People use the two words interchangeably, and then arrive slightly confused about what they have booked. The distinction is real, and it is worth understanding before you choose — not because one is more serious than the other, but because they travel in different directions.
Counselling and therapy generally work backwards. Where did this pattern come from, what happened to you, what is the history underneath the way you react now. A licensed therapist can also diagnose and treat clinical conditions — depression, anxiety disorders, trauma, addiction.
Coaching works forwards from where you are today. What is the pattern, what is each of you doing inside it, what specifically changes this fortnight. I am not a clinician and I do not treat conditions. What I do is structured attention on how two people actually operate, plus practice between sessions.
In the room the difference is visible. A counselling session may spend an hour on why a particular reaction has such a grip on you. A coaching session is more likely to map your recurring conflict onto a page, find the exact moment it becomes unwinnable, and then rehearse a different move — out loud, until it stops feeling artificial. You will leave with something to do, and I will ask about it next time.
Which should you choose? If there is untreated depression, addiction, an active mental health condition, or unprocessed trauma driving what is happening, start with a clinician. Coaching layered on top of an untreated condition tends to produce frustration and a sense of failure that neither of you has earned.
If you are two reasonably well people who keep colliding — the same argument, a marriage that has gone quiet, in-laws, parenting splits, a decision about whether to stay — coaching is usually the more direct instrument, because the problem is behavioural and behaviour is trainable.
Plenty of people do both, sometimes at once: individual therapy for what each of you carries, coaching for what happens between you. That combination works well and I have no territorial feelings about it.
There is one more difference worth stating plainly. A good practitioner of either kind will tell you when you are in the wrong room. If you come to me and what you actually need is a psychiatrist, a clinical psychologist or a family lawyer, I will say so in the discovery call rather than book you in for ten sessions. That referral is part of the service, not a failure of it.