If you’ve decided you want something to change, the next question is who should help, and whether you need help at all.
It’s a fair question, and most answers to it come from someone trying to sell you their side. I’m a coach, so you should know that going in. I’m going to try to answer it honestly anyway, including the cases where what I do is the wrong fit.
Start here: when to see a therapist
Please see a licensed therapist or doctor if any of these are true:
- You’re thinking about hurting yourself or someone else. (In the US, call or text 988, any time.)
- You can’t get through a normal day: work, sleep, eating, basic care.
- You’re dealing with trauma that floods you when you think about it.
- You’re dealing with addiction, an eating disorder, or symptoms that might need a diagnosis or medication.
- You’re in a relationship where you aren’t safe.
A therapist is trained and licensed to treat these.
When a coach can help
Coaching tends to fit when you’re functioning, but something keeps repeating.
You hold it together at work. You have people in your life. But the same problems keep showing up with different people. The same fight. The same pulling away. The same point where things start going well and you find a way to stop them.
You may already understand a lot of it. Maybe you’ve been to therapy and it helped you see the pattern. What you’re looking for now is help changing it.
That’s the space a good coach works in. And it can work alongside therapy rather than replacing it.
When you can start on your own
You can do a lot of this yourself. Honestly, more than people expect.
You can start on your own if:
- You can think about difficult memories without being overwhelmed by them.
- You’re curious about your patterns more than you’re in crisis about them.
- You’re willing to sit with a feeling long enough to find out where it started.
The work starts with noticing. Pick one recent moment that bothered you and ask what it felt like it was saying about you. Not the name of an emotion: “I was annoyed” is an emotion, while “it felt like I wasn’t worth calling back” is the feeling.
Then ask whether anyone else has ever made you feel exactly that way. A feeling that keeps coming back with different people is usually part of a program. The earliest time you remember feeling it is a good place to start.
Your subconscious is the part of your mind that runs without you thinking about it. It records everything, and it creates programs out of what you experience and feel the most. That’s what programming is: something repeated until it became automatic. Your thinking will match your programming. If your programming says people are out to get you, it will keep making you think people are out to get you, even when they aren’t.
I’ve written out the full process for the next step in What Do You Say to Your Inner Child?. No purchase, no sign-up.
Signs it’s time to get help, even if you’ve been doing fine alone
- You keep finding the same memory and nothing shifts.
- You can’t find the earliest memory, no matter how far you follow the feeling.
- You understand the pattern perfectly and it keeps running anyway.
How to tell if a coach is any good
If you do go looking for a coach, here are questions worth asking. Ask them of me, too.
- Can they explain what they actually do? Not a promise of transformation. The actual steps.
- Will they let you try something free first? You should be able to see how they think before you pay.
- Do they help make you independent? The goal is for you to be able to do this without them.
Where I fit
I help people understand the problems that keep repeating in their lives: where they come from and how to change them. We trace each one back to where it started, then use inner child work to rebuild the programs that create the thinking behind those problems.
If you’re not sure yet, start free:
- The quiz shows you which feeling keeps coming back, in your own words. About three minutes, no email needed.
- The Program Decoder traces any moment that bothers you back to where it started. Free, it takes an email.
If either of those helps, you’ll know whether you want to go further. If they don’t, you’ve lost nothing.