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Friday, September 20, 2002
By Sara Fiedelholtz

With a location in almost every neighborhood, Starbucks has made it easy to get your caffeine fix. And if Dr. Joe Siegler has his way, soon you’ll be able to get a fix on your life as well at neighborhood storefront “life coaching centers.”

Siegler, a psychiatrist by training, wanted to create a coaching center that is a visible part of the lives of the people he is assisting.
“ I wanted to bring it out of secrecy. I want it to be a positive,” said Siegler, who debuts Chicago’s first storefront coaching center, Full Life, at 2750 N. Racine Ave. later this month.

Life coaching, developed by practicing mental health experts about 10 years ago, is designed to help people navigate modern-day life. It concentrates on the how-tos, not the how-comes. It is designed to help people create the life they want where professional and personal happiness are more closely intertwined. The coach aids clients in establishing goals and then creating a strategy to achieve them.

"The meaning of life coaching has definitely crept into society thanks to the likes of Oprah, Cheryl Richardson, and Laura Berman Fortgang,” Vilas said, refereeing to prominent communicators who have featured life coaching in their work.

Coaching is also more oriented to the future than traditional psychotherapy, which looks at the past and tries to figure out where a patient’s wounded areas are and how to fix them.
"Coaching is the next generation of therapy,” said Siegler. “The fact is that a good therapist has always been a coach working with clients on solving problems and setting goals.”

A life coach helps a client come up with his own answers but accelerates the way to attain the goal. The coach also aids clients in learning from their experiences and advises on strategies for fitting together work and life.

"People have realized that they can take control of their lives and exercise choices,” said Siegler. “People see that they can have a meaningful life and want to live it to its full potential.”

Siegler said his clients range in age from 18 to 90, but most are in their 20s and 30s.

"I want to give people a cool place to work on their lives,” said Siegler.

Dr. Siegler was quoted in a recent article in

To read the full article, click here.






Letter to the editor written by Joe Siegler, MD in response to an article by Raoul Lionel Felder:

In "Mothers, Kids and Feminism" (Op-Ed, May 14), Raoul Lionel Felder states that "psychiatrists, competent or otherwise, simply lack common sense." But it does not take a lot of common sense to see that lurking behind Mr. Felder's idealization of motherhood is a thinly disguised devaluation of women.

Through history, men often claimed to put women on a pedestal. However, during this century, the feminist movement finally showed this idealization to be a Trojan horse. For, along with the "elevated" status of women, came fewer civil rights, less protection under the law and unequal treatment in the workplace. Therefore, Mr. Felder creates a specious argument when he says that the problems in custody cases today are present because "traditional values and the standing of mothers have been knocked aside."

Letter to the editor written by Joe Siegler, MD in response to an article by William Styron:

In "Why Primo Levi Need Not Have Died," William Styron eloquently weaves together the threads that make up what psychiatrists call a major depressive episode (Op-Ed, Dec. 19). But I am concerned with his discussion of treatments...

...Thus, the passage of time is not acceptable treatment of depression. People with depression and those who care for them need to turn to the many effective treatments that are available. Enough suffering, enough stigma.