beneficial life coaching is for all professionals, not just physicians. And my goal today was to really educate you on what life coaching is and what the benefits are. Because it's not so much out there as we understand, we're much more familiar with therapy.

So definitely think about what your goals are, where you are, where you want to be, or do you want to dive into your past to figure out if therapy or coaching is a better fit for you. But what I will also say is sometimes if you do both in conjunction with each other, they're very complementary because you can figure out with therapy really delve in your past, and that helps figure out the now, and of course the future, which is more coaching.

So if you want to get clarity on what's getting in your way or you want to end burnout for good once and for all get your life back book a call with me. PriancaNaikMDcoaching.as.me. The link will be in the show notes. Thank you so much for tuning in and I will talk to you next week.