Develop Your Own Gift of Therapy

When Irvin Yalom turned seventy, two things were happening for him:

1. His patients begun to worry about how long he might live.
2. Given his seemingly imminent demise, he found himself wanting to pass on what he had learned in the four decades as psychotherapist.

This pushed him to write a now classic book, The Gift of Therapy.

This was not his last book. At age 93, more than two decades later, Yalom published The Hour of The Heart.

I doubt the reason for The Gift of Therapy’s popularity is because of Yalom’s existential approach to psychotherapy. I suspect his process focused on down to earth, short chapters of advice cuts across the sensibilities of therapists of all walks of theoretical orientation.

For those of you who have read Yalom’s classic book, here’s a little pop quiz: Name ONE THING you’ve learned from The Gift of Therapy.

Don’t fret if you can’t recall what you’ve read. That’s because we are all on the same boat. We are on the same shores of forgetfulness, swept by other pieces of more recent learnings, random facts, and the passage of time.

Here’s another critical reason we recall little of Yalom’s words of wisdom: His “gifts of therapy” aren’t ours; it’s his.

We are more likely to be persuaded by our own ideas. And we are more likely to recall and apply ideas if we process one suggestion at a time.

Here’s my suggestion:

At the end of each week, in less than 140 words, take 5 mins to note down ONE thing you’ve learned from your experience

In other words, develop a practice of capturing your Weekly Therapy Learnings (WTL).

Inspired by Yalom”s book, since 2013, I’ve been capturing weekly quick notes on what I’ve learned as a psychotherapist.

I wished I’ve started earlier in career.

Imagine if you did that weekly, and even if you missed some weeks, in a year, you would have about 30 to 40 pieces of personal wisdom!

Another important benefit you get from making it a routine to capture your WTL: Principles emerge from patterns of your practice.

Principles often exist without your conscious awareness. To elicit what is implicit, it helps that you become intentional in digging a little beyond the surface.

Out of over 400 WTLs in my notes, I’ve extracted about 32 first principles.

Some of these end up in my books, articles, and courses.

One of the unexpected learning that stood out was that I have 54 notes that are tagged as “Mistakes.” In other words, these notes were about blunders that I made in my clinical practice.

One of the underrated piece of learning is to make sure I learn from the mistakes well, and make new mistakes in the future.

It’s better to fail well than to succeed badly.

Here’s a related post: Increase Positive Variance and Decrease Negative Variance.

Most of them continue to guide me and others that I supervise.

Here’s a sample:
– Listening Into Speech Will Say, Won’t Say, Can’t Say
– Follow the Pain
– Follow the Spark

I would love to hear what guiding principles emerge as you capture your own Weekly Therapy Learnings (WTLs).

Remember, keep it short, so that it’s a sustainable exercise.

For Examples of my WTLs, see this post Parameters and Samples for Capturing Weekly Therapy Learnings

Parameters and Samples for Capturing Weekly Therapy Learnings

P/S: I’m not fully convinced I should do this, but I’m contemplating sharing what is in my WTL, based on real clinical situations. I’m resistant to paywalls in general, but because it’s very specific and I do not want this viewable by the general public, it will likely exist in a “Paid Post” section of my Substack, something like $4-5 a month. Let me know if you happen to be interested in this. Thanks.