The 6 Lessons I Learned from Being a Psychotherapist

A few years ago, I asked myself a question: if I could bottle the main lessons that I have learned as a psychotherapist, what would they be? After a lot of contemplation I came up with six fundamental truths that I think are the basis for a good life, which I then wrote about in my book Think Like a Therapist.

There were six principles that arose from the ideas behind being a therapist, the bedrock assumptions and ideas that I felt anchored to as a therapist. It was a book about how to think more wisely about life, specifically about what makes for a good life.

What makes for a good life is a question that has perplexed philosophers throughout the ages and is now posed by psychologists and psychotherapists.

Psychotherapy is ultimately a discussion about the good life and a vision of how to lead it. Psychotherapy helps us to explore ourselves and what life means to us. It is about learning to be ourselves, and to become free of our conditioning.

Most of the time, we are living in a deluded reality in which we behave as if we will live forever, and as if what other people think about us is more important than what we think about ourselves. The realization that life is fleeting and that it is up to ourselves, not anyone else, to decide what matters to us, sometimes seems to come out of the blue – in lightbulb moments in which people suddenly gain a new perspective. Often, such realizations are provoked by trauma and loss.

In my book, I shared what I believe are the most important of these realizations: the six ways in which we can begin to see ourselves and the world anew, without distortion, and embark on a road to personal growth and a more emotionally mature life. In essence, the six lessons are:

1. We are all fragile creatures, remember that life is fleeting and precious.
2. Give yourself the greatest gift, learn to value yourself just as you are, no strings attached.
3. Beware of letting yourself be used by others, look to yourself to make the choices in your life that are best for you.
4. Be curious, open to experience, flexible in your thinking, aware of your feelings, and always willing to change your mind, because life is about learning.
5. Enjoy life as it is, be hopeful and work for a better tomorrow, but be content within yourself today.
6. Bring love, kindness, gratitude, understanding and compassion to the world.

I believe that these six lessons are like dominos falling, each naturally arising from the one before. Number six is especially important — what we bring to the world we get back for ourselves. Research shows the importance of these qualities, that people who are kinder, more grateful, and more compassionate are happier and healthier.

As I said, the six lessons may seem obvious, but because they run counter to what most people have learned, they can be hard to implement. As young people, we may be encouraged to spend much of our time thinking about and preparing for the future, that we forget to be present and enjoy life in the now. We are taught to look to others for their approval. We listen to others to tell us what is important and how to think. As a result, we can become fixed in our views and opinions and stop learning about ourselves and who we are. Instead, we chase happiness by seeking external rewards and pleasures when true contentment is a state of mind. And we become so caught up in ourselves that we lack compassion for others and for ourselves.

We might want to change our lives, but often we don’t want to have to change ourselves. Real therapeutic change involves thinking deeply about who we are and making the effort to peel away layers of denial, delusion and defense to reveal the emergence of a new version of who we are. But as human beings we are often motivated to keep going in the way we have been and to put things off until tomorrow.

Because of that these are often hard-earned lessons that come at great cost, such as illness or bereavement. When confronted by such adversity, we might realize that what really matters to us is not so much the big things that we once thought were so important — our status and wealth, for example — but the things we took for granted, our health and companionship with others, and only then begin to see how these six lessons are an anchor point for us. It is sad that often we learn such lessons late in life at great cost, and perhaps through therapy. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

As I show in the book, these are lessons distilled from a vast lake of psychology research and scholarship. And there are ways in which we can begin to reflect on these lessons for ourselves and to engage with them in making a difference in how we choose to lead our lives.

If you look back on your life so far, which of these six lessons has been the hardest one for you to learn? Why this might be?

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Which of these six lessons would be the most useful one for you to learn in your life at the moment? What difference might it make for you?

Are there other lessons you would add?