When coaching is not the right help.
Coaching is for growth. It is not crisis support and it is not clinical care, and there are times when what you need is a doctor, a therapist, or someone on a line right now. This page is where to go instead. Nothing on it costs anything, and asking is not a step backward.
Not urgent, but more than growth work.
If something has been sitting on you for weeks, if it is changing how you sleep or eat or work, if you have felt this way before and it came back, that is the territory of a licensed clinician rather than a coach. Therapy treats. Coaching builds. They are different trades and the difference matters.
Start with a doctor if the body is involved. Sudden exhaustion, a racing heart, weight that moved on its own, a new fog you cannot think through. Plenty of things that feel psychological are thyroid, iron, sleep, blood sugar, or a medication you are already taking. A primary care visit rules those out first, and it is the cheaper door.
To find a therapist or psychiatrist. Your insurer's directory is the fastest route to someone covered. findtreatment.gov, run by SAMHSA, lists state-licensed treatment for mental health and substance use and is free to search. If paying out of pocket is the obstacle, ask every practice you call whether they hold sliding-scale slots, and look at university training clinics, which are supervised and cost a fraction.
Check the license. In California, anyone calling themselves a therapist should hold a license you can look up by name at search.dca.ca.gov. It takes a minute and it is worth doing. Coaching, including mine, is not a licensed profession, which is exactly why this page exists.
A first call is a fit conversation, not a commitment. You are allowed to ask what they treat, how they work, and whether they have seen this before. You are allowed to say it is not a fit and call the next one.
Four places where the right help is specific.
If you have tried to cut back and could not, or someone close to you is asking you to, that is worth one phone call.
SAMHSA National Helpline
1-800-662-4357
Free, confidential, every hour of every day. They refer to treatment near you and they do not need your name.
If eating has become a set of rules, a number, or something you hide, this is a clinical specialty and a good one.
National Alliance for Eating Disorders
1-866-662-1235
Answered by licensed therapists who specialize in this, weekdays 9am to 7pm Eastern. Outside those hours, call or text 988.
If someone you live with frightens you, coaching is the wrong room. Advocates do this work, and they will not tell you what to do.
National Domestic Violence Hotline
1-800-799-7233
Text START to 88788
Free and confidential, every hour of every day. The Deaf Hotline takes video calls at 1-855-812-1001. If you are in immediate danger, call 911.
Grief is not a disorder and it does not need fixing. It does deserve company, and it sometimes needs a clinician.
Where to look
Hospice organizations run free bereavement groups open to anyone, whether or not your person was in their care. Ask the nearest one. If grief has stopped moving at all after a year, or you are not safe, a therapist who works with loss is the right call, and 988 is there tonight.
Many of the people I work with are in therapy too.
That is a normal arrangement, not a conflict. Therapy tends to work backward and inward, on what happened and what it did to you. Coaching works forward and outward, on what you are building and what it is asking of you. People get a lot out of having both, in different hours, for different jobs.
If you want us to coordinate, I am glad to, with your written permission and in my own lane. I do not ask your therapist for clinical opinions and I do not take direction on your care. And if we start working together and I hear something that belongs to a clinician, I will say so plainly and help you find one. That is part of the job, not the end of ours.
What I will not do is treat a clinical problem with growth work because you asked me to. It would be flattering to be the only call you had to make, and it would be the wrong answer.
You can write to me and ask, and I will tell you honestly.
If coaching is not the right help, I would rather point you somewhere useful than take the work. Write to me through the contact page, or to [email protected]. One caution worth saying plainly: email is not a crisis line. I read it when I read it, and I cannot promise how fast. If it is urgent, use 988 or 911 above, not me.