Over the last month, I’ve had a surprising number of conversations with people who have asked me some version of the same question:

What, exactly, is the difference between therapy and coaching?

There are many answers to this question (and plenty of overlap between the two), but one distinction I find useful is this:

Therapy often helps us understand what has happened to us, how it has shaped us, and what may need care or healing.

Coaching is interested in a slightly different question: Given where I am today, who am I being—and what might become possible if I could see or do something differently?

As many of you know, I’m currently working toward my ICF credential through Newfield, a coaching program grounded in two very big words that I admittedly had to Google before I enrolled: epistemology and ontology.

Epistemology asks, essentially: How do we know what we know? How do our assumptions, experiences, interpretations, and beliefs shape what we take to be true?

Ontology is concerned with being: How are we showing up in the world? How do our language, emotions, bodies, relationships, and deeply ingrained ways of seeing things shape not only how we experience our lives, but what we believe is possible within them?

Funnily enough, despite needing to look up the terminology, I realized I had been thinking about these questions for most of my life.

Growing up, my dad had a meditation room—because this is apparently something you can have when you grow up in Indiana, where houses contain approximately 700% more rooms than they do in Brooklyn.

On the wall was a quote:

“Climb into the balcony of your consciousness and take a seat.”

I loved it.

Even when I was in high school and having some sort of teenage breakdown, my dad would remind me to climb into the balcony. I would picture two Allysons: one down on the stage, completely consumed by whatever catastrophe was unfolding, and another sitting up in the balcony, looking down at her and thinking:

Hey girl. What’s up with you?

I didn't have the language for it then, but I think that's part of what I love so much about coaching now.

We spend so much of our lives on the stage. We are inside our reactions, assumptions, fears, ambitions, stories, and habitual ways of making sense of things. From there, they don't necessarily look like interpretations. They just look like reality.

Coaching gives us an opportunity to climb into the balcony.

To notice: Oh. That's the story I'm telling myself. That's what I assumed their silence meant. That's what happens in my body when I don't know what's coming next. That's the standard I've been organizing my life around without ever consciously choosing it.

And sometimes, simply being able to see ourselves from the balcony creates a possibility that wasn't available from the stage.

Which brings me to an invitation.

As part of the final stage of my Newfield training, I am now working with a master coach who observes recordings of my coaching sessions and provides feedback as I work toward my ICF credential.

Rather than shorten the hour-long sessions I currently have with my clients, I’ve decided to open a small number of spots specifically for people who are curious about coaching and would like to experience it for themselves.

These sessions will be approximately 30–40 minutes, held over Zoom, and offered at a reduced practicum rate. Because they are part of my credentialing process, sessions will be recorded and may be reviewed confidentially by my mentor coach and/or submitted as part of the credentialing process. I’ll share all of those details with you before you commit to anything.

So, if you've wondered what coaching actually is—or if there is something in your own life that you keep looking at from the stage and might like to examine from the balcony—I would love to work with you.

Just reply to this email and tell me you're interested. We can have a conversation about what you're navigating and whether coaching feels like the right kind of support.

And if it isn't? I’m happy to help you think about that, too.

Maybe I'll see you in the balcony.