Families often treat therapy and coaching like a threat. Amy doesn’t see it that way. In episode four of The Family We Were Given series, she breaks down the difference between therapy and coaching, why healing can make some families uncomfortable, and why she tells clients they are not a victim to what happened to them. She also gets into a pattern she sees constantly: parents who want their kids happy mostly because it makes them feel like good parents.
What therapy and coaching actually do
Amy sees therapy as the tool for going back: figuring out what happened, what it triggered, and why. Coaching picks up from there. Once you know what happened, coaching is about deciding what to do with it now, and building accountability for the life you actually want.
You are not a victim to your life
Amy doesn’t like the word victim. Things happen to people that shouldn’t happen, and she’s clear that some of it is genuinely horrible. But she believes adults get to decide they are not controlled by what happened to them anymore. That decision, not the original event, is where healing actually starts.
Why parents push a certain life on their kids
Amy has coached daughters whose moms wanted them settled, married, and secure in a traditional path. What she’s noticed: most of that pressure has less to do with the child’s happiness and more to do with the parent’s own sense of having done a good job. When a child makes an independent choice the parent didn’t plan for, it can feel like a personal failure to the parent, even when nothing has actually gone wrong.
Use this today
If you’re a parent, notice one moment this week where you wanted your child to choose something specific. Ask yourself honestly whose happiness that choice was actually protecting.
Next week, Amy concludes The Family We Were Given series.
