Life Coaching: Better than Therapy?

Founded eight years ago, Handel employs a cadre of coaches who guide clients to identify dreams, recognize what's blocking their fulfillment, and then come up with specific steps to make them reality. An action-oriented plan like this appealed to me. I'd been in therapy on and off for the better part of two decades, sorting through the psychic fallout of growing up with a mother who drank too much in order to dull the pain of some horrible tragedies she'd experienced as a young woman and a father who was evasive, philandering, and hypercritical (a professional book critic, in fact). Self-understanding had helped me accept myself, flaws included, but now I wondered if I'd set my sights too low, if my limitations were preventing me from getting more satisfaction—not to mention joy—out of life.

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