Domestic Abuse Help ~Life Coach, Spiritual Advisor or Clinical Psychologist

By Dr. Jeanne King, Ph.D.

I have been offering psychological services online now since 2007. Over the years, the internet has become flooded with life coaches and spiritual advisors offering behavioral health services to individuals with serious psychological conditions.

While one may say, how great it is to have services now widely available and at a far less expense, it is important to acknowledge that these services are clearly different than those offered by a trained clinical psychologist.

How Are They Different?

Far too often people show up with serious psychological conditions themselves, or significant psychiatric disorders in their spouse, and present with the behaviors of domestic violence or narcissistic abuse. It may be true that a life coach, who has had similar encounters with narcissistic domestic abuse, can offer authentic compassion and a toolbox of strategies for coping. However, these people are not trained in psychotherapeutic process, much less in the dynamics of the psychopathology that commonly underlies intimate partner abuse.

The same is true for spiritual advisors. While they clearly may have an expertise in the higher order of things and a grounded spiritual perspective, they too are not…