Bronwyn Penhaligon, the 444th person I’ve met on my quest to have lunch with 500 strangers, sometimes asks her clients a tough question: “What are you going to do about it?”

Bronwyn is a strategic psychotherapist, which means she does more than just help her clients understand their predicament – she also helps them move to a better place, as promptly as possible. So when clients come to Bronwyn with a problem, she wants their mindset to shift from merely discussing it to taking specific steps to solve it. Hence her question: “What are you going to do about it?”

Some clients find this approach confrontational, because change can be scary. Others, though, relish the fact that someone is finally giving them the tools they need to improve their lives.

Bronwyn says most of her clients have one thing in common – they don’t think they’re good enough – which can lead to anxiety, depression and self-destructive behaviour.

One reason Bronwyn loves strategic psychotherapy is because she’s a goal-oriented person. When she was 15, she did psychometric testing to figure out which career would best suit her skills and personality, and thought about the actions she’d need to take to succeed at that career. 

That led Bronwyn to pursue a career in advertising and marketing, which she largely enjoyed. Eventually, though, two things started to bother her. First, the job could be mentally draining, because it was hard to derive any real sense of purpose from selling ‘stuff’. Second, it could be physically draining, because the better she performed, the more work that would get dumped on her. 

When the pandemic struck, the account Bronwyn was working on was cancelled, which meant she suddenly had time, at home, to think. Bronwyn decided to research alternative careers, which is how she discovered strategic psychotherapy. It seemed like such an obvious fit – Bronwyn enjoyed reading books about self-help and personal development – that she was surprised it had never occurred to her before.

So Bronwyn was faced with the same question she would later ask others – “What are you going to do about it?” The answer, she decided, was to study psychology and change careers.