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I don't see what the coaches are even doing, besides repeating the same advice that he's giving for free in his videos. As I understand it, with traditional therapy, the main benefit is supposed to be from talking about your problems to someone who will listen. The "talking cure" as Freud called it. But you're also opening up about your deepest secrets to someone, which is why it helps to have therapists somewhat regulated so they don't take advantage of people or convince them of crazy shit like Freud did.
As far as I can tell, he gives great explanations of how modern society and technology are bad for people in ways that are not their personal fault. But his main advice is just to get the internet and do some meditation. At least a therapist can meet you in person, seeing a coach over the internet seems to contradict that.
Having an internet coach who you can talk to and get personalized advice from isn't a useless service. Just having an intelligent person to be a sounding board can be worth money. Plus it can serve as someone to be accountable to- you need to tell the coach how much progress you make each week, so you make sure you make some progress instead of putting it off.
What consequences would regulated therapists face that these coaches wouldn't for abuse of people's secrets?
Doesn't the therapist lose their license if they're caught doing something wildly unprofessional? That's supposed to keep them in check a bit. But yeah, I do agree that it's helpful to have a real person to talk to regularly, just wish it didn't have to be some stranger on the internet.
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