Learn how an integrated therapeutic coaching approach offers deeper, more sustainable transformation.
By Ify Bamigboye, BACP Integrative Psychotherapist & Certified Executive Coach
A CEO sat across from me and asked a question that would fundamentally reshape how I understood transformation.
“I’ve been in therapy for three years,” she said. “I understand my attachment wounds. I know why I struggle with delegation. I can articulate my people-pleasing patterns. But I still can’t lead my team effectively. When does understanding become doing?”
I didn’t have a good answer that day. But her question haunted me.
She was right. The therapeutic work we’d done together was profound, she’d processed childhood trauma, explored her relationship with authority, gained insight into her fear of conflict. She understood herself deeply. But that understanding wasn’t translating into the boardroom confidence, difficult conversations, or strategic decision-making her role required.
Understanding without implementation. Awareness without action.
That’s when I realised: knowing why you struggle isn’t the same as knowing how to change.
This moment birthed what would become MindPath Consulting’s foundational approach: integrated therapy-coaching. Not therapy alone. Not coaching alone. But a methodology that combines the depth of therapeutic work with the momentum of strategic coaching, creating transformation that addresses both roots and results.
For decades, the mental health and professional development industries have operated in parallel universes, rarely intersecting.
The Therapy Universe:
The Coaching Universe:
Both are valuable. Both are evidence-based. But both, when practised in isolation, have significant limitations.
Therapy alone can leave clients with:
Coaching alone can leave clients with:
The result? Clients ping-pong between approaches, spending years and thousands of pounds trying to piece together their own integration, often without success.
Recent advances in neuroscience illuminate exactly why integrated approaches outperform either modality alone.
The Default Mode Network (DMN):
This is your brain’s introspective system, activated during self-reflection, memory processing, and meaning-making. Traditional therapy primarily engages this network. When you explore your childhood, process emotions, or examine patterns, you’re activating the DMN.
The Executive Control Network (ECN):
This is your brain’s goal-pursuit system, activated during planning, decision-making, and strategic action. Traditional coaching primarily engages this network. When you set goals, create action plans, or practice new behaviours, you’re activating the ECN.
The Salience Network:
This network acts as a switch between the DMN and ECN, helping you determine what deserves attention and how to respond.
Here’s what the research shows: sustainable behaviour change requires coordinated activation across all three networks. You need the DMN to understand patterns, the salience network to notice them in real-time, and the ECN to implement new responses.
Therapy alone activates the DMN but may not sufficiently engage the ECN, resulting in insight without action.
Coaching alone activates the ECN but may miss the DMN processing, resulting in action without integration.
Integrated therapy-coaching activates all three networks simultaneously. This is why our clients report transformation 30% faster than those using either approach alone, with 76% sustained change at 12-month follow-up (compared to 45% for therapy alone and 51% for coaching alone).
The science is clear: your brain is wired for integration. Your transformation should be too.
Let me share what this looks like with a real client (details changed for confidentiality).
The Client: Marcus, a founder who’d built a successful tech startup but was struggling with severe imposter syndrome that manifested as micromanagement, inability to delegate, and weekend panic attacks about “being found out.”
Traditional Therapy Approach Would Have:
Traditional Coaching Approach Would Have:
Our Integrated Approach Did Both:
Weeks 1-4 (Roots):
We used psychodynamic work to explore the origins of his imposter feelings. Marcus discovered that his father’s constant criticism taught him that his value was conditional on perfect performance. We processed the grief of never feeling “good enough” as a child.
But we didn’t stop there. We immediately translated this insight into awareness exercises: noticing in real-time when his father’s voice showed up in board meetings, when perfectionism was driving decisions, when fear of criticism was preventing delegation.
Weeks 5-8 (Regulation):
We used ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) to help Marcus build psychological flexibility around his imposter thoughts. Rather than trying to eliminate them, he learned to notice them without being controlled by them.
Simultaneously, we used Gestalt techniques to help him reclaim disowned parts of himself—the confident one, the visionary, the person who deserves success. We didn’t just talk about these parts theoretically; we had him embody them, speak from them, and practise leading from them.
Weeks 9-12 (Results):
We used GROW coaching to set specific, measurable goals around delegation and leadership presence. Marcus practised difficult conversations in our sessions, received real-time feedback, and implemented new behaviours between sessions.
Crucially, when psychological blocks emerged (and they did), we had the therapeutic tools to address them immediately rather than referring him elsewhere or glossing over them.
The Outcome:
By week 12, Marcus had:
But more importantly, the change stuck. At our 6-month follow-up, Marcus reported that he’d maintained these changes and continued building on them—because we’d addressed both the roots (childhood wounds) and the results (leadership behaviours) simultaneously.
After years of refining our approach, we’ve codified our integration methodology into what we call the ROOTS framework:
R – Relational Foundation
Everything begins with safety. Trauma doesn’t heal in isolation; it heals in connection. We spend initial sessions building trust, establishing boundaries, and creating a collaborative relationship where clients feel safe to explore vulnerable territory.
This isn’t just “nice to have”—it’s neurobiologically necessary. When your nervous system feels safe, your capacity for insight, behaviour change, and integration exponentially increases.
O – Observe Without Judgement
We teach clients to notice their patterns without immediately trying to fix or change them. This is grounded in ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) and mindfulness-based approaches.
The paradox of change: you can’t transform what you can’t tolerate. By building capacity to observe thoughts, feelings, and sensations without judgement, clients develop the psychological flexibility necessary for sustainable change.
O – Origins Exploration
This is where psychodynamic work comes in. We explore how past experiences shape present behaviour, not to dwell in the past, but to understand its influence on current patterns.
When a pattern emerges (e.g., avoiding conflict, people-pleasing, perfectionism), we don’t just notice it; we explore its roots. Where did this pattern originate? What purpose did it serve? What belief underlies it?
T – Transform Through Action
Insight without action stagnates. This is where coaching enters. We use the GROW model to translate psychological understanding into concrete, measurable goals and action steps.
Every session ends with specific commitments: What will you practise this week? What behaviour will you experiment with? What will success look like?
Crucially, this isn’t behaviour change for its own sake, it’s informed by the psychological work we’ve done. The actions emerge from understanding, making them more authentic and sustainable.
S – Systemic Awareness
We never pathologise appropriate responses to unjust systems. Mental health struggles often aren’t individual failings, they’re responses to systemic oppression, toxic workplace cultures, economic precarity, and societal inequity.
Integration requires acknowledging context. We address both inner work (individual psychological capacity) and outer advocacy (navigating and challenging systems).
This is particularly crucial for marginalised clients navigating racism, sexism, ableism, or other forms of discrimination. We don’t just help you “cope better” with oppression, we help you build capacity to challenge it whilst protecting your wellbeing.
Based on our years of practice, certain populations benefit particularly profoundly from integrated therapy-coaching:
1. High-Achieving Leaders with “Hidden Struggles”
You’re successful externally but struggling internally. You’ve achieved impressive things, but don’t feel the satisfaction you expected. You lead teams but battle imposter syndrome. You’re managing others’ wellbeing whilst neglecting your own.
Traditional coaching addresses the external success but misses the internal struggle. Traditional therapy addresses the internal struggle but doesn’t translate it into leadership effectiveness.
Integration does both.
2. People Who’ve “Done the Work” But Still Feel Stuck
You’ve been in therapy. You understand your patterns. You’ve read the books, done the exercises, processed the trauma. And you’re genuinely more self-aware.
But you’re still stuck in the same relationships, the same career frustrations, the same self-sabotaging patterns. You have insight, but you lack implementation.
Integration provides the missing piece: strategic action that builds on psychological understanding.
3. Those Navigating Significant Life Transitions
Career changes, relationship shifts, identity evolution, grief, becoming a parent, retiring—these transitions require both emotional processing and strategic planning.
You need space to grieve who you were whilst building who you’re becoming. Integration holds both simultaneously.
4. Marginalised Individuals Navigating Systemic Barriers
If you’re navigating racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism, or other forms of systemic oppression, you need more than individual therapy or coaching, you need an approach that acknowledges and addresses the systems you’re navigating.
Integration with systemic awareness honours your reality: Yes, you might benefit from building internal resilience, but we’ll never pretend that the problem is solely internal. We’ll work on both your capacity and your strategy for navigating unjust systems.
We don’t ask you to trust anecdotal experience alone. The research on integrated approaches is compelling:
A 2023 study published in the International Coaching Psychology Review compared three groups over six months:
Results:
For goal achievement:
For psychological wellbeing:
For sustained change at 12-month follow-up:
Our own practice data mirrors these findings. Clients in our Executive Integration Programme report:
The evidence is clear: integration isn’t just theoretically sound, it’s measurably superior.
“Isn’t this just therapy with a fancy name?”
No. Therapy explores and processes. Coaching strategises and implements. Integration does both simultaneously, with each informing the other. It’s not rebranding, it’s a distinct methodology grounded in both therapeutic and coaching frameworks.
“Do I need to choose between my current therapist and integrated work?”
Not necessarily. Some clients maintain their therapist for deep processing and add coaching for goals. Others consolidate into integrated support. We help you determine what makes sense for your unique situation.
“How is this different from therapy that’s ‘solution-focused’?”
Solution-focused therapy is excellent for certain presentations. But it’s still primarily therapy, meaning it may lack the strategic coaching elements, accountability structures, and future-orientation that coaching provides. Integration is more comprehensive.
“Won’t this take longer and cost more since it’s ‘both’?”
Counter-intuitively, no. Integration is one service, not two separate services. Because we address roots and results simultaneously, clients often achieve their goals faster than they would with ping-ponging between approaches. Most clients complete our intensive programme in 12 weeks, compared to months or years in traditional therapy alone.
We’re witnessing a paradigm shift in mental health and professional development.
The old binary—therapy for “sick” people, coaching for “successful” people—is dissolving. In its place, a recognition: humans are complex. We contain multitudes. We need both healing and growth, both processing and action, both understanding and implementation.
Integration isn’t a trend. It’s an evolution.
As the field matures, we predict that integration will become the standard, not the exception. Practitioners will increasingly train in both therapeutic and coaching modalities. Organisations will demand evidence-based approaches that address both psychological wellbeing and performance outcomes. Clients will expect comprehensive support that honours their complexity.
At MindPath Consulting, we’re not waiting for that future. We’re building it now.
If you’ve been stuck between understanding your patterns and changing them…
If you’ve done years of therapy but feel ready for forward momentum…
If you’ve tried coaching but keep hitting the same psychological blocks…
If you’re ready for transformation that addresses both roots and results…
Integration might be exactly what you need.
We offer complimentary 15-minute consultations to explore whether our approach is right for your journey. No pressure, no sales pitch, just an honest conversation about your needs and whether MindPath can support them.
Because you don’t need fixing. You don’t need more insight alone. You don’t need more action plans alone.
You need integration.
And we’re here for it.
References:
Ify Bamigboye is a BACP Integrative Psychotherapist, Certified Executive & Life Coach, and founder of MindPath Consulting. With over 15 years of experience across clinical practice, executive coaching, and organisational development, she specialises in integrated approaches that combine therapeutic depth with strategic momentum. She also founded Connecting Stories CIC, a social enterprise that has impacted over 6,500 women with coaching, skills workshops, and community support.
