Support resources
Some of what I write about here runs close to things that need a licensed professional rather than a coach: workplace bullying, burnout, anxiety that follows you home. Coaching does not diagnose and does not treat. If any of it is reaching your sleep, your mood, or your sense of what's real, the people below are the right first call.
This page is deliberately short. Everything on it is an organization that keeps its own listings current, so what you find here should still be accurate when you need it.
If you are in immediate danger
Call your local emergency number: 911 in Canada and the United States, 999 in the United Kingdom, 000 in Australia, 112 across the European Union.
If you need to talk to someone now
- Find a Helpline
- Free and confidential helplines in over 150 countries, by phone, text or chat. It asks where you are and gives you the lines that serve your country. This is the one to try first, wherever you live.
- Befrienders Worldwide
- A network of emotional support centres across more than 30 countries, staffed by volunteers who listen without judging or telling you what to do.
- International Association for Suicide Prevention
- Their crisis centres page points to the main international networks, which is useful if the directories above don't cover where you are.
Finding a therapist or counsellor
Each of these is run by the professional body for that country, so everyone listed is registered and accountable to someone. Your family doctor is also a good route, and in some places the only route to publicly funded care.
- Canada · Canadian Psychological Association
- How to find a psychologist, including the list of provincial and territorial associations, many of which run their own referral services.
- United States · APA Psychologist Locator
- Search licensed psychologists by state, name or speciality.
- United Kingdom · British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy
- Search registered therapists by town or postcode.
- Australia · Australian Psychological Society
- Search by location, issue or area of practice.
- Anywhere else
- Look for your country's national psychological or counselling association, which will keep a register, or start with your doctor.
Where coaching fits
A coach doesn't diagnose and doesn't treat, and any coach who offers to should worry you. Coaching works on the practical layer alongside proper support: thinking a situation through, planning a route, and doing the work that route takes.I've written about the difference between the two at more length.
The organizations on this page are independent of me. I have no affiliation with any of them and receive nothing for listing them.