How to Be Your Own Therapist summary

Everyone brings their own unique story to therapy, and Owen O’Kane is no exception. He grew up in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in a tough, working-class area, during a tumultuous period in Irish history known as The Troubles. And if that wasn’t enough, he was also gay and living in a conservative religious community that didn’t accept his sexuality.

O’Kane got by however he could. But life only began to improve when he started seeing a therapist – a wonderful woman who happened to be a Catholic nun. Therapy opened doors, transformed O’Kane’s life, and ultimately led him to become a therapist himself.

Through this personal process, O’Kane learned to recognize the deep-seated patterns and assumptions that held him back, and caused him to feel shame and self-doubt.

As children, we do our best to navigate our environment. We learn coping strategies to protect ourselves and meet our needs. Once cemented, however, these strategies can become almost invisible to us, as we use them in our adult lives. And this tendency is the origin of much of our suffering because these strategies often no longer serve us.

Seeing a therapist is a great way to start uncovering these unhelpful behaviors.

Typically in therapy, you start by telling your story – the significant events of your life so far – doing your best to give your therapist an unvarnished account. Then, you identify the struggles you’re facing as an adult: what brought you to therapy and what you’d like to change. You and your therapist look for connections, reflecting on life events and their impacts, and paying attention to the rules and assumptions that may have carried through to today. Once you identify the self-enforced rules you’ve been living by, you can start examining and questioning them, to see what’s supporting you – and what may be holding you back.

This is therapy, in a nutshell. But therapy isn’t a matter of “one-and-done.” It’s an ongoing process – a lifestyle, even – in which you check in, introspect, and take ongoing steps to stay connected to yourself and what matters. You can independently learn how to do this, shedding those unhelpful habits that stop you from living your best life.

To this end, we’re going to explore a three-step self-therapy practice that you can carry out in as little as ten minutes a day.