Is there a difference between counselling and psychotherapy… This is a question that, depending on who you ask, may produce varying answers! There are so many different regulatory bodies that all seem the same to the non-specialist. It’s reasonable to ask whether they ‘regulate’ different things! So, here I offer my own particular take on this question. Generally, counselling and psychotherapy both aim to help you with emotional, psychological, and behavioral challenges. There is so much in common between them, they readily cross over. There are distinctive differences however that we can point to, to understand counselling vs psychotherapy.
The focus of your needs
A primary difference between counseling and psychotherapy is the focus of the treatment. Counseling will help you with specific, shorter-term life problems. It often supports you to explore your options for action, with greater focus on the present in a practical way. Counselling also provides emotional support and gentle guidance for life problems like coping with work stress or dealing with a breakup. Think of it as a helping hand, just when you really need it. A good counsellor will be the warm but neutral shoulder to lean on when you need support.
In contrast, psychotherapy goes into greater depth. It addresses recurrent, persistent issues like anxiety, depression, trauma, or personality disorders. It targets past experiences and unconscious processes (i.e., patterns in your thinking, feeling and behaving outside of your awareness) that contribute to your current emotional state. The idea is that we develop coping mechanisms early in life, strategies for managing anxiety-inducing things, people, and places. We carry these strategies with us in ways that no longer help or serve us. A big goal of psychotherapy is to help you bring these into awareness, invite new ways to respond, free you from those past habits that once helped you survive difficulties. One way to think about it is getting into the depths of how you’ve come to be who you are. This can be destabilising work. A good psychotherapist can guide you safely into such depths.
Length of therapy
Due to these differences in focus, the duration of counseling and psychotherapy will typically vary. Counseling may be required just as long as you feel you need it, to help you figure out your current issue or help you feel supported through the roughest times. Psychotherapy tends to prove a much longer commitment, simply because deeper issues and patterns take time and patience to understand. Sometimes you’ll hear of clients talking about the “hard work” of therapy, and they are likely referring to the challenges of acting on insights they gain into their own patterns and character structure.
Therapist training
The professional training undertaken also often differentiates counsellors from psychotherapists. Counsellors tend to have a more practical training experience, with focus on core listening and helping skills, and learning how to be non-judgmental and non-directive. They may specialise in areas such as addiction counseling or stress management. Psychotherapists tend to have had more extensive training backed by broader study of psychological theory, and will have expert knowledge of a specific approach like psychoanalysis or existential psychotherapy. They are also more likely to have had to undergo therapy themselves, as part of their education journey.
How your therapist works
As a result of differential training styles, the techniques used in therapy will vary. Counseling often employs a more direct approach, offering practical advice and guidance (you might see this called “psychoeducation”). They also use specific active techniques like goal-setting or problem-solving strategies. Psychotherapists may make use more depth techniques like dream analysis or transference (i.e., reflecting on how your behaviour towards the therapist might echo how you behave towards significant others in your life). The outcome from such techniques tend to be more revelatory. They can produce depth insights into “who you are,” how you react, or what your relationship patters are. Such techniques need more freedom to be exploratory and open-ended and this in part explains why psychotherapy can prove a longer process.
In closing
I hope this is a helpful summary of identifiable differences between counselling and psychotherapy; it may help you determine what you need from entering into a therapeutic relationship. If you’d like a more formal read, try this article. In a similar vein, if you’d like to expand your understanding of the types of therapy available, read more here.
