Publication date:

May 3, 2025

How Therapy, Habits, and Stillness Rebuilt My Life

Author:

Orlando Osorio

Reading time:

11 min

Table of Contents

Text Link

Share this article

1. Growing Up Without the Language of Mental Health

In my family, the words "psychologist" or "psychiatrist" never came up. They were associated with madness, weakness—something to avoid. Mental health wasn’t discussed. It wasn’t a priority. It simply didn’t exist as a topic.

So, when I first encountered psychology, it wasn’t because I was seeking help. It was during college, as an engineering student in Caracas, Venezuela. I chose an elective class called Psychology Through the Ages, taught by a charismatic psychoanalyst named Johnny Gavloski. I had no idea what I was walking into.

We were just three engineering students surrounded by psychology majors. The class was brutally difficult—we failed spectacularly. But something about those lectures, about hearing someone speak of the human mind with such nuance, lit a spark.

I started wondering: What would it be like to sit across from someone and talk about everything?

It took nearly a decade for me to find out.

2. My First Step Into Therapy

Years later, I called Johnny again—this time to book my first therapy session. I was living in Venezuela, trying to keep multiple projects afloat, and starting to feel something crack beneath the surface.

The early sessions were difficult. I’d leave the office feeling like I hadn’t said enough. I was afraid to open up, afraid to name the things I was really feeling. And I knew that until I could speak freely, I wouldn’t truly heal.

The three themes that kept showing up: my relationship, my parents, and my work.

It wasn’t until my seventh session that something shifted. I began speaking more openly. My voice broke. I cried. And I realized that this process of healing required a kind of honesty I had never practiced.

3. Breakdown in Mexico City

Fast forward. I had left Venezuela. I was living in Mexico City. I had no legal residency, was nearly $25,000 in debt, and had just shut down a startup I had poured four years of my life into.

To make it worse, my co-founder relationships fell apart—these weren’t just business partners, they were like brothers to me. Losing them felt like losing part of my chosen family. And at the same time, my romantic relationship ended abruptly. My girlfriend at the time decided to ghost me completely, and that sudden silence made everything even harder to process.

I couldn’t return home because of Venezuela’s collapse. I was facing a full identity crisis.

And then came the nights.

Every day, without fail, I’d wake up at exactly 2:00 am. My chest tight. My thoughts racing. My body in a state of alert. Sometimes I’d cry and not know why. The anxiety had a rhythm, a shape. I felt like I was falling apart.

Adding to the weight, a few months earlier I had visited my father and shared the economic situation I was going through. He broke down in tears—not just from sadness, but from the frustration of being unable to help me financially. We weren’t even in the same country.

It’s important to add that this amount of debt hit even harder because I had come from earning just $40 a month in Venezuela. That contrast distorted my sense of scale, and $25,000 felt like an impossible mountain.

Looking back, it was a full-body SOS. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t think clearly. I couldn’t make plans. My identity as a founder—so tied to building, winning, executing—was gone.

4. Explore Mode: A New Beginning

During this lowest point, I made one crucial decision: to start saying yes to things I normally resisted. I was done doing things my way. And in that spirit, I clicked play on a podcast that popped up as a recommendation—Episode 100 of Y Combinator, an interview with Sam Altman.

In that conversation, Sam talks about choosing projects at the intersection of your strengths, passions, and the ability to create value. He shares the importance of deep focus and the need to minimize distractions. He speaks about compounding growth, network effects, and building things that matter in the long run. Most importantly, he insists on taking time to reflect: What worked? What didn’t? Where should your energy go next?

That episode hit me hard. It felt like a message delivered at the exact moment I needed it. And it inspired me to start writing again.

After publishing my first blog post, something amazing happened. Friends and strangers began reaching out with support, stories, and recommendations.

My friend Clara Cárdenas sent me an article by Arianna Huffington about what great founders do at night. Another friend, Rigel Salazar, recommended a podcast episode featuring James Clear and Rich Roll.

Those two suggestions opened even more doors.

Motivated by the response and curiosity around habits, I decided to commit fully. That’s how Explore Mode was born: a weekly blog where I documented my own experiments around behavior change, time, wellbeing, and identity.

5. Building Tiny Rockets

Soon after, I started tracking habits in a shared Google Sheet. Before long, 60+ people joined, sharing their routines, struggles, and personal experiments.

That initiative became Tiny Rockets—a startup dedicated to helping people build healthier routines through micro-habit design.

Tiny Rockets grew to over 1,000 users. We hosted live bootcamps, did 1:1 onboarding calls, and supported people through real transformation.

This experience was both fascinating and emotionally intense. We met users going through divorce, career pivots, mental health struggles—and all of them came seeking some form of progress. We helped. And they told us it changed their lives.

To this day, I still receive thank-you notes.

6. Remembering Discipline

All of this felt like a return to something I had lost.

As a teenager, I was incredibly structured. I attended a military high school in Caricuao. My days started at 4:30 am. I trained, studied, practiced sports, polished shoes, and still found time for friends, music, and life.

Somewhere along the way, I forgot how disciplined I could be. Explore Mode and Tiny Rockets helped me reclaim that.

7. The Inner Revolution: Meditation and Stillness

I began meditating every day. At first, it was hard. I didn’t know what I was doing. But over time, the effects were unmistakable: better sleep, sharper thinking, a more grounded sense of self.

One book that helped: Search Inside Yourself by Chade-Meng Tan. Written by a Google engineer, it’s mindfulness translated for analytical minds. The book taught me that emotional clarity isn’t mystical—it’s trainable.

I learned how the breath could change my emotional response. That presence isn’t about controlling thoughts—it’s about observing them with kindness. I understood, for the first time, what it meant to feel calm by choice.

8. A River Inside Me

Two different people told me to read Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. I had never read fiction. I thought it was a waste of time.

But I was committed to saying yes. So I read it. The first half confused me. The second half blew me away.

There’s a scene where Siddhartha listens to a river—and finally understands life not through knowledge, but through silence. That scene explained everything I had felt in therapy, meditation, and stillness. The river became a metaphor for my mind.

“To seek means to have a goal; but to find means to be free.”

The book mirrored my life: ambition, identity, failure, love, fatherhood, and letting go.

9. Invisible Progress and New Beliefs

The Slight Edge taught me that real growth is invisible at first. One of the book’s most powerful analogies is how most people live in a cycle of survival mode—doing just enough to get out of discomfort, only to fall back into old patterns. It’s the idea that we bounce between desperation and temporary discipline. We eat healthy for a few days, save money for a few weeks, or stick to a new habit—until we feel "safe" again. Then we slide back.

The Slight Edge explains that real change happens when we break this cycle. When we keep doing the small things afterthe pain is gone. That’s where compounding begins—when you do the boring, invisible, unglamorous work consistently enough that one day, it starts working for you.

James Clear says it too: when ice goes from -7°C to -6°C, it still looks like ice. But change is happening.

For the first time in my life, I trusted small things. I stopped chasing “massive productivity” and started honoring consistency.

And that’s what led me back to joy. Not hustle. Not metrics. Just showing up, one day at a time. James Clear says it too: when ice goes from -7°C to -6°C, it still looks like ice. But change is happening.

For the first time in my life, I trusted small things. I stopped chasing “massive productivity” and started honoring consistency.

And that’s what led me back to joy. Not hustle. Not metrics. Just showing up, one day at a time.

10. A New Chapter: Discovering IFS

Recently, I joined an incredible team to help build lapractica.com, a therapy platform based on Internal Family Systems (IFS). I had never worked with IFS before, and diving into this model has been incredibly eye-opening.

In simple terms, IFS teaches us that we’re not just one self—we’re made up of many "parts." Some of those parts are protective. Others carry burdens or pain from the past. And beneath it all, there is a core Self—calm, compassionate, curious—that can learn to guide those parts with understanding rather than judgment.

This model has helped me better understand my own emotional patterns and reactions. Instead of labeling parts of myself as "bad" or "broken," I’m learning to listen to them. To be curious. To lead with compassion. It’s a new layer in my personal journey, and I’m genuinely excited to keep exploring it.

🔍 Reflection Questions for You

If this story resonated with you, here are some questions to sit with. Use them for journaling, conversations with friends, or quiet reflection:

What habits have helped you feel most like yourself?
When was the last time you felt fully grounded and calm?
What are you avoiding that you know could help you heal?
What’s one small habit you could start today that aligns with who you want to become?
Have you allowed yourself to talk openly—with someone or even with yourself—about your challenges?
What identity have you outgrown, and what new identity are you slowly growing into?
What would it mean to be 1% better every day, starting now?

Take your time. There are no right answers—only honest ones.

‍

📚 Personal Recommendations

🌱 Helpful Practices

Meditating 5–10 minutes a day
Weekly journaling as a mindfulness ritual
Taking power naps
Reducing social media use: reorganizing apps, setting time limits, turning off notifications
Tracking screen time and free time
Having open, vulnerable conversations with friends or community
Building simple, consistent morning and evening routines

Twitter/X: @orlandosorio_

Mis recomendaciones