I've been going to therapy for over ten years now. I resisted therapy aggressively when I was in my 20s, saying stupid shit like: "Nobody could possibly know my brain better than me." or gems like: "I can't trust anyone else to mould my brain."

Ah, the arrogance of youth and the ignorance of inexperience

I'm not going to delve into the good and bad of therapy. There are thousands of articles and tens of thousands of research papers and millions of case studies that argue for therapy. I'm sure there are many that disagree with therapy too. I'm not here to debate that with you to be honest.

Therapy works for me and I want to spend the rest of this article explaining my process and how I frame therapy and use it to improve myself every year.

I see therapy as mental coaching. In the same way the most general advice to improve your health is to move more, exercise your body more and to get physically fit, I believe the same applies to my mind. I should exercise it, move it more, push it into uncomfortable places and I don't believe I have the skills to do that on my own at the highest level.

And let me be clear here, this is my mind and I absolutely am playing at the highest level. I want (need) my mind to be as sharp as possible and as elastic and fit as possible when I'm throwing down with the best in my field, on a stage or in a debate. My mind isn't world-class… but every day I push to get it there.

1. Getting help is a sign of strength

So the first thing is to reframe therapy. Seeing a psychologist isn't a sign of weakness, it's a sign of strength. It's a sign of growth. Furthermore, it's a sign you take yourself and your mental health seriously. Likewise, it's a sign you take your relationships seriously (including the one you have with yourself). It's a sign you give a fuck, and that is a strong green flag.

For some strange reason men seem to hang on to the idea that therapy is a sign of weakness and that they are strong and smart enough to not require a mental coach. This is such a ridiculous perspective when so many men love blindly and idiotically love team sports and obsess over sport stars who all have dedicated mental coaches in various forms. A few examples:

• The NBA's Mind Health Programme requires every team to have a licensed mental health professional.
• Gilbert Enoka is internationally renowned for his 23-year history with the All Blacks, first as their mental skills coach and later as All Blacks Manager of Leadership. During that time the team won back-to-back Rugby World Cups, 21 consecutive Bledisloe Cups, three Grand Slams, and eight Tri Nations titles.
• Clubs like Liverpool, Arsenal, and Manchester City have been pioneers in embracing sports psychology.
• South African Paddy Upton was appointed mental conditioning and strategic leadership coach of the Indian national cricket team in 2008 alongside head coach Gary Kirsten.
• Prof Pieter Kruger has worked with rugby's Sharks, Lions, Springboks, Blitzboks, and Proteas netball, as well as international clients including Harlequins, Munster, Brumbies, F1's McLaren, UK Athletics, Great Britain Rowing, and Chelsea FC.

One of my favourite quotes comes from a friend of mine, Howard Mann, who likes to say to his business coaching clients, "You can't read the label from inside your own bottle." Howard is right, and this thinking applies to your own brains too. Sports professionals know it. CEOs know it. Top professionals in any field know it. But the average man thinks he's smarter than all of these high performers.

Get over yourself and listen to your heroes. Hire a mental coach because, for no other reason, your favourite sportsballstar has one and you think they are strong as fuck, right?

2. Finding a therapist

back in the day when therapy was a niche interest of an elite few hippies who wanted to test out new age ways to heal, it was tough to find a psychologist.

I remember my first time seeing a therapist. I was 13 and my father had just been hi-jacked at gunpoint by three armed men in our driveway at home while my brother and I were opening the gate for him. It was a tough night, my brother and I made the decision to lock the gate to the house when we saw the three men follow him into the garage. I couldn't sleep for weeks after that, so my parents booked me in to see a therapist who happened to also be the mother of one of my classmates.

She was well-meaning but didn't listen and tried to get me to admit I was being bullied and that's why I couldn't sleep, when it was so blatantly obvious that I had some form of ptsd.

Anyway, things are different now and there are a lot of options available to you.

Furthermore, I started with in-person sessions. I found my first therapist by asking the friends I respected and trusted the most if they had any recommendations or knew anyone who might. I was lucky to get a good reference to a therapist who has space for me.

Moving to Europe has made things a bit more complex. EU therapists are fucking expensive and there is short supply so they are all over-booked if you want someone in person who speaks your language.

You can always ask your GP for recommendations and oftentimes your medical aid will cover the cost for this.

Then you can also try online services, which is my preference (and you'll understand why shortly). I tried Better Help once and it was absolutely fine but last year when burnout hit me, I decided to get more serious, focus up and started trawling through It's complicated.

3. Interviewing the therapists

My advice is to first interview a few different psychologists and if it's your first time doing therapy of any kind, interview different people who have different approaches.

Set up interviews with men and woman.

Set up interviews with therapists who specialise in different kinds of therapy, here are five you can start with:

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) — Helps you identify and change the negative thought patterns that drive unhelpful emotions and behaviours.

Psychodynamic — Explores how your past and unconscious patterns are quietly shaping who you are today.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) — Teaches you to stop fighting your difficult thoughts and feelings, and focus instead on living according to your values.

Person-centred — Provides a safe, non-judgmental space where you can talk freely and find your own path to growth.

I have found that CBT helps my brain the most, so I searched It's complicated for CBT therapists who specialise in burnout recovery and future planning.

Each interview is 15 minutes long and I ask fairly standard questions that give me a sense of how the person reacts, responds and thinks to solve problems I might have.

I set up interviews with five CBT therapists and this time I was specifically looking for a female perspective on my experience of life. After five interviews I was fortunate enough to find a therapist who had lived in Cape Town, so she knew South African men. She had lived in my neighbourhood in Amsterdam for 7 years so she understands my current context. Finally, she had recently moved to Cyprus, which is where my family is from, and she is staying in the city some of my family still lives. It was a no-brainer.

4. Come prepared - take notes

Therapy for some people is meandering and nebulous. It can be this for me too and there are times when my life is chaotic and my brain is in turmoil and for those sessions things are much less organised and clear. But for the most part I book one session per month and between sessions I spend my month taking notes about my actions, thoughts and struggles in a "Therapy" notebook in Notion so it's always on me.

Before each session I review my notes from the month and build an agenda.

I know, I know, it sounds like I need to see a therapist. Don't worry, she knows I bring an agenda to every session.

Sometimes the agenda is totally meaningless despite my best efforts but hey, that's therapy!

At the very least if you come prepared you can figure out what you thought was important to you right at the moment versus what you actually end up spending your time and attention resolving.

5. Record your sessions

Some therapists don't like or allow this. Those therapists aren't for me.

I record my sessions using an app. This is why I choose to have online sessions over in person sessions. You can still record if you do it in person, but it does add an extra step in the record > transcribe > import steps. Once I have the transcripts from the session I review the conversation in relation to my original agenda and fill in the gaps.

I also review the transcription to write down key points, mental models and paradigms that we build together so that I don't lose them in the mess of thoughts from the session.

This step feels strange to begin with but remember, this is about optimisation and improvement so reviewing the sessions is a great way to hear yourself speak and think while watching someone lease guide and help you.

Recording your sessions in the age of AI also means you are able to unearth patterns you may not have noticed in the past. I have created a Claude project with my sessions, agenda, goals and notes and then get to ask about every little thing I want.

6. Build mental models

Therapy sessions usually don't solve things for me in the session.

Each session create a swirl of expectation, realisation, insight, confusion and clarity all at the same time during a tumultuous day or two after. Each session gives me insight into an issue or issues, and directs my thinking down a specific path, but without mental models and new paradigms to use in my every day life, I'd be a lost fart in a bag the size of Manhattan.

This is the most critical part of therapy for me. In each session when we have a breakthrough or something new shifts and surfaces my therapist and I stop and build a new model for me to follow for a while to see how it fits.

Here, I'll give you an example:

When I was deep in the throes of burnout last year I was struggling to control micro-experiences in a single day. If something irritated me I would throw the entire day away out of frustration.

After discussing and analysing the specific instances we decided on the following simple model for me to walk through when I felt irritated.

1. Awareness - what is the real size of the irritation (a stubbed toe or a business deal going bad)?
2. Try to make a different choice - can I make a choice that doesn't irritate me?
3. Change your mind - just because it's irritating doesn't mean it has to be irritating.

I now have this as a permanent mental model until my physical response to irritation is to let it go and not double down.

7. Test the models

Some conclusions turn out to be right and some turn out to be wrong but both are appropriate and acceptable. If you test a mental model or new paradigm and you hate it then you get to drop it, evolve it or add it back into your agenda for your next session to discuss why it didn't work and how you felt.

How would I know how it felt at the moment? Because I follow Step 4 above religiously.

I have also started asking people how I'm doing. I'm trying to be softer in my approach to new people and after having met some new people at a recent conference, I asked them how I did and mark myself in my notes.

The craziest thing starts to happen at this point; feedback loops create positive reinforcement and the mental models stick!

The more hard work you're doing updating your operating system, the better your operating system gets which means the more hard work you can do updating your operating system. It's a self-fulfilling cycle of self-improvement.

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Look, I know this all sounds a bit intense but here's the thing — it fucking should be.

Improving is hard work and I have an insane amount of respect for people who try even if they don't always succeed. The converse is also true; I lost respect for people who very rarely (almost never) update their operating system. Even if your operating system (world view) is pleasant, kind and good for you, I still think you should be updating it and challenging it often, or you risk becoming a relic, or worse, the same version of yourself from last year.

I try to be a different version of myself every year. Hell it feels like I'm upgrading my operating system every month at this point but that's a good thing for me. I like to see the world with new eyes and fresh perspective, I like to be challenged and have my world view and core beliefs challenged. I like being a better version of myself and would feel pretty devastated if I was the same person today that I was five years ago. That's not progress, that's ignorance.

On the whole, therapy is a way for me to build mental fortitude while becoming a better person not only for myself but for the people I care about.

When I frame therapy like that I really don't understand why everybody doesn't want the same thing.