How Coaching Works
Plain answers about what coaching is, what it is not, and how we work together.
What Coaching Is
Coaching is a structured, confidential partnership focused on the changes you want to make. Your coach helps you clarify what matters, build a realistic plan, develop skills, and stay accountable to it. The work is collaborative and forward-looking, grounded in evidence about how people actually change.
What Coaching Is Not
Coaching is not psychotherapy or counseling. Coaches do not diagnose or treat mental health conditions. If you are working through trauma, depression, anxiety that interferes with daily life, or relationship distress that needs clinical care, a licensed therapist is the right professional, and we will help you find one.
Coaching is not medical care. Coaches do not diagnose conditions, order tests, or prescribe. Health-related coaching is education and behavior support. Medical questions belong with your own provider or our sister practice, Rainier Lifestyle Medicine.
Coaching is not for emergencies. If you are in crisis or thinking about harming yourself, call 911, or call or text 988 for the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, available around the clock.
Our sexual health coaching follows the same lines. It is education and skills coaching, delivered by a coach trained through the Sexual Health Alliance's AASECT-approved certification program. Sexual pain, medical symptoms, trauma histories, and clinical relationship distress are referred to licensed clinicians.
Confidentiality
What you share in coaching stays in coaching. We do not share session content with employers, partners, or anyone else without your written permission. For employer-sponsored engagements, the sponsor receives attendance confirmation and broad outcome themes only.
Two limits apply. We may break confidentiality if required by law, or if we believe you or someone else is in serious danger. And because coaching is not healthcare, coaching records are not medical records, though we protect them with the same care and use secure, encrypted video for every session.
Practical Terms
Before your first paid session you will sign a short coaching agreement covering everything on this page plus scheduling, cancellation, and fees. The highlights: sessions are 50 minutes by secure video, cancellations need 24 hours notice, package fees are confirmed in writing before you commit, and you can end an engagement at any time. Coaching fees are generally not HSA/FSA eligible because coaching is not medical care.
Questions about whether coaching or therapy is the right fit for what you're facing? Ask us directly on a free intro call. We will give you a straight answer, even when the answer is a referral elsewhere. Get in touch.