How to choose? Where to start? How TA can help.
Much of the distinction between therapists and coaches has resulted from licensing laws, third-party payment reimbursement systems, and credentialing regimes – all choices made by the provider and the type of business they want to run.
As often happens, the systems designed to keep people safe and standards high become slanted in favor of those at the top of the pyramid while chasing whichever markets appear most lucrative at the time. Counselors become therapists become coaches depending on what is most popular.
Packages that promise psychological transformation of the personality through their particular mental models offer tidy solutions to common neuroses and worries. These formulations do provide help in a miasma of social and personal concerns of living today. At the same time, they are invested in selling their solution as the quickest or most effective or most widely-used method, or in maintaining their legitimacy against other approaches.
How can a person seeking assistance distinguish what is the best kind of support for what they are going through? How can providers offer discernment about what kinds of clients and issues they can best serve?
The truth is that the client is a human being and their needs are not generic. The ability to make contact with another human being (not an AI trained program!) and sort out what’s going on is a valuable privilege that deserves clarity and profound respect. The provider’s ability to assess the type of issue and the proclivities of the client, without having a pre-defined solution, is what makes them worth the investment of time and money.
If you are not willing to invest time in determining the approach that is appropriate for you at this time, you take whatever the marketplace offers and it’s probably as good as any. If you are willing to explore with someone who has a range of experience and skill, you will be able to design the path together and create the milestones that matter to you.
Of course, everyone has filters that come from their training. This tells the client what kind of provider to choose – what models do we want to know the provider has available for working with us? The cost also varies by levels of licensing or certification, and what is covered, if any, by insurance.
The value of using a mental model such as transactional analysis (TA) is that it is based on contracting between the provider and the client in the context of a deep understanding of human development. There are no predetermined one-size-fits-all methods, but a thorough understanding of how we have become who we are and a range of change processes to fulfill our hopes and dreams.
In the contracting phase, the transactional analyst can suggest a combination of methods or can see a direct path to resolving the issue that the client brought in. If he or she is trained as a coach, therapist, consultant, or counselor, they can offer services from that background and make referrals to other specialists.
If I am trained as a coach, I don’t do a deep dive into toxic family patterns or third-degree early decisions. If I am trained as a therapist, I can recommend a coach for a career path or lifestyle change. As a consultant, I can tell when my client needs to work with someone about their family system, rather than taking that on during an organizational development project.
Many transactional analysts have practiced and been supervised in multiple areas of application so they may have the range to address a variety of issues. Their ethical requirement is that they don’t represent themselves as qualified in other fields.
The core material of TA will illuminate the presenting issues so that the provider and client both gain value from those insights which serve as a basis for further work in whatever direction turns out to be most beneficial for the client.
The relationship between provider and client is the central factor in determining the effectiveness of the engagement. One of the benefits of TA is that all work is done by contract, so that you know what you are getting. Based on the contracting process, the client is free to continue or conclude the engagement as agreed. It’s a representation of TA’s fundamental premise that people are OK and can make informed decisions for themselves.
Whether you call your helper a coach, therapist, counselor, or teacher, be sure that they know how to choose and use the right tools for the job at hand.
With love and appreciation,
Lucy
