Therapy works mainly through understanding and relationship, and is the right door for anything clinical.
Coaching works through structure and forward motion, and assumes you are stable. Somatic work goes through the body and nervous system, and is for patterns that fire faster than thought. They are not interchangeable and none is superior. The question is which one your root responds to.
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Therapy
Licensed, regulated, insurable in many cases. Works through conversation, history, and the therapeutic relationship. Many modalities inside it: CBT, psychodynamic, EMDR, IFS and others. Strong for meaning-making, grief, trauma processing with a trained clinician, and anything requiring diagnosis or medication coordination. The honest limitation: patterns held in the body can be described for years without moving.
02
Coaching
Unregulated, so quality varies. Forward-looking, goal-oriented, structured. Strong when you know what you want and need accountability and a method. Assumes a stable baseline. Not appropriate for crisis, trauma, or anything clinical, and a good coach will say so.
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Somatic work
A family of body-based approaches: Somatic Experiencing, breathwork, bodywork, movement. Works with nervous-system state rather than narrative. Strong when the pattern is a freeze, a flinch, a shutdown that arrives before any thought. Does not primarily aim at understanding. Some forms are activating and are contraindicated for certain people; a competent practitioner screens for that.
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How to tell which your pattern wants
You cannot explain it. Therapy.
You can explain it perfectly and still do it. Often somatic, or a rule-level read.
Coaching, if stable.
Most people who find Project Gina are in the middle column. They have done the explaining. Years of therapy, still stuck.
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What Project Gina does with this
Project Gina doesn't choose a kind of work for you. The guides to talk therapy, coaching and somatic work explain each one, who it may not suit, and what credential to check. You choose.
Descriptions here are general. For specific modalities, consult the professional bodies that govern them.