FAQs About Therapy, Counseling, and Coaching in Redlands
When you start searching for mental health support, the terminology alone can feel overwhelming. Therapy, counseling, coaching, LCSW, LMFT, weekly sessions, how long does this take — it’s a lot to sort through before you’ve even had a single conversation.
This post answers the questions I hear most often from people considering therapy for the first time or returning after a gap. If you’re looking for a broader guide to finding the right therapist in Redlands, I’ve written about that here. And if you want to know specifically what to expect in a first session with me, that’s here.
For now — let’s clear up some of the confusion.
Is Therapy the Same as Counseling?
In everyday language, yes — people use therapy and counseling interchangeably and either one is understood to mean the same thing. You might search “counseling in Redlands” or “therapy in Redlands” and find the same practitioners. Both terms refer to working with a licensed mental health professional to address emotional, psychological, or relational concerns.
Technically there are some distinctions — counseling sometimes refers to shorter-term, more focused work around a specific issue, while therapy often implies deeper or longer-term exploration. But in practice most therapists use both words and don’t draw a hard line between them. What matters more than the label is the approach, the fit, and whether the work is actually helping.
What’s the Difference Between Therapy and Coaching?
This is one of the most important questions to ask — and I want to answer it honestly, because I have genuine respect for good coaching and don’t think it’s lesser than therapy. They’re simply different tools for different situations.
Coaching is typically forward-focused, goal-oriented, and action-based. A good coach helps you get clear on what you want, identify what’s getting in the way, and build strategies to move forward. Coaching can be enormously valuable for clarity, accountability, and momentum. Many of the women I work with have done coaching and found it genuinely helpful.
Therapy goes deeper. It’s the right choice when what’s getting in the way isn’t just a strategy gap but something more rooted — anxiety, trauma, relational patterns, grief, or other mental health concerns that have their origins in your history and your nervous system. Therapy is also the appropriate level of care when those concerns are significantly impacting your daily life, your relationships, or your sense of self.
The other significant difference is that therapists are licensed and regulated. We have graduate-level clinical training, supervised hours, ongoing continuing education requirements, and ethics codes we are legally bound to follow. Coaching is not currently regulated in the same way, which means the quality and training of coaches varies widely.
If you’ve done coaching and found it helpful but feel like something deeper is still unresolved — that’s often a signal that therapy might be the missing piece. Click here for more on how this can often show up as anxiety.
What Do All the Letters Mean?
When you’re searching for a therapist in Redlands you’ll see a variety of credentials after people’s names. Here’s a plain-language breakdown:
LCSW (Licensed Clinical Social Worker) — graduate training in both mental health treatment and the broader social and systemic context of people’s lives. LCSWs are trained to understand how culture, family systems, and life circumstances shape mental health, not just individual psychology. This is my license.
LMFT (Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist) — specialized training in relational dynamics, couples, families, and how our earliest relationships shape who we become.
Psychologist (PhD or PsyD) — doctoral-level training in therapy and often psychological testing and assessment.
LPC or LMHC (Licensed Professional Counselor or Licensed Mental Health Counselor) — master’s level training focused on individual and group therapy.
All of these licenses require graduate training, thousands of supervised clinical hours, and passing licensing exams. What matters beyond the license is specialization — what specific training and experience does this therapist bring, and does it match what you need?
As an LCSW I’ve pursued significant post-graduate training in somatic therapy, interpersonal neurobiology, and experiential approaches. That additional training shapes my work as much as my degree does.
Do I Need to Come Weekly?
I recommend weekly sessions, especially in the earlier stages of our work together — and here’s why it matters more than just preference.
The kind of therapy I do isn’t primarily about exchanging information or getting advice. It’s about building a relationship with your own inner experience — with the different parts of you that hold different feelings, fears, and histories. That relationship takes time and consistency to develop. Weekly sessions create the continuity and momentum that allow trust to build, both in our relationship and in your relationship with yourself.
We also work on skills together — practices around mindfulness, witnessing your own experience with compassion rather than judgment, and setting boundaries from the inside out. These aren’t concepts to understand once and move on from. They’re capacities that deepen with repetition and gentle practice over time.
That said, life happens. There will be weeks where something comes up and we reschedule. What I’ve observed over many years of doing this work is that clients who come consistently — even when they’re not sure they have anything to say — tend to move more fluidly and experience change more steadily than those who come intermittently.
How Long Does Therapy Usually Take?
Honestly — it varies more than any single answer can capture. And I think it’s important to be honest about that rather than give you a tidy number that might not be true for your situation.
Some concerns resolve relatively quickly. A specific life transition, a particular relationship pattern, a skill set that needs building — these might shift meaningfully in a few months of consistent work. Other situations, particularly those involving longer-term patterns rooted in early experiences, take longer. Not because something is wrong, but because the protective parts of us that developed over decades don’t shift on a timeline we can predict in advance.
What I’ve observed in my own practice is that something important tends to happen over time that can’t be rushed. As your nervous system begins to trust the process — and to trust that it’s safe to let down its guard a little — a deeper layer of self-trust begins to emerge. New understanding arises not because we analyzed our way to it, but because when all the parts of you are held with witnessing and compassion, something that was waiting to be known finally has room to surface.
That kind of emergence takes the time it takes. My job is to create the conditions for it. Yours is to show up.
On average, clients tend to work with me for around a year — though some stay longer and some complete meaningful work in less time. We’ll check in regularly about what’s feeling useful and what you want to focus on. Therapy should always feel purposeful, not like something you’re just maintaining.
Do You Have More Questions?
If there’s something I haven’t covered here that you’re wondering about — about my approach, about what working together might look like, or about whether therapy might be right for you right now — I’d love to hear from you. The best way to get your questions answered is in a free consultation where we can talk directly.I offer online therapy throughout California via telehealth. If you’re ready to start or just want to explore whether it’s the right time, reach out. There’s no pressure and no commitment required.
Author Bio
Kathy Jaffe, LCSW is a therapist in Redlands, CA specializing in work with women navigating anxiety, trauma, relationships, and midlife transitions. She offers online therapy throughout California via telehealth. Her approach draws on interpersonal neurobiology, somatic therapy, and mindfulness-based models including ACT and DBT-informed skills — and a deep belief that your system already knows how to heal. Learn more about working with her.
