My story is a story of extreme situations, endless curiosity, and both painful and beautiful lessons.

I grew up as the son of two people who, in very different ways, shaped the questions I would later ask about myself and the world.

My mother graduated from university with a degree in psychology. My father was an anti-apartheid activist with a brilliant yet complex mind.

When I was around three, I saw my father on television. I didn’t understand what he was fighting against, but seeing him stand for something larger than himself stayed with me.

I wanted to follow in his footsteps. By contributing, in my own way, to making the world a little fairer and a little more beautiful.

Around the age of six, my father suddenly disappeared from my life.

Afterwards came intense anger and suicidal thoughts that would remain with me, in different ways, for many years.

I was also growing up with an ADD mind that was constantly moving, connecting and questioning. At school, that often created problems. I struggled to fit the way my mind worked into the way I was expected to learn.

I was living inside a mind I didn’t understand.

When I discovered that my mother had studied psychology, my curiosity found somewhere to go.

I wanted to understand people.

But increasingly, I also wanted to understand myself.

At thirteen, I briefly had contact with my father again. Then came another twelve years of silence.

After that brief contact, my ways of escaping became increasingly destructive. By fifteen, I was using cannabis and hard drugs. Over the years, escape would take many forms, including food, alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, sex and gambling.

When the psychological help I sought was unavailable, delayed or didn’t fit the criteria, I kept looking for ways to understand what was happening.

Why was I so angry?

Why did I keep returning to things I knew were hurting me?

Psychology became more than an interest.

I began applying what I learned to myself.

One of the first techniques I worked with was NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), which gave me practical ways to explore language, thought patterns and my relationship with my experiences.

From there, curiosity took me further.

Psychology led me towards philosophy and science.
Marcus Aurelius introduced me to Stoicism, while other traditions and philosophies, from Cynicism and Aristotelianism to Buddhism, Taoism and Existentialism, gave me different ways of looking at human behaviour, meaning, responsibility and freedom.

I wasn’t looking for one answer. I was collecting perspectives.

And throughout all of this, life kept providing its own education.

I started working at fifteen and have since had more than fifty different jobs, ranging from project management in major IT companies to working as a mechanic, taxi driver, garbage collector and sex worker.

I experienced addiction, depression, toxic relationships, sexuality, homelessness, different cultures and people from almost every layer of society.

Each gave me another perspective.

The world looks different depending on where you are standing.

Around the age of twenty-two, after emerging from what had been my deepest depression until then, something began to change.

People started coming to me.

At first, often simply for a listening ear.

Soon, some were seeking my support almost daily.

Alongside my full-time job, I regularly spent another ten to thirty hours a week listening to, questioning and supporting other people, without being paid and without thinking of it as a profession.

I simply wanted to understand what they were experiencing and explore with them what else might be possible.

And it continued.

For more than twenty years, thousands of people (friends, colleagues, acquaintances and complete strangers) have trusted me with their questions, struggles, desires and parts of themselves they sometimes found difficult to share elsewhere.

During those same years, I continued learning, questioning and changing my own perspectives.

Even my relationship with my father’s absence eventually changed.

I couldn’t change what happened.

But I could change my relationship with what happened.

And perhaps that captures something fundamental about what all those years have taught me.

I don’t guide people because I believe I have found all the answers.

Quite the opposite.

The more perspectives I encounter, the more aware I become of how many variables may contribute to what we see.

What began as a need to understand my own mind became a lifelong curiosity about the human being standing in front of me.

Not to decide who they are.

Not to fit them into a diagnosis, philosophy or method.

But to become curious about everything that might have contributed to who they are today.