The key difference between IFS Coaching and IFS Therapy lies in the practitioner’s background and the intended scope of the work. Their IFS training is comparable - but it is the pathway that affects the approach, experience, and potential impact.
IFS Therapists typically come from a clinical, psychology-based foundation and are licensed to treat mental health conditions. Their work often focuses on past trauma, reducing symptoms, and restoring emotional well-being, guided by professional protocols and ethical frameworks which can enrich—or sometimes slow—the intuitive flow. They are restricted geographically, governed by licensing bodies.
In contrast, IFS Coaches—like myself—emerge from holistic coaching, intuitive work, and/or personal development pathways. We use IFS to support self-actualization, inner alignment, and forward movement, trusting the client’s innate wisdom to guide the process. The experiential background enables them to stay in curiosity, facilitating the client's Self-led exploration without a "fixing" lens, the need for protocols, or medical-model constraints. While therapists may be oriented toward resolving the past, coaches are more present- and future-focused, helping clients create lives rooted in authenticity, agency, and purpose.
Both bring powerful tools to the table, but the experience can feel different: coaching offers a spacious, intuitive, and integrative environment for deep insight and rapid transformation, especially when clients are ready to take responsibility for their lives, leading with compassion, curiosity and courage.
Although officially brought to us by Dick Schwartz, a systemic family psychotherapist and academic, IFS philosophy and mechanics have more in common with Coaching than Therapy: IFS acknowledges the self-correcting system and each individual's empowered Self (and potential!). The model inherently rejects the pathologizing medical model governing western therapy and has been heavily influenced by Shamanism. For example, the unburdening process helps the parts of us that are trapped in time due to unprocessed trauma, to heal and transform - a shamanic-based practice.
Coaches co-create the collaborative process as led by the Client's inner wisdom, focusing on the present and future for self-realization, empowering clients to create lives that reflect who they truly are via self-responsibility, authenticity and self-leadership. In contrast, therapists traditionally have the Client lean on expert guidance and treatment plans, focused on the past while creating emotional safety, symptom relief, and restoring mental well-being.
| | |
| Psychology, clinical training, mind-focused | Personal development, holistic training, intuitive or spiritual, heart-centered |
| Healing past wounds & symptoms reduction | Integration for sustainable growth & self‑actualization |
| Acknowledging and reviewing of past, empathy-based | Collaborative, integrating with goal-centered applications |
| Clinical assessment, trauma protocols | Creative re-patterning, inner leadership |
| Licensed to treat mental health conditions; geographically registered | Refers when clinical needs arise; can work globally |
Both Coaches and Therapists seek continued training alongside consultation, and/or peer support while working with clients.
Ultimately, IFS is a powerful inner work model that transcends the therapy-coaching divide – it’s a paradigm for inner connection and self actualization. Whether facilitated by a therapist, a coach, or a spiritual guide, its purpose is the same: to help you meet yourself with compassion and courage so that you feel free to embody your truest nature and highest potential.