Do clients need years of therapy, or can one conversation resolve the issue?

post by Chipmonk · 2025-02-28T00:06:29.276Z · LW · GW · 10 comments

This is a link post for https://chrislakin.blog/p/one-shot

Contents

    1/ Before: 8 years of talk therapy
    2/ Before: Talk therapy, CBT, and IFS
  How does one-shotting happen?
      1) The client learns how to coach themself
      2) The client “deeply unlearns” their issue
    Which issues can be one-shot?
    Who is ready for a one-shot?
  More one-shots
    5/ Social anxiety
    6/ One-shot by a tweet?
    Misc. examples
  Have you ever had an issue one-shot?
None
10 comments

It took me months to outgrow my anxiety and depression. Afterward, I wondered, “How could this have taken hours instead?” This was my guiding light as I’ve learned how to help others resolve their chronic issues.

This post is only about the data I have seen with my eyes. It talks heavily about my own experience and my bounty-based coaching business.

When I was considering offering coaching, I hated the common incentive structure: getting paid per hour of effort.

Most coaches get paid more the longer it takes you to resolve your issue… I couldn’t take part in a system where the incentives were so misaligned.

It also felt wrong to take money from clients if their life didn’t actually improve.

So when I started my business, I made payment contingent on results [LW · GW]:

Set a bounty on resolving your lifelong procrastination, anxieties, or stubborn issue. Work with us, pay your bounty when you feel satisfied.

This incentivizes us to help you resolve your issue as efficiently as possible. If we can resolve your issue in “one shot” (one conversation or intervention), we will! The goal is results, after all.

Some things that clients are surprised we do differently than the coaching/therapy they've tried:

• We don’t dig into trauma or even ask much about the past. We don’t linger on bad things the client doesn’t want. We focus on what you want to see more of in the present.
• We focus on unlearning, not learning.
• Because we’re so results-oriented, we’re very flexible. We don’t cut off sessions due to time — sessions have ranged from 5 minutes to 4.5 hours (though these days it’s usually like an hour max). We text our clients frequently and have impromptu calls.
• As technical people ourselves, we can communicate with technically-oriented clients very quickly and effectively.
• We try to talk less. I’ve facilitated multi-hour sessions where I’ve spoken for ~5 min total.
• We don’t portray ourselves as an authority in the session. We don’t give object-level life advice.

Some clients have resolved lifelong issues like anxiety in one shot— even though they had previously tried years of therapy, coaching, or meditation. This doesn’t usually happen, but when it does it’s very cool and I hope to get better at it.

Conversation and guided meditation can be extremely effective when the right coach and client come together. (Edit: No psychedelics were used stop asking!!)

Examples below.

1/ Before: 8 years of talk therapy

Spoke to somebody for 4.5 hours one day, and 6 months later they still report being far less anxious and far more agentic. 

The change was so drastic that people he met started describing him differently:

One of my new friends said, “You're so adventurous.” That shocked me… If you were to ask my high school friends, that’s not a word they would use.

He speaks at length about how his work, social, and dating lives have changed:

(I met this client at Manifest, a prediction market conference.)

Results: When he felt sure that the results were lasting/ weren’t temporary, he paid the 4-figure bounty he had placed to work with me.

(I emphasize bounties paid because they provide concrete legible evidence that the client was satisfied with their growth. Bounties reflect the value the client gains from working with us, not the effort we put in.)

2/ Before: Talk therapy, CBT, and IFS

The first person I ever tried to help with my techniques had previously tried talk therapy, CBT, and IFS. When we met at a CFAR reunion in November 2023, I tried to help him address his emotional reactivity. Our conversation lasted 3 hours. We also spoke for another two hours in August 2024. In October 2024, he said:

I used to get triggered by very small things that some of the people surrounding me would say or do… These things would incapacitate me for 48 hours, I would have to shut myself in my room. Now I just laugh…

This wasn’t exactly “one shot”, but I think it’s close enough and I happen to have a detailed interview with him. He talks about his life has changed and how he grew so much:

Read on for reflections about what’s going on, and more examples of one-shotting:

How does one-shotting happen?

The right coach, the right client, and the right method can coalesce to create the conditions for a one-shot. I know of two ways one-shotting can happen:

1) The client learns how to coach themself

Both clients above talk about how they learned to do on their own what I did with them in the session. Then, whenever they encountered a trigger in everyday life, they untangled it themself.

This required substantial agency on their part to actively apply what they learned from me over and over again without prompting.

A more concrete example:

A client came with a multi-decade porn addiction. He had tried various internet blocking methods before (but no coaching, meditation, or therapy), but the problem persisted. In mid October 2024, we had a session lasting 1.75 hours where I taught him how to “try on the feeling” he wants instead when he feels the desire to use porn. Ever since, he’s used that skill when necessary. It’s a few months later now, and he rarely ever feels the desire to use porn.

Results: He is paying his 5-figure bounty over 3y.

2) The client “deeply unlearns” their issue

In other cases, a one-shot can occur by simply helping someone thoroughly unlearn their issue. When this happens, they almost forget they ever suffered from the issue.

This kind of one-shot requires the coach to help the client notice ~all of the places they might possibly run into blocks in the future, and then untangle them all in advance while still in the session.

For example:

A tech founder based in SF tried 2 years (~120 hours) of IFS therapy, retreats, and hundreds of hours of meditation to resolve his lifelong block on romance and attraction. Our first conversation lasted four hours, in which we found and unlearned his root issue (approximately: the self-loathing strategy [LW · GW]). (I have no idea why I was able to help resolve this when hundreds of hours prior attempts didn’t, but here we are. This is common.) He slept a lot after the session and woke up with intense muscle soreness the next day, lol. Within two weeks he had comfortably asked out multiple crushes. He had never easily asked someone out before.

Which issues can be one-shot?

• It is much more common to one-shot issues that manifest as anxiety (feeling bad) rather than avoidance.
  • I suspect this is because people who avoid X also tend to avoid feelings related to X, which slows down any growth or coaching is attempted. These people also tend to not ask for help or schedule sessions.
• It’s very difficult to one-shot an issue that the client depends on in some way.
  • For example, anxiety that is helping someone (as a locally optimal strategy) set boundaries with their parents, while they’re living with their parents. They should probably move out first.
  • Similarly, if someone has an issue relating to their partner but they live with or are financially dependent on their partner, they usually lose the ability to rationally consider the possibility of breaking up.

Who is ready for a one-shot?

Here’s what I know:

One-shotting can happen regardless of prior attempts to resolve their issue. Most cases on this page already tried years of coaching, therapy, and/or meditation before working with me.

These prior attempts can sometimes help build skills that set up the possibility of a one-shot. For example, it’s especially fun to work with skilled meditators because they zip through everything quickly.

That said, I definitely have not one-shot the issue of anyone who:

• Has extreme difficulty feeling their feelings
• Has given up on resolving their issue
• Doesn’t enjoy talking to me
• Did not sign up

More one-shots

5/ Social anxiety

Previously he had tried most of the tpot meditation advice to resolve his multi-year social anxiety. Meditation alone did not resolve this. On September 30, 2024 we had a three-hour session:

And while we may have one-shot some specific parts of the issue, a few weeks later he had more complexity appear and we helped him some more. So maybe not a true one-shot, but it does hint at what’s possible.

Recently he told me “All going well on my end” and that he’s still using the techniques he learned on his own as necessary.

6/ One-shot by a tweet?

Here’s a fun example: Maybe sometimes all it takes is the right tweet?

I was actually going to coach Sarrah, but by the time I had time she said she didn’t need it anymore:

Misc. examples

• A client decided to pay half of their 5-figure bounty after one conversation (75 minutes).
• Someone I spoke to for 15 minutes at a party told me months later that it changed her year and helped her get out of a bad relationship — even though we didn’t talk (directly) about relationships.
• I ran an eye contact workshop where an attendees told me weeks later that making eye contact with people was still easy (and it certainly hadn’t been before).
• Someone who read a random tweet of mine a few days ago dm’d me. Unclear if the effect will last, but:

There are more cases I either can’t share, don’t have detailed information about, or for which it’s too early to tell.

Have you ever had an issue one-shot?

Have you ever had a lifelong issue one-shot with effects still 6+ months later? Leave a comment or DM me or email chris@chrislakin.com, I’d love to hear about it.

Also: Do you know any coaches who can one-shot sticky issues? Please contact me if so. I’m always looking to send bounties to outstanding coaches. There’s a lot of people we can help.

Thanks to Stag Lynn for reviewing.

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