Eight Years of Working on My Mind: What Therapy, Coaching, and Other Inner Work Actually Gave Me

Why I'm Sharing This

Nearly everything good in life — a fulfilling career, a profitable business, a happy and harmonious relationship, a body I love, travel, a great social circle, even good sleep and sex — has come, directly or indirectly, from years of working on my inner world. This summary distills eight years of personal experience with psychotherapy, coaching, and various other "mind work" specialists. It is not professional advice, a course, or a checklist — it is the honest account of a client and of a mentor who has guided hundreds of people into IT careers, often from scratch or after years away from the workforce. Many people hesitate to try therapy or coaching because it feels unclear, possibly a scam, or like something a friend could do for free. This account is meant to demystify that hesitation by showing what actually happened over eight years: what was gained, why it took so long, how it changed every area of life, which methods and specialists were used, what it costs, how to find the right specialist, and who actually needs this kind of work.

How It Started

The starting point was 2019, during a master's degree in Data Science, at a university with a strong psychology department. Friends who were psychology students spoke often about therapy, and one in particular said that as soon as she could afford it, therapy would be her first investment. At the time, this made no sense — but there were clear personal signals pointing toward needing help.

The Initial Trigger

By nature, there was a strong choleric temperament: emotional outbursts, uncontrollable crying or shouting, and general emotional instability, especially pronounced during school years. This affected communication with others and came bundled with numerous fears — fear of judgment, fear of not being "allowed" to do or want certain things. Despite seeming self-aware, these patterns couldn't be managed alone.

A student discount brought the first therapy session down to about 400 UAH. The specialist worked in schema therapy and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) — notably, CBT is the one method covered by insurance in the US, reflecting its recognized evidence base. After the very first session, it was clear there was real material to work through, and that relationship continued for a full year, surviving a move from Lviv to Kyiv and a shift from in-person to online sessions.

What Therapy Actually Delivered — And How Long It Took

Not an Instant Fix

Each session was emotionally intense, diving into childhood origins of trauma, current inability to express oneself freely, and the roots of present-day pain. There was strong belief that consistency would pay off — but the real shift in emotional regulation only became noticeable after about two years, not weeks or months.

The Core Shift

Better emotional literacy — learning to distinguish fear, shame, and guilt as they arose.
A gap between trigger and reaction — instead of an automatic pattern (crying, yelling, or lashing out), a moment of awareness opened up, creating a real choice in how to respond.
Increased self-awareness of ingrained reactive patterns versus deliberate, new responses.

Three factors made this process possible: having psychologists in one's social circle, a close friend's strong interest in therapy acting as inspiration, and natural curiosity as a researcher — including curiosity about oneself.

Ripple Effects Across Life

Family Reconciliation

During this period, a serious conflict with a father — who had essentially forced a move out of the family home, followed by two years of no contact — was resolved through the therapeutic process. Reaching a place of readiness to reconcile, a reunion was arranged for Christmas through the mother. This reconciliation turned out to be one of the most important events in life.

Meeting a Life Partner

Just a few months after reconciling with her father, she met her future husband — now her spouse of seven years — while co-founding a mentoring startup. Previous relationships had been undermined by deep self-devaluation: unconsciously choosing partners who couldn't keep pace with her ambitions, because believing she deserved someone matching her drive and rhythm felt impossible. When she met her husband, he was recognized instantly as a "10 out of 10" match against a list of criteria she had deliberately written out — but it took the emotional work already done, including the reconciliation with her father, to find the courage to pursue him.

Interestingly, her husband had a similar background in psychotherapy, and the shared experience became a bonding point early in their relationship. Within two weeks of getting together, both felt they no longer had unresolved "requests" driving them back to their respective therapists, and both relationships with those therapists ended naturally around the same time.

Boundaries and Knowing What You Want

Learning to say "no" — previously experienced as dangerous, leading to chronic overcommitment, resentment, and burnout.
Developing genuine contact with personal desires rather than chasing socially approved goals. A clear example: aspiring to work at Google mainly to win a father's approval, while actually lacking true desire for that path and lacking the patience for algorithm-heavy interview prep — and realizing that what was truly wanted was fast-paced generalist growth across the full machine learning stack, which a company like Google likely wouldn't offer.
Burnout had been occurring roughly every three months before this work began — a direct symptom of being disconnected from one's own wants and needs.

From Employee to Entrepreneur

Self-worth had been built almost entirely on external validation — approval that once fueled academic and professional excellence (graduating with honors, performing exceptionally at work) but also created a feeling of being "a dog on a leash."
Cutting that emotional dependency and building genuine internal grounding enabled the shift into entrepreneurship — the ability to set one's own direction and pace.
Transitioning into blogging/content creation became a powerful "litmus test" for unresolved self-esteem issues: early audience goodwill gives way to criticism, and every insecurity gets poked at by commenters calling out looks, intelligence, competence, and credibility. Roughly three years were spent actively processing the pain of hate comments and criticism, with therapy and coaching providing essential support throughout.
Later transitions — from office work to remote work, from a single job to juggling multiple projects, and eventually from employment into running a business — each required deliberate emotional processing of the anxiety and uncertainty involved.

Toward Greater Tolerance and Flexibility

Therapy broadened overall tolerance for ambiguity and criticism:

Accepting that a partner may or may not pay for things, that people may or may not like you, and that negative feedback is useful information rather than a personal attack.
Previously, any feedback below a perfect score felt devastating and triggered self-protective withdrawal, which blocked growth. Learning to tolerate "imperfect" feedback opened the door to real improvement.

Therapy vs. Coaching: A Key Distinction

Psychotherapy — regardless of modality (CBT, schema therapy, Gestalt therapy, or psychoanalysis) — works toward healing: resolving the roots of trauma, building genuine self-worth, achieving a sense of being fundamentally "okay," and feeling securely connected to one's own desires without burning out.

Coaching, by contrast, offers practical tools for the present without digging into childhood origins. The contrast can be illustrated with a simple analogy:

A client tells a therapist, "I feel like there's a monster under my bed." The therapist asks what this might connect to in childhood.
A client tells a coach the same thing. The coach says: "Saw the legs off the bed" — no space under it, no monster. Problem solved practically and quickly.

Coaching delivers fast, actionable tools, but once a certain depth of blockage is reached, only deeper excavation — therapy — can move things further.

What Determines Whether Therapy Works

Readiness to change is the single biggest factor. Some clients spend months or years going in circles with a therapist simply because they are not genuinely open to deep change — and no amount of therapeutic skill can force that shift.
Cognitive flexibility matters enormously: being willing to question one's own convictions and "take the crown off," rather than clinging rigidly to fixed beliefs, is what allows real movement.
Fit and "vibe" with the specialist matter more than credentials alone — progress happens with a therapist who genuinely resonates, not one chosen just to check a box or follow a trend.
Persistence pays off: repeatedly revisiting the same stuck point, with patience, can eventually loosen even entrenched beliefs.

Why It Took Eight Years (and Counting)

Growth is not linear or finite — every new level of ambition or life change surfaces new fears and new psychological layers to process. As personal and professional ambitions expanded further and further (something therapy itself enabled), each new stretch of growth required fresh inner work. Periods of greater life stability require less psychological work; periods of active transformation — like the current push toward a new breakthrough — require more, sometimes with two or three specialists in parallel each week.

The core belief underpinning all of this: real limits barely exist. Aside from literally unattainable things (like being born into royalty), nearly any ambitious goal — including, hyperbolically, launching rockets into space — is achievable if genuinely desired. The real obstacle for most people isn't capability; it's an internalized lack of permission to want big things, coupled with fear, guilt ("I don't deserve this"), and the lure of false safety in a conventional, secure-seeming job. Ironically, no job is truly "safe" either — employees can be let go at any time, while entrepreneurship brings its own daily risks and hard choices, which likewise require a solid psychological foundation.

The Role of Upbringing

People raised by emotionally secure, affirming parents often start with a real advantage — they were allowed to simply be themselves. Growing up instead with the sense that love had to be earned — through constant academic or professional achievement that was never quite "enough" — tends to produce highly anxious overachievers. This pattern is common among those who seek mentorship in the same way, since similar people tend to attract each other. Without active inner work, this pattern can run unchecked for a lifetime; therapy offers a chance to interrupt it and "reprogram the operating system."

Who Should Consider This Work — and Who Might Not Need It

Useful for almost anyone, but not a cure-all, and not something to pursue just because it's trendy.
People who practice disciplined, systematic self-reflection on their own may not need formal therapy — some genuinely thrive without ever having seen a therapist.
The right fit is deeply personal: look for a specialist whose approach and personality truly resonate, not just credentials or price.

Beyond Traditional Therapy: Other Specialists

Numerology

A single consultation with a numerologist, who identified a "billionaire" marker in a numerology chart, coincided with launching a first business — scaling a data analytics course from 10 students to 40, which eventually grew into a full academy. Three years of prior therapy had already built the psychological readiness to act on that nudge.

Sex Coaching / Sexology

Many unconscious hang-ups around sex — closely tied, as it turns out, to money and desire more broadly — were addressed with a sexologist, partly prompted by a partner's own interest. Since sex is fundamentally about desire, this work paralleled the broader journey of reconnecting with personal wants. Starting with general psychotherapy first is recommended before pursuing this specific track.

Energy Work

Energy practitioners are used to address "blocks" that don't seem to resolve through talk therapy alone. Belief in the underlying framework is honestly uncertain — but the practical results have been convincing enough to keep paying for it.

Cost and Finding a Specialist

Sessions started at roughly 400 UAH (around 2019) and have ranged up to €50/hour for a regular therapist, with some specialized coaches or therapists charging $200–300/hour.
A session priced at $500–600 would be worth considering if there's strong confidence the specialist can deliver a genuine breakthrough — the key factor is demonstrated ability to produce results, not price itself.
Many competent therapists charge as little as $20–50 per session.
Good ways to find a specialist:
- Therapy marketplace platforms (where therapist videos and ratings can be reviewed).
- Searching directly on Instagram for therapists whose content resonates personally.
- Personal recommendations from friends — in practice, the longest and most effective therapeutic relationships came through this route.

Over eight years, cumulative spending on this work has reached the thousands of dollars — but the return, both financial and personal, has been far greater.

Closing Thought

Work on the mind — through therapy, coaching, or other modalities — shapes every part of life, including professional performance, since work occupies such a central place in daily existence. This kind of work is also what enables people to ask for fair compensation, raise their rates without guilt, set healthy boundaries when told something is "too expensive," and avoid impostor feelings when a client is unhappy about something that was never actually promised. Trying this kind of work at least once, with the right specialist, is a genuine catalyst for growth — and not something to be afraid of.