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Coaching Services Counseling Services Mental Health Coaching vs. Counseling April 21, 2020 By Sawayer 1 Comment

Expert Life Coaching or Professional Counseling?

I am often asked what the difference is between seeing a counselor and seeing a life coach. It’s a great questions and the answer is pretty straight forward. Here at Sawayer Logistics, we provide both counseling services and coaching services.

What is Life Coaching

Life coaching specifically focuses on the present issues you are needing guidance on with a view toward growth and toward the future.

There is very little looking back at individual histories and problems. Also, the life coach can be certified by a recognized certifying agency.

This usually means that they are aware of the ethics of providing coaching and what are the best ways to coach.

Since there is not any State license required at the present time in any of the States, to work as a life coach, we are less limited to who we can see and where we can provide our coaching services.

This means that thru the technology of the internet, we connect thru the secure video platforms of Zoom.com, Doxy.me or Vsee.com, which allows me to see you wherever you have the technology to make the video connection.

In order to earn my credentials as an Expert Level Life Coach, I had to take a series of training courses and tests in order to be certified. This is not a one time process and we are always involved in continuing education.

What is Counseling

In the State of Texas, becoming licensed as a Professional Counselor requires a Master’s Degree in a related field, thousands of hours of training and education, enduring a supervised practicum and taking a state examination.

Re-licensure happens every two years and each counselor must show that he or she has taken the required courses in Ethics and Jurisprudence plus additional training hours in counseling related areas.

Individual Counseling by a licensed counselor is a bit more restricted than being an Expert Level Coach.

How is it restricted? Well, first of all, as a Licensed Counselor in Texas, I am not at present able to provide therapy services in other States or Countries.

Having said that, there is strong governmental interest as a result of the Covid19 Pandemic to change those restrictions and allow any duly licensed Counselor in one State to practice across State Jurisdictions, with the appropriate oversight.

Paying cash or using insurance to pay for counseling makes a difference

Individual counseling is also affected by the way you pay for it. If you are a “private pay” client and don’t use your health insurance, we don’t have to give you an official diagnosis and provide that to your insurance company to justify payment.

If you are using insurance or your EAP program for payment, then we are usually asked to provide them with reports and diagnosis. Also, they often set a limit on the number of sessions they will pay for up front. They can extend the number of sessions, but normally it is a set number.

Let me emphasize that as long as you acknowledge that you are freely seeking counseling, then it doesn’t matter who pays because your looking for a solution to a difficult problem.

Still some people see having any kind of personal problem as an embarrassment and fear social repercussions if the word gets out that they are seeing a mental health professional.

On the other hand, when there is some “involuntary” pressure to get counseling, that is something to discuss in the very first counseling session. You are free to chose, and I am here to assist you!

Individual or Couples Counseling, as opposed to coaching, is also focused on problems and on the historical issues that may have contributed to the present problems being experienced. Of course, like coaching, the goal is growing in your coping skills to enjoy a better future!

In both the private pay and insurance pay scenarios for counseling discussed above, you will have to sign consents for release of any information and releases of liability paperwork.

At Sawayer Logistics we provide you with information on counselor standards and ethics, information on the fee schedule and other information about the counseling process you need as a consumer.

That’s about it as far as how the individual or couple counseling differs from life coaching.

If you have questions, send me an email and I will be happy to respond. Here is the link for further reading!

https://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/whats-difference-between-therapist-life-coach-0823165

Coaching Coaching Services What is Coaching • What is Counseling April 21, 2020 By Sawayer 0 Comments

Is Life Coaching For You ?

In a previous post titled “How do life coaching and counseling differ”, I contrasted the two modalities of services that we provide here at Sawayer Logistics (sawayer.com).

In this post, I want to be a little more focused on what life coaching offers specifically. I have attached a link below for further reading if you are interested.

So Life Coaching or Personal Coaching is a pretty broad term and is often used in several specialized areas such as nutritional coaching, fitness coaching, writing coaching, financial coaching, parent coaching, etc.

While the focus can be different for each, “coaching” specialty, in general, coaching per se, has it’s own common elements.

Because any expert can be a coach thru their own training and life experiences in a particular area of specialization, by and large, there are NO STATE LICENSES is required to provide those coaching services. So there is good news and bad news. The “good news” is that coaches, thru the internet, can sell their services to any willing customer, world-wide! Wow, talk about a customer base!. The “bad news” is that if you are looking for a governmental entity to re-assure you that the coach you employ is licensed, your pretty much out of luck.

HOWEVER, don’t despair just yet because many professional coaches have taken formal training in how to provide effective coaching by using what are called “Best Practices” recognized by most credentialing entities in the field of coaching. A professional coach can earn various “professional certificate”, that will confer the title or credential of “expert level life coach”.

It’s important to remember that the focus of coaching is growing your capacity for success in the area you are interested in. Coaching is “future focused” and builds on your “existing strengths”. As such, there is not much looking back on where you failed. Rather we look at where you are right now and how we can get you to your goal. This involves lots of things from writing out your plans, using vision boards, keeping a journal, and determining some way to measure your progress in a concrete way.

If your goal is to have better health thru nutritional coaching then we will look at measurable numbers. As an example, initial lab test results for cholesterol or high sugar levels, or blood pressure levels form the baseline.

Together we then set new goals to improve those numbers thru nutrition, exercise, diet and improved self image.

Hopefully, you now have a fairly specific idea of how coaching works. I look forward to reading any comments or questions you post in the comments section. Click on the link below for even more useful information on this topic!

https://www.lifecoaching.com/pages/life_coaching.html

Fees for coaching are based on how much time we spend together and can be done on a half-hour or hourly basis at the rate of $50 per 30 minutes. And of course, there is a lot you will do on your own, between our sessions.

Please feel free to contact us if you need more information regarding fees and scheduling an virtual coaching appointment.

Near Death Experience Out of Body Experience Retirement Trauma Traumas Healthy Relationships April 20, 2020 By Sawayer 0 Comments

What Really Is Reality?

Every experience exists in two places.

There is the place of physical reality and our brain’s interpretation of that physical reality.

That reality then gets complicated because our brain has a unique, “interpreter function”.

That interpreter is like a box of crayons we use to add color to the experiences we have in our very early lives.

So reality is like the blank page in a coloring book that presents itself just as it is, usually blank and white.

Our eyes and ears and nose and skin are like a black colored marker that draws the lines and designs on those first pages of the coloring book in our early years.

Then the interpreter function starts using the colors of life, as we get more and more information about what we believe we are experiencing.

As a result of these “interpreters”, 10 people can stand side by side looking around and all 10 will fill their coloring books with different designs and colors.

As we go thru life… the first year pages in our books have a tendency to naturally influence, or “color”, if you will pardon the pun, the next pages to come.

Eventually we become limited by our brains interpreter, which no longer allows us to experience reality directly OR very accurately… just “uniquely.

Our page designs become more limited and interestingly, so does our access to our available colors becomes limited as well.

This limiting is a protective and survival mechanism that allows us to function under the circumstances we find ourselves in at the moment.

Over time, the colors we use are filtered by the interpreter and we become less able to see the total colors of our life experiences.

This coloring book becomes something we come to define as our personality or our world view.

This explains how 10 people can be presented with the exact same experience and relate to that experience and what it means in 10 different ways. How amazing is that?

It is also why we need to share our coloring books with each other after we become clear on how we came to chose the designs and lines and colors that it contains.

This “getting clear” is how counseling helps us. We share our coloring book with our counselor, who respectfully and non-judgmentally asks about each page. We can do much of this on our own, but eventually we need another trained individual to help challenge how our perspectives are affecting our lives at work and with family or friends.

It’s not the external world around us that confuses us but rather it’s our initial and subsequent mental and emotional interpretations of that physical world that can actually change our ability to experience that world in its pristine existence.

By sharing our own individual coloring book interpretations with love and humility and without fear and/or shame, we get closer to what God’s revealed truth is. You see, I just colored this article with God!

Learning about our wonderful uniqueness as coloring artists is literally is a lifetime adventure of refining and in the end leads to appreciation of the fact that the essence of God is always ungraspable mystery.

It is that unfathomable and ungraspable MYSTERY that propels us to faith and worship and can be so comforting for many.

OK, I colored that last paragraph again. Is this not challenging?

Even counselors need counselors sometimes.