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Joe Siegler, M.D., is a practicing executive coach, board-certified psychiatrist, speaker, and founder and president of Chicago's Full Life Centers, serving thousands of clients and numerous organizations. He is a frequent guest on television and radio shows.

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Fire your Therapist

why therapy might not be working for you and what you can do about it

Joe Siegler, M.D.

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Fire your Therapist

why therapy might not be working for you and what you can do about it

Joe Siegler, M.D.

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Fire Your Therapist

John Wiley & Sons

Chapter One

It's really not that complicated. Most people want a better and more meaningful life. And they want results. Wherever I go, I hear something along the lines of the following when I'm introduced: "Wow, you're a doctor and a coach! I've been looking for a coach but never knew where to turn." More than ever before, people are seeking alternative forms of help. They're not seeking it because they're abnormal or because they have any type of clinical mental malady. Instead, they want fresh and effective guidance about everything from relationships to careers to spiritual issues.

Just about every day, I encounter someone who confirms my belief about this universal and wide-ranging need for practical life guidance. For instance, I'm in a cab and the driver reveals he is an unemployed Ph.D. in chemistry wishing he had a great career; I'm on an airplane speaking to an executive who is frustrated that he is getting mediocre results in both his marriage and at work; I'm buying a shirt and the salesperson expresses frustration not only because she is not using her master's degree but also because she longs for a spiritual connection to give her life more meaning.

In short, you, like most people, want something more. You don't want someone to tell you what to do per se, but someone to facilitate the design of your master plan and then help you make choices and implement changes. As much as you might like to do all this on your own, you can benefit from a coach, mentor, teacher, or adviser who both motivates you and serves as an accountability figure. This relationship helps you maintain your progress.

We are entering a groundbreaking era of coaching and other change modalities. In the past, coaching tended to be defined narrowly. It was primarily a vehicle for people having trouble with jobs or hoping to enhance sports performance. In recent years, however, the concept of a life coach or an executive coach has emerged and become something of a trend. We're seeing more and more people turn to coaches to help them with a wide range of issues. Coaching methods are expanding and becoming more sophisticated in response. Coaches are learning how to help people achieve peak performance, raise confidence, define the next phase of their career, manage money better, improve their relationships, make more friends, manage their weight and achieve wellness, date more effectively, manage bad habits and even addictions, develop their religious or spiritual sides, design retirement, or search for a more meaningful existence.

Kayla is a good example of someone who probably would have gone it alone in the past, but today recognizes the value of coaching. A junior at an excellent midwestern college, Kayla was feeling pressure from both her school adviser and her parents to choose a major. Kayla was open to this, but had no idea what she truly wanted to choose. To help her select a major, she engaged the services of a coach who was recommended by one of her roommates. The coach encouraged her to begin thinking about what she truly was interested in studying. He provided her with different scenarios to consider; he helped her organize her thinking about different majors and career possibilities. By asking Kayla questions and helping her understand what her responses implied, they were able to narrow the possibilities to three. Of these she finally selected the one she truly wanted: sociology.

Why couldn't Kayla figure this out for herself? This is an important question. The answer is that people are often socialized by their culture, parents, and peers to stop paying attention to what they really want. So a coach will often sift through this interference from others and free the client to discover her true desires. By providing Kayla with a process to analyze her options and by offering objective counsel about those options, the coach was able to help Kayla make a decision.

People like Kayla are normal. Their lives are a work in progress, a work that can be changed in accordance with their hopes and dreams. There is a reason why coaching has been embraced by athletes and the corporate world. Now the public at large can capitalize on coaching techniques and tools to improve just about every aspect of their lives.

Coaching Meets an Emerging Need

The world is smaller: globalization is the rage, whether we like it or not. Due to ever-expanding technologies such as the Internet, overnight global mail, world cell phones, and video conferencing, geographic distance does not seem to matter anymore. Everybody wants a piece of the pie. Resources are scarce. Competition is fierce. Success is harder to come by. The American Dream or what I call the World Dream is harder to attain. There is tremendous concern over terrorism and destruction of the environment. Whether a newly graduating college student, a thirtysomething unhappy with his career choice, or a senior citizen embarking on retirement, most people are hungry for help. Their uncertainty, anxiety, or ambition prompts them to seek assistance.

Normal people, however, often are unsure about where to seek help. Some are willing to try therapy but discover that after a while, it's not meeting their needs, for they don't have a symptom of mental illness for which traditional therapy is equipped to handle. Or they take an effective medication for an isolated mental health symptom, are now symptom-free, and now want coaching to address their life plan. Others avoid therapy completely because of the attached stigma that seeking help is only for those with mental illness. For many years, friends and family would often react to the news of someone being in therapy with a comment such as "What, are you crazy?" Ironically, insurance companies who sometimes pay for mental health services will often turn someone down for a health care or disability plan if they have a "mental health history."

The fact is that Freud and his later disciples would see a normal person working toward life-optimizing goals during one session and then would see an individual with severe mental illness during the next session. I don't believe this "mixed" approach is viable. Different skills and services are needed for normal people versus those with serious mental illness. Unfortunately, many people aren't aware of this distinction. As a result, they are often disappointed with the results of therapy and uncertain if coaching is right for them.

Noah was very bright and in his early thirties. He was also very shy, which made him uneasy when meeting women and dating. He enlisted the help of a therapist, who diagnosed him as having a low-grade depression. In the sessions Noah was asked to discuss his feelings of depression, but Noah said he wasn't depressed and that he was simply shy. The therapist disagreed. Still, Noah continued with the therapy, assuming his therapist would be able to find a way to free him from his debilitating shyness and help him achieve his goal of dating. The therapist, however, was not focused on this goal, at least not as an end in and of itself. He wanted to help Noah dig down deeper and discover the root causes of his shyness. And so Noah and his therapist spent ten sessions digging, and though Noah found the process enlightening and believed the therapist was smart and...