I'm a founder who needed to learn how to let my guard down. Here's why I swapped my life coach for a therapist.

• Entrepreneur James Routledge started seeing a therapist after working with an executive coach.
• He describes how the therapist told him to stop "presenting" and talk candidly about himself.

I went to see a therapist in October 2018. By the end of the introductory session my therapist closed the session with a reflective question; "I'm wondering who you'd be without your business?" to which I responded; "That, is exactly why I'm here."

I was completely consumed by my startup, Sanctus, which I founded two years before. We were scaling and had just hit £1 million in annual revenue, we were growing our team and I was learning how to manage a business.

I had a lot to think about. The total consumption, perpetual loneliness and constant anxiety were all part of the ride. I accepted those feelings as part of the job, until I couldn't any more.

I'd had a life coach before and it'd been transformational, I'd explored my values, where I found purpose and meaning in my work. The coaching had helped me start the business in the first place. I found my coach through Sanctus, the business I was getting off the ground at the time.

Yet I was repeating old patterns again, it's as if coaching had peeled back the curtain. I needed to go deeper.

I'd spent years saying " when 'x' happens, I'll worry less", "when we hire 'X I'll worry less", "when we hit 'X' revenue it'll be different". Until it hit me, the problem was me, not my business.

I was spending 60 hours a week analyzing business and figuring out what might be wrong with it. An hour a week to look at me, not work, made a lot of sense.

Every Tuesday night for 18 months I went to therapy. That time was my time. It wasn't a chat about business or a "catch up." It took me a while to get used to that. At first, I found myself pitching my therapist, trying to persuade him everything was alright.

My right leg would cock over my left as I sat back like I was on a panel at an event. It only took him to say "I feel like you're presenting to me" for me to realize how easy it was to keep my guard up and how hard it was to dissolve my founder self.

At times I wondered why I was there, why I was talking about childhood, experiences at school, or past relationships. What did all of this have to do with work? I very rarely talked about business. I didn't talk about people problems or our monthly revenue.

My therapist protected me from that. He knew that was easy for me, easy for me to talk about my startup. I felt comfortable doing that. It was my defence.

Underneath my startup's branded t-shirt, I was at war with myself. I didn't like some parts of me, particularly some of my past. The over-working, the obsessive thinking, the consumption with business was covering up what I was avoiding - me.

I hardly knew me. Underneath the surface layer of "a Founder" I was packed with deeply complex and interwoven stories, traumas and experiences that were driving my behaviours.

I spent time getting to know myself. I reflected on my relationships with family, friends and what they really mean to me. I explored who I might be without being the founder of a business. I talked about writing, hiking, travelling and more.

I delved into the past and how it impacted my present. I said sentences out loud that I'd only ever thought. I told stories I'd kept secret and I shared things I'd never even considered.

I was able to heal some of the scars that I didn't know I had and I was able to let go of long-held beliefs that were irrelevant now.

I mostly left therapy sessions feeling confused and raw, like I'd been punched. Over time, things started to come together, I started to come together. I'd pulled myself apart and I was putting myself back together again.

I stopped going to therapy in March 2020, because I felt like I needed some time to let what had changed materialise in the real world. It's not like I felt "fixed", I just felt complete for now. I imagine I may go to therapy again in my life.

Since then, I moved to a new part of London I adore, I got engaged, I stepped down as CEO of Sanctus, and I wrote a book.

I can't attribute any of those events directly to therapy, yet I can't say therapy didn't impact all of them.

I felt more able to let go, to trust people and to let my business grow up with me in a more peripheral role. I felt more separate from Sanctus in a healthy way, I wasn't leaning on the business as much, so it started leaning on me less too.

Executive coaching is becoming more common for founders and I know its benefits. Yet it's often focused on the role of a founder.

For me therapy was powerful because it didn't focus on me as a founder at all, it focused on all of me, founder part included, but no more so than anything of the other parts.