Quixotic Life Coach Hopeful, Advice from Anyone Currently in the Field?

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leahyhl

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My primary goal is to become a Life Coach. I'm not sure how stigmatized the term "Life Coach" is, but I use it because I think it is slightly more descriptive of my aspirations than "Counselor," just because counseling often entails counseling in a school setting (which is really not my interest). I want to work in private practice with people seeking help with normal life issues. I am not interested in working with the severely mentally ill.

Call me crazy for wanting it all, but I'd like the following out of graduate school:

1) an intellectually fulfilling, stimulating educational experience
2) minimal debt
3) a marketable degree with the highest earning potential possible for my goals

Has anyone been there, with any do's and don'ts for me?

Thank you, so much, for your responses.
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Lifecoach. Then you really dont need grad school at all. I think thats a pretty unregulated profession.

You will not see very many "normal" clients in clinical, or even in couseling psych, asumming you're in a clinical setting. There are cousdeling psychologists that see a primarily "worried well" population, but they are engaging in traditional psychotherapy, not "life coaching."
 
erg923 said:
Lifecoach. Then you really dont need grad school at all. I think thats a pretty unregulated profession.

You will not see very many "normal" clients in clinical, or even in couseling psych, asumming you're in a clinical setting. There are cousdeling psychologists that see a primarily "worried well" population, but they are engaging in traditional psychotherapy, not "life coaching."
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Wasn't this covered in podiatry a while back?
 
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Yes, you're crazy (you asked for it).

The only people who seem to profit from life coaching are the people to do training/workshops for it. Even if there's no gold to be found, you can make money selling pans and shovels.

Life coaching should never be done as a stand-alone career. In fact, it only be done by licensed therapists as a small adjunct to their services (i.e. their patient is now no longer depressed, and wants a few coaching sessions to help them find some direction). There will be people who are seeking "coaching" who have clinical disorders, and these non-professionals are not trained to treat them (and will often not refer out because of their narcissism/greed).
 
leahyhl said:
My primary goal is to become a Life Coach. I'm not sure how stigmatized the term "Life Coach" is, but I use it because I think it is slightly more descriptive of my aspirations than "Counselor," just because counseling often entails counseling in a school setting (which is really not my interest). I want to work in private practice with people seeking help with normal life issues. I am not interested in working with the severely mentally ill.

Call me crazy for wanting it all, but I'd like the following out of graduate school:

1) an intellectually fulfilling, stimulating educational experience
2) minimal debt
3) a marketable degree with the highest earning potential possible for my goals

Has anyone been there, with any do's and don'ts for me?

Thank you, so much, for your responses.
Click to expand...


1) an intellectually fulfilling, stimulating educational experience:

This is easy, any quality Ph.D. or Psy.D. program should offer this.

2) minimal debt

Now you've limited it to fully funded Ph.D. or Psy.D. programs.

Did you score 1200 or better on the GRE? Do you have a 3.5 or better GPA as an undergraduate? Have you considered opportunity costs associated with 6-8 years of additional training before licensure?

Minimal Debt: USUHS.
Upside: You'll be paid more than 50k a year to go to school and internship with no loans or tuition.
Cost: Deliver your mind, body, and soul to the US Military for a period of 6 years following school.

3) a marketable degree with the highest earning potential possible for my goals.

All degrees are marketable, a great deal of this depends on how you market it. The highest mean earning potential still remains with Ph.D. clinical psychologists within the field of licensed psychologists but your own personal motivation and ability to grow your practice would really be the determining factor. Private practice therapists make their own rate schedules, it's just a matter of finding people to pay your rate.

In all honesty, a Ph.D. or Psy.D. may not be what you are looking for, you may want a less time intensive degree or training. This forum is dedicated to those pursuing a Ph.D. or Psy.D., so I answered your question from our perspective.

Mark
 
I understand you want to help people-- that's a good and noble position to be coming from-- but this is not the way to do it.

Good therapy, delivered by a well-trained clinician, can be extremely beneficial and sometimes lifesaving. Bad therapy, delivered by poorly trained individuals, on the other hand, is not just an innocuous alternative. Bad therapy can be harmful. People often assume that therapy is just talking to each other, and that it needs little more training than does talking to your friends. But when you put yourself in a position of therapist (or life coach, or whatever-- let's face it, the general public doesn't know the difference), you often wield a lot of power. And to do so without the proper training-- and especially to take money for it-- is incredibly irresponsible and unethical.

Unfortunately, "life coaches" are not bound by our ethical standards, as they are a rogue and ungoverned profession. It's a kind of like if someone who didn't get into dental school decided to make something up called "tooth coaching," and performed non-licensed dental work, and THEN set-up an online certificate program where young, idealistic (quixotic, if you will) people pay lots of money to get a meaningless degree and then go on to charge people who don't know any better for dental work they're not qualified to perform. You get my gist.

What you want to do sounds remarkably like counseling psychology, which is an actual legit and regulated field. Degrees are available at the MA and Ph.D. levels, and it's not just for schools or kids. Other people can tell you more. You should also consider an MSW.
 
My supervisor at my internship is an LCPC (MA Counseling), and when I asked about the scope of counseling practice as opposed to clinical psych or clinical social work, he said that counseling training generally focuses on dealing with the "normal neurotics" of the world, though many people with the degree do go on to get the training and supervision and deal with more severe psychopathologies.
 
imo life coaches are a bunch of thieving bottom feeders who take advantage of a vulnerable population for their own benefit.


they have basically no educational requirements (i.e., high school diploma), other than the certification course. but then they want independent practice.

what a scam. imo, life coaches just don't want to commit to getting a real education but want to get all the benefits of a MA degree or better. trying to receive the same benfits with less effort in any field is the lowest of the low.

notice how the life coach forum on SDN? no? because it is not a real degree.
 
Thank you all, for your responses. Yes, MarkP, I have well above a 1200 GRE, and I am fully prepared to pay the cost, and opportunity cost, of school. My GPA is a 3.19, but I earned a business degree from the 17th best undergraduate business school in the country, and simultaneously completed a psychology degree in 4 years.

I've never considered taking a Life Coach Certification program. I use the term to describe what I want to do on a day-to-day basis. I am glad to hear that you think a Counseling degree will suit my needs, because that echoes my intuition.

I'd love more opinions on the market for, as BioGirl so eloquently put it, "normal neurotic" therapy. Would anyone disagree with the idea that serving people with mild clinical diagnoses and normal adjustment challenges is analogous to starting a pans&shovel stand?
 
leahyhl said:
Thank you all, for your responses. Yes, MarkP, I have well above a 1200 GRE, and I am fully prepared to pay the cost, and opportunity cost, of school. My GPA is a 3.19, but I earned a business degree from the 17th best undergraduate business school in the country, and simultaneously completed a psychology degree in 4 years.

I've never considered taking a Life Coach Certification program. I use the term to describe what I want to do on a day-to-day basis. I am glad to hear that you think a Counseling degree will suit my needs, because that echoes my intuition.

I'd love more opinions on the market for, as BioGirl so eloquently put it, "normal neurotic" therapy. Would anyone disagree with the idea that serving people with mild clinical diagnoses and normal adjustment challenges is analogous to starting a pans&shovel stand?
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There's nothing wrong with helping people with adjustment/ minor problems. But don't call it life coaching. That term refers to something else, specifically non-professionals masking as professionals, a potential pariah on our field. Semantics are important in this field-- if you were to use the term life coaching in a personal statement or interview, you would be screwing yourself.

BTW, and this is kind of an aside, but it always strikes me as a little odd when people say things like "I want to help people, but I don't want to work with people with severe mental illness like schizophrenia or bipolar disorder so clinical psych isn't right for me." It's really the minority of clinical psychologists that study/ treat severe mental illness, and the majority of depression/anxiety researchers are clinical psychologists. Granted, clinical does take more of a medical model approach than (I think) counseling psychs do, but plenty study and treat things like marital discord, stress, and other common life issues.
 
leahyhl said:
Thank you all, for your responses. Yes, MarkP, I have well above a 1200 GRE, and I am fully prepared to pay the cost, and opportunity cost, of school. My GPA is a 3.19, but I earned a business degree from the 17th best undergraduate business school in the country, and simultaneously completed a psychology degree in 4 years.

I've never considered taking a Life Coach Certification program. I use the term to describe what I want to do on a day-to-day basis. I am glad to hear that you think a Counseling degree will suit my needs, because that echoes my intuition.

I'd love more opinions on the market for, as BioGirl so eloquently put it, "normal neurotic" therapy. Would anyone disagree with the idea that serving people with mild clinical diagnoses and normal adjustment challenges is analogous to starting a pans&shovel stand?
Click to expand...

Good deal. So it does sound like a counseling psychology degree is what you are going for. You have a wide range of people in Clinical psychology, Counseling psychology, and Social Work all aiming for the same market. No one perspective is the right answer.

Sorry to put you through the grinder, but we get plenty of people posting here that they want to be a "life coach" with no academic credentials worth speaking of and don't even know what a GRE is. Unfortunately these are the hurdles we must clear in order to get training in the field of psychology. Calling it "life coaching" is a bit of a misnomer as others have already stated.

I don't know about paying the cost, in hindsight, paying for a Psy.D. seems counter-productive in both opportunity and direct costs unless you have some method for getting loan forgiveness. Additionally "life coaching" is not reimbursable through insurance further limiting your revenue stream.

I am not trying to discourage you, if you have a model that you feel will pay the bills and will result in professional and personal satisfaction, by all means pursue it! With regard to counseling and clinical psychology, your GPA is a little weak but if you went to a top school I am sure that will more than offset it. Sounds like you are a hard charger like me... I went to a much lower ranked school but I did my entire psychology degree in 5 semesters with a 4.0, so I can appreciate your accomplishment!

Mark
 
Have you considered working for an employee assistance plan (EAP)? With you background in business and your interests, it might be a good fit for you. Don't quote me on this, but I suspect most of the counselors in an EAP are at the MA/MSW level rather than PsyD/PhDs.
 
Wow. I never knew that existed. You may have just nailed exactly what I am ultimately looking to do! Thank you, so much!

Does anyone else know what the educational background is for a typical EAP counselor?
 
A life coach? Just become a priest. They offer advice to people, except you don't get to have sex anymore.:thumbdown:
 
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