As a brother in recovery rooms who will be celebrating my 7th fellowship anniversary this December, and who has, at different points in my life, received psychotherapy, 12-step sponsorship, and holistic spiritual coaching—and is himself a 12-step sponsor and holistic spiritual coach—this is a question that has regularly come up in discussion with my fellows, friends, and colleagues. In this article I offer my opinion, enriched by the numerous discussions and personal experiences I have accumulated. The purpose of this article is to help those with emotional, mental, or spiritual suffering to make educated inquiries and decisions regarding their recovery journey.
To begin, let’s briefly review each modality before comparing their applicability for different people.
Psychotherapy
Let’s begin with the approach that is most clear to define, which, due to its institutional and legally regulated nature, is psychotherapy. Psychotherapists are licensed healthcare professionals who undergo rigorous academic and practical training, often 4 to 8 years of study and practice, typically involving post-graduate education.
Psychotherapists have a wide breadth of practices, specialties, and schools of thought, ranging from traditional Freudian analysis to Internal Family Systems (IFS) parts work. A psychotherapist’s goal and purpose is generally to assess, diagnose (where applicable), and treat symptoms and disorders using treatments like talk therapy, EMDR, and grounding and regulation practices.
Examples of clinically defined conditions include depression, anxiety, and psychotic disorders (which can involve disconnection from reality), as well as disorders such as obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and borderline personality disorder (BPD).
Psychotherapists are paid professionals who follow regulated procedures as licensed healthcare providers, and they have certain legal privileges and responsibilities, such as legal confidentiality privelege, and in some cases mandated reporting.
Psychotherapists may also be, or work in tandem with, psychiatrists or psychiatric nurse practitioners. Psychiatrists are medical doctors who can prescribe psychiatric medications. Psychiatric nurse practitioners can also prescribe in many jurisdictions and are trained at the nursing graduate level. Medications are intended to reduce or manage symptoms; their appropriateness depends on the person and situation.
The goal of psychotherapy is not necessarily to guide or mentor clients toward their “true resonance” or “highest place of thriving and abundance.” Psychotherapy is, at its core, a healthcare profession with the primary purpose of treating symptoms and disorders. Clients who seek more than simply to be “stable” or “survive” may find that psychotherapy has limits in their recovery journey, as I did myself. In addition, depending on someone’s circumstances, psychotherapy may be economically or circumstantially inaccessible, or limited in quality or availability due to factors such as insurance, local provider availability, or geographic location.
That being said, due to systemic institutional support and legal recognition, psychotherapy is generally a conservative “first response” that can be appropriate for members of the general populace who are suffering from a wide range of symptoms or disorders, ranging from mild, intermittent depression or anxiety to acute psychological crises such as psychosis or suicidal ideation. Contemporary healthcare infrastructure has systems in place to stabilize and support people in crisis and provide a baseline level of care for those seeking relief from more common symptoms as well.
12-Step Sponsorship
12-step sponsorship is an informal, non-professional, unpaid, voluntary relationship between a sponsor and a sponsee. The sponsor is typically an experienced member of one or more 12-step fellowships with at least some time working the steps, who agrees to guide the sponsee.
A wide range of 12-step fellowships exist that cover many topics, ranging from substance use to relationships and attachment, overeating, money issues, compulsive internet or technology use, or even creative blocks. Due to the informal nature of sponsorship, practices vary widely from sponsor to sponsor and fellowship to fellowship.
For example, in substance-recovery fellowships, sponsors may be very hands-on with sponsees. In addition to mentoring them through the steps and providing emotional support, some sponsors may help sponsees adjust to substance-free life, help with practical tasks like getting to and from meetings, finding work, or connecting with resources. In some situations, sponsors may offer temporary support or help someone access shelter resources, though this varies widely and isn’t an expectation.
In fellowships that focus on patterns that are often less immediately acute—such as relational issues, money issues, or family trauma—sponsors often focus more narrowly on step work and emotional support.
In long-term recovery, once a person has years of experience and has themselves become a sponsor, they may move into more peer-like support relationships. Some people call this “co-sponsorship” or “fellow travelers,” though terms and norms vary by fellowship.
Sponsor relationships can be hit-or-miss, and the quality of mentorship can vary greatly depending on the sponsor’s experience, their emotional sobriety, their availability, and their breadth of knowledge. Emotional sobriety is a term recovery people often use to describe spiritual and emotional growth beyond technical sobriety. Technical sobriety is the objective amount of time abstinent from a destructive substance, pattern, or behavior.
It often takes trying multiple sponsors to find a good fit, and fellows will sometimes change sponsors over time or “outgrow” a particular relationship. Some sponsor-sponsee relationships can develop into friendships. At the same time, considering the vulnerability of someone in early recovery, it’s generally encouraged for sponsors to have transparent discussions about what the relationship is and isn’t.
A common pitfall in sponsorship—also seen with therapists and coaches—is the sponsee “making the sponsor their Higher Power,” as recovery people would call it. In other words, believing the sponsor has the power to “fix” the sponsee’s dysfunction, which of course isn’t true. The sponsor (or therapist or coach) can offer guidance, tools, and a held space, but the healing work is ultimately between the person and their Higher Power. Though such confusion or deification on the part of the sponsee or client can occur in many helping relationships, due to the informal, non-professional nature of sponsorship, this kind of relationship dysfunction can be especially common, particularly when boundaries are not adequately addressed or the sponsor does not understand enough about codependency to take precautions.
A notable difference between sponsorship and therapy is that 12-step programs are inherently spiritual in nature and generally non-denominational, whereas therapy is typically secular (though a client can seek explicitly faith-based therapy, and many therapists are open to spirituality if the client wants that). Non-denominational, in this context, means 12-step recovery does not require adherence to any particular religion, and the fellow is invited to explore their own relationship to a Higher Power, whether that is God in a traditional theistic sense or something more non-theistic.
12-step sponsorship is generally appropriate for a person seeking healing and relief from a specific dysfunctional addiction or pattern, and it is not a substitute for a higher level of care during acute psychiatric crises, where professional support is usually necessary.
With all that being said, sponsors are unsung heroes in our world today. It is through their selfless service and volunteer work that millions of people each year are able to recover from painful addictions and dysfunctions, and I am one of those people. I have received direct sponsorship from multiple sponsors throughout the years, and guidance from countless others through informal conversations and inquiries. The traditions and practice of 12-step recovery, through a Higher Power’s will, live on in the literature and in the blood, bones, stories, and spirit of those who have walked the path of 12-step recovery.
Holistic Spiritual Coaching
The term “coaching” may ambiguously refer to any number of unrelated modalities, typically involving a one-on-one, session-driven mentor relationship. Such modalities include sober coaching, life coaching, fitness coaching, sports coaching, business/sales coaching, and technique coaching (such as vocal coaching). That being said, the type of coaching I would like to discuss can broadly be referred to as holistic spiritual coaching.
Examples of modalities that could be included within the broader category of holistic spiritual coaching include IFS-inspired coaching, parts work coaching, recovery-informed coaching, trauma-informed coaching, inner child/reparenting coaching, nervous-system-informed (or somatic-informed) coaching, and values-based life coaching. Despite their differing styles and perspectives, what all of these coaching modalities have in common is the goal of helping clients realize balanced, holistic growth of their entire being, including emotional, spiritual, physical, mental/intellectual, creative, social (friends/family/romance), and career/financial growth.
How might a holistic spiritual coach have the necessary experience to mentor in such a wide array of “hard skills,” you might ask? When I refer to hard skills, I am not referring to how difficult it is to learn or perform a particular skill, but rather to the concrete, technical nature of certain skills or areas of expertise; for example, playing guitar, speaking Portuguese, organic chemistry, or salespersonship are all examples of hard skills.
To address the aporetic question posed, although holistic spiritual coaches tend to be intelligent and skilled people who have realized holistic growth in many areas of their life, it would be impossible for any one person to mentor in so many hard skills, all of which individually can take numerous years to reach master-level proficiency. However, there is one “person” that can become the client’s ultimate “Swiss Army knife” mentor.
This “ultimate mentor” is the client’s Higher Self, or Higher Power (depending upon the client’s beliefs). The wisdom of holistic spiritual coaching is that rather than mentoring hard skills, the coach assists in identifying and healing the spiritual and emotional blockages of the client, thereby enabling the client to become their own director. Some modalities refer to this state as being Self-led, referring to the “Self” or “higher self” previously mentioned.
Holistic spiritual coaching is ideal for people who, despite possessing relative stability in their life, and without any acute crises to threaten them, still hunger for “something more”—though what that something more is may not be clear to them. This feeling, which some describe as a peristent, gnawing unrest, typically indicates that beneath the superficial comfort and stability of their life, the person’s spirit has enormous underused potential which, like a tiger in a cage, longs to be free and express itself.
Like the restlessness of the tiger in the cage, if this spiritual longing is not addressed, it can cause immense long-term suffering. This spiritual malady is progressive; typically the person with such a spiritual hunger begins, without even realizing it, to numb or avoid discomfort through low-grade compulsions such as excessive screen time, comfort eating, or holding onto relationships, possessions, social anorexia, or behaviors that do not serve them.
If the person is lucky, their discomfort might progress to overt addictive behaviors. They are lucky not because such behaviors benefit them—for recovery from addiction is a horrendous burden—but because they have the gift of desperation. In other words, life figuratively has placed a “gun to their head,” and they must “grow or die.” And with that desperation comes surrender and action, which can ultimately lead to healing and transformation.
If the person is not blessed with the gift of desperation, they face a prospect even more bleak than the overt addict: to slowly decay, avoiding life, and becoming increasingly isolated, withdrawn, and empty—to leave this world having left a potential life unlived.
Holistic spiritual coaching for a willing seeker can prevent such a bleak outcome. A holistic spiritual coach will hold safe space and trust to guide the client through deeper and deeper layers of their consciousness. In this internal journey, the client will slowly heal their fears, resentments, insecurities, and confusion. They will receive clarity on who they are, what their purpose is, what they really want, and what really serves them. They will receive inspiration, focus, and courage to take the actions that most benefit them. They will unlock a full emotional experience of life: they will feel anger, sadness, disgust, and fear fully, but they will also gain the ability to feel true joy and happiness.
That being said, coaching cannot be a substitute for therapy or 12-step sponsorship. Coaches cannot assess, diagnose, or treat psychological conditions, nor is it appropriate for coaches to attempt addressing acute psychiatric crises such as psychosis, suicidal ideation, or acute substance detox. In my ethical understanding, it is also not appropriate for sponsorship to be offered as a paid service, and clients with acute addiction should be encouraged by their coach to seek 12-step sponsorship outside of their coach-client relationship. Coaching is for people with relative psychological stability who are seeking deeper work and self-discovery, not those in acute crisis or unmanageability. That being said, coaching can be done concomitantly with therapy and/or 12-step sponsorship as long as the client understands the clear distinction between the roles and purpose of each.
Where do I draw the line between my professional paid work as a coach, and my volunteer work as a 12-step sponsor?
My work as a holistic spiritual coach is distinct from my role as a 12-step sponsor, which I offer freely to my sponsees, within the limits of my availability. For sponsorship to be ethical, it must always be given freely. Sponsoring fellows, organizing meetings, and organizing groups are examples of free service work I give back to my recovery community, separate from the paid services I offer as a coach and artist.
Sponsorship and coaching are fundamentally different in their scope, intended purpose, and demographic. Sponsorship is typically intended for people who identify as an addict, have “hit rock bottom”—in other words, the lowest point in their life—and have a desperate desire to stop their addictive behavior(s). These people join a 12-step fellowship, thereby becoming a fellow, and find a sponsor who guides them through the 12 steps. The 12 steps are a rigorous spiritual path that require complete surrender to the process and a lifelong commitment to service work. The goal of this process is to result in a spiritual awakening, and the cessation of the destructive behavior(s) that brought the fellow to the fellowship. The 12 steps provide a spirituality- and community-oriented template for this person in recovery to live their life moving forward.
That being said, the goal of 12-step recovery is not necessarily for the fellow to reach their “highest holistic life potential,” though working the 12 steps is typically a prerequisite or co-requisite for coaching for those identifying as an addict, and even non-addicts may benefit from some exposure to 12-step meetings or practices. If I am working with a paid client who identifies as an addict, I hold a boundary that I do not sponsor someone I coach, nor do I coach someone I sponsor. Instead, I encourage them to seek a sponsor in the appropriate 12-step fellowship if they have not done so already.
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