I have not always had therapy.
Like many, I used to think that having a therapist was so American. The idea of paying someone to listen to all your thoughts felt self-indulgent. I didn’t even want to admit that I had one, at first,
I was brought up to be self-sufficient. This was in part due to being a child of immigrants who refused to rely on anybody. My family preferred to live in a bubble and at the heart of that bubble was our restaurant. Our lives danced around it; we ate all our meals there, we helped out after school, we clapped in each New Year with the customers who refused to go home.
The guiding ethos was duty, and the most important rule was to never, ever complain. Physical affection was for other people. Fears were never acknowledged and inconveniencing others was a crime. We were a psychoanalyst’s dream.
Facing the Music
I never felt like I chose therapy. Sobbing as I answered my doctor’s questions with my best friend for moral support, I was recommended medication and talk therapy immediately. I felt embarrassed that I needed help. Had I become the sort of spoilt child that my parents found disgusting? I could not understand why I was feeling so low.
I had designed my career by starting my own business. I felt confident in myself and I worked hard. I had great friends despite not spending enough time with them. Why was I having a breakdown, 6 years into my 12 year entrepreneurial journey?
I didn’t really know how therapy worked back then and was terribly self conscious about it. I would take notes and prepare for the sessions like a business meeting, to justify it was worth the money and I was capturing all the outputs. I needed to feel in control.
But with each weekly session, I felt myself soften with my own self-compassion. As I worked painfully through years of unresolved traumas, I noticed I started to let go. I began to trust the process and it felt good I was in therapy for a solid year and came off the medication too. I can honestly say that I was transformed in my ability to connect with myself. By the time I was ready to get on with life after therapy, I felt brave - unshackled from ghosts of the past.
Fast forward 6 years, and I am coming to terms with losing my business. I am again re-finding psychotherapy to support me.
Entrepreneurs & Therapy
I know a lot of entrepreneurs who have tried therapy; some love it, others reject it quickly. I always encourage people to keep looking for the right therapist. Like in any profession, there will be good ones and bad ones. Amongst the good ones, you need to find one that fits you, it is no different from seeking a partnership in business or in life.
I believe that all entrepreneurs can benefit from psychotherapy.
This is not because of some innate ‘personality type’ that make us more susceptible to emotional crises. It is more that the questions that entrepreneurs face daily can easily trigger an existential crisis.
The Inevitable Questions, but multiplied.
The fundamentals of the Existential Crisis were first defined by Irvin Yalom in the 1980s. Existential questions are those difficult moments when we are forced to face the key ‘inescapable parts’ of being human.
According to Yalom, there are 4 types of existential crisis:
- The Death crisis - accepting the inevitability of death of our ourselves, our loves ones, and things we care about.
- The Freedom Crisis - accepting the responsibility that one has to make the decisions within our freedom.
- The Isolation Crisis - the fear of being alone, to end up alone or to feel lonely.
- The Meaningless Crisis - the fear of living a life without purpose, or living a life that lacks value.
Of course, many people can go through life without having had any of these crises consciously. But if you look closer at the roots of our common anxieties, most of our troubles will stem from one of these.
If you then throw in an all-absorbing business that could close down from one wrong decision, the loneliness of making those decisions, the daily weight of those decisions - especially when the business and the entrepreneur are young and fragile - then entrepreneurs are surely primed for one hell of an existential crisis?
When working all hours, entrepreneurs have moments when they ask themselves: Is this really worth it? Did I expect to sacrifice this much? Why is it so hard, all the time? The existential questions we have for our businesses quickly extends to damning questions over the real value of our lives. What are you doing? What is it for?
Each human existential question is triggered and then multiplied under the magnifying glass of entrepreneurship.
Here’s how each crisis crushed me and how they could affect you too.
The Death Crisis
Entrepreneurs tend to link their happiness and fulfilment strongly to the health of their businesses. The balance sheet looks good = we feel good. The business gets some good publicity = we feel loved. The business is treading water = we are insecure and stressed.
The fear of losing one’s business is huge, so keeping it alive, especially at the early stages is the goal.
For me, I didn’t know where I ended and the business began - we were one. This death crisis meant that I lived on the edge for a decade, fearing not one but two deaths in unison. The idea of my business failing felt like the worst thing that could happen to me.
When my business did fold, you can imagine my surprise to see myself still standing, looking down at my business like an outer body experience. The end of my business for me was meant to equal the end of me, but somehow I survived.
With my Captain’s Guilt of not going down with the ship, I was racked with a secret wish to have collapsed with the business too. I did not want to answer the question of who I was, without my business. These dark thoughts led me back to seeing a therapist to ensure I kept believing in life after this death.
In Buddhist philosophy, there is a belief that when we die, our Yin and Yang spirits in our bodies split ways. The Yin, standing for peace stays in the body and the Yang, the fighting energetic spirit leaves the body that no longer needs it.
When I lost my business, it truly felt like a part of me died. I imagined my body becoming lifeless while the Yang energy broke out and floated away.
I was left with the Yin energy to help me heal but I missed the Yang energy. I lamented feeling action-oriented and full of purpose. It was weird to withdraw and find joy in the quiet. The punchy Yang energy that drove both my success and my burnout, had fizzled out in the embers.
When the death bell rang, I lost my purpose. I did not know who I was, without my business and I am still figuring it out now.
The Isolation Crisis.
It’s lonely at the top, they say.
I had some wonderful advisors who supported me through thick and thin, but at the end of the day when you head home alone after a tough day or you are in a meeting delivering some dreaded news, you feel like the only person that can understand you, is you.
You fear sharing the full picture to staff for fear they might be spooked by your fears; does it spell trouble for them too? Friends would get tired by the issues that troubled me. Boyfriends wanted to stop hearing about my workday.
A therapist will listen to all your worries without judgement and help you to distil why you are feeling this way. A deeper understanding of our fears and having someone without an agenda to talk to is a real balm to the loneliness of entrepreneurship.
The Freedom Crisis
Sounds like a “rich person’s problem", doesn’t it? Bear me with me. Is there really such thing a thing as having too much freedom?
Entrepreneurs make decisions all the time, sometimes they have to make decisions quickly and without all the information they want. Our decisions can have a huge ripple effect. Perhaps it will affect an employee’s livelihood, a small suppliers’ business viability or a business’ reputation and share price?
The weight of these daily decisions can take its toll and an entrepreneur may buckle under the responsibility over big decisions. A strategic change in direction can feel very empowering, ONLY IF it turns out to be the right one. Entrepreneurs generally love having this level of freedom and power, but not all love the responsibility.
My therapist would help me see my decisions in the broader context of my life and other people’s lives. We can be guilty of exaggerating the real power we have over others and underestimate how easily others can walk away if they are unhappy with our decisions. With psychotherapy, I have learnt how to own and accept my decisions no matter how they turn out, as part of accepting ourselves.
The Meaningless Crisis.
This is one I experience most regularly. My business sold food - tasty, good quality food, but there are… other foods (!) - nobody starved without us.
During the Pandemic, I felt embarrassed that as a business we were considered Key Workers. If eating ramen and udon noodles is considered key worker material, I was not going to argue but we were hardly saving lives.
I often fantasised about running a business that had massive social impact, that went beyond the stimulation of tastebuds. I would envy businesses that really created change.
When faced with tough times, I worked around the clock determined to hunt down solutions. A tiny voice would ask “is this really worth it”? I was driven of course, but why?
As I consider my next steps now, a search for meaning and a greater purpose returns. A therapist forces you to step back and look at your life as a whole and reconnect with the values that you have had your whole life. They also remind us that there are many different places to find meaning, and not just in our work.
The cost of therapy and the cost of not having therapy
It would be remiss of me to not address this.
Therapy is not cheap. The rates are off-putting. In London you can be paying anything from £60 to £150 an hour, sometimes more. If you are anything like me where investing in myself feels like an indulgence, then this is not an obvious thing to do.
Any improvement in revenue would allow us to bring in more hires or give committed staff pay rises - paying the MD more so she can afford therapy was hardly a consideration.
But what is the cost of not having therapy? Holding onto your unresolved traumas and feeling alone in your anxieties may be having more of an impact on you, your team and your loved ones, more than you realise. I certainly did not expect the value of self-awareness that would come from seeing a therapist regularly. I learnt to be more patient, more compassionate towards the people in my life, including myself. I was able to sit with feelings that were uncomfortable, without needing to act on them. I started to feel less alone - I felt held. I truly believe that therapy prevented me from hurting myself and that is a skill that will serve me for life.
I recommend shopping around to find someone you really feel you can talk to. My first therapist was not a great fit for me but I didn’t know that at the time so I carried on longer than I should have before looking for another therapist. I usually block-book to get a better rate and only commit to 4-5 sessions at a time to avoid feeling overwhelmed by the cost.
To spread the cost, sometimes I will space the sessions out so that it covers me for a longer stretch, say every 2-3 weeks rather than weekly. It also give me time to put into practice any breakthroughs I have.
Mental health is a hot topic these days so I may be preaching to the converted, but it certainly was not the case when I started seeing a therapist. I am clearly an advocate, but we do need to make it affordable.
For me, I credit therapy for my sanity.
Are you an entrepreneur? Have you had therapy and how did you find the experience? Maybe you never want to try it, either way I would love to know why.
Little favour
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Such a wonderfully honest piece again Bonnie, thanks so much for sharing your experiences. I’ve never had therapy, but have benefited massively from life coaching. I was encouraged to shop around and find the right person, which was vital. Trust is so important. On a more flippant note, I’m watching The Sopranos, and loving the scenes between Tony and his therapist Dr Melfi!
Thank you for such an honest read, Bonnie. It's so helpful to have all of this broken down in a way that speaks to entrepreneurs. I did try therapy before but I'm not sure it was a good match. Finding the right therapist is so important.