Practical skills, clear goals, and steady accountability as you build the life you want. Coaching is offered as a distinct service, separate from psychiatric care.
Our life coaching services focus on helping you build practical skills, clarify goals, and create meaningful change in everyday life. Coaching is forward-focused and action-oriented. Together we can work on stress management, career and academic direction, relationships, self-confidence, and healthy routines.
While distinct from therapy, coaching can complement mental health treatment by strengthening motivation, accountability, and personal growth. If you are already working with a therapist or prescriber, coaching can support the skills side of that work as you move toward the life you want to create.
We keep this line very clear, for your protection and ours.
Coaching is not diagnosis, treatment, or therapy. It is practical skills, goal clarity, accountability, and habit building.
You will always know the cost before we begin. Coaching is self-pay only and is never billed to insurance.
Individualized one on one coaching focused on personal growth, career, business goals, life transitions, relationships, goal setting, and creating meaningful change.
A focused session for returning clients who need support with accountability, decision making, or a specific goal.
Coaching is not a covered medical service. No claims are filed, no diagnosis codes are used, and there are no surprise bills.
Coaching is not therapy or medication management. We hold ourselves to clear written policies that keep the two services separate.
Coaching clients who need clinical care are referred out to an appropriate provider, or formally converted to patients through a proper psychiatric intake. We do not blend the two. If something comes up in coaching that calls for assessment, diagnosis, or treatment, we will pause coaching and talk openly about the right next step for you.
Every coaching client signs a coaching agreement before we begin. The agreement states that coaching is not medical or psychiatric care, that no diagnosis or treatment is provided, that no provider-patient relationship is formed, and that coaching is not billable to insurance. This protects you, sets clear expectations, and keeps the coaching relationship honest from day one.
Coaching is cash pay only. It is not a covered medical service and is never billed to insurance. You will always know the cost up front, with no claims, no codes, and no surprises.
What coaching is, what it is not, and how it sits alongside clinical care.
Coaching is a working partnership built around what you want to create next. Instead of handing you answers, a coach brings the questions, the structure, and the follow-through, on the premise that you are already resourceful and capable of running your own life. The job is to help you see your options clearly, choose one, and act on it.
Therapy tends to what hurts. It involves assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of mental health conditions, and it often traces where a pattern started before that pattern can loosen. Coaching begins where you already are and works forward: goals, skills, habits, and accountability. Coaching diagnoses nothing and treats nothing. Alice Tran is a psychiatric provider, but coaching sessions are not clinical care and are not psychiatric care of any kind.
A consultant is hired as the expert. You describe the problem, they study it, and they come back with a recommendation for you to implement. Coaching turns that around. You are the expert on your own life and work, and the coach supplies the structure and the questions, so the answer you land on is genuinely yours and you actually follow through on it.
A mentor has walked a road you are on and offers advice out of their own experience: here is what I did, here is what I would do. A coach does not lead with their own path. The work is to help you generate your own options, weigh them honestly, and commit to one. Both are valuable, and they are not the same thing.
No. Coaching is open to anyone, whether or not you have ever been seen for clinical care at this practice. It is a separate service with its own agreement and its own fee.
Often yes, as long as the two stay clearly separate. Clinical visits involve diagnosis and treatment and are billed to insurance. Coaching involves neither and is self-pay only. If you are already a patient here, we will talk through whether a particular goal belongs in coaching or inside your clinical visits before you book.
No. Coaching is self-pay only and is never billed to insurance. There is no diagnosis code, no claim submitted, no superbill, and no surprise invoice. You will know the cost before we begin.
We stop and name it. If what surfaces looks like a mental health condition that needs assessment or treatment, the honest answer is that coaching is not the right tool for it. You will be pointed toward appropriate care, either here as a patient or with another provider.
There is no required package. Many people start with one 60 minute session to get the goal clear and the plan written, then use shorter 30 minute check ins to hold the momentum. How often we meet is decided together and can change as your life changes. Sessions are held by secure video, or in person in Fairfax.
Yes. Coaching is offered in English and Vietnamese, with no interpreter needed.
No. Coaching is not medical or psychiatric care, so it is not tied to state licensure the way clinical visits are. Psychiatric treatment through this practice is available only to people located in Virginia.
Curious whether coaching is a fit?
Reach out and we can talk through your goals and whether coaching, clinical care, or a referral is the right starting point for you.
Coaching services are separate from psychiatric care and do not establish a provider-patient relationship.
If you are in crisis right now, please do not wait for an appointment.
Call or text 988, the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. Free, confidential, available 24/7.
For emergencies, call 911 or go to your nearest emergency room.
Alice Tran Psychiatric Care does not operate 24/7 and does not provide crisis services. Emails, voicemails, text or portal messages are typically responded to within 24 to 72 business hours.