Why I Built an AI Therapist

I’ve been a waiter, a construction worker, a DJ, a kitchen hand, a porter, a caregiver, and a supermarket cashier. I’ve washed dishes in Australia and meditated in the Himalayas. I’ve battled addictions, eating disorders, anxiety, depression, and self-destructive behavior. Before I ever sat across from a client as a psychotherapist, I had already lived a dozen lives — and nearly destroyed myself in several of them.

My name is Laurentis Theofanus. I was born in Romania. At five years old, my family — refugees — moved to Cyprus. I didn’t grow up with privilege. I grew up with violence and poverty. The kind of childhood where you learn to read a room before you learn to read a book. Where survival isn’t a metaphor — it’s Tuesday.

That survival instinct carried me through twenty years of work that had nothing to do with psychology. I stacked shelves. I poured drinks at a nightclub. I mixed concrete on construction sites. I did whatever needed doing. And in the quiet hours between shifts, I was fighting battles no one could see — against my own mind, my own habits, my own body turning against me.

I didn’t overcome those things in a therapist’s chair. Not at first. I couldn’t afford one. Instead, I found my own way through. Meditation. Fasting. Martial arts. Running until my legs gave out and my head finally went quiet. Lucid dreaming — teaching myself to stay conscious inside my own darkness. I built an inner world long before I built an AI, because the outer world wasn’t offering me much to hold onto.

The Search

I studied psychology at the European University of Cyprus. Then I flew to Australia to study philosophy at Bond University, searching for something I couldn’t name yet. That search eventually led me to the Himalayas in India — not to find answers, but to sit with the questions long enough to stop running from them.

When I returned to Cyprus, I completed my postgraduate training in Systemic Psychotherapy. I opened a private practice. I started working with people — real people, with real pain. Families breaking apart. Individuals trapped in patterns they couldn’t see. People who needed someone to sit with them in the dark.

I understood them. Not because I’d read about their pain in a textbook. Because I’d lived it. Failed relationships. Self-destruction. The cycle of wanting to get better and sabotaging yourself the moment things start working. I knew every corner of that maze because I’d walked it myself — sometimes crawling, sometimes blindfolded.

The Truth About Being a Therapist

Here’s something people don’t talk about: being a psychotherapist doesn’t mean you’ve figured out your own life.

I’m not making enough money. That’s just the truth. I’ve been in private practice since 2015 and working with an NGO since 2023, and I still struggle financially. Poverty was part of my childhood. In a different form, it’s still part of my life today. The irony of spending your days helping others navigate their lives while barely keeping your own together — that’s something every therapist knows but no one says out loud.

I also wrote books. Three of them. Becoming Nothing — a philosophical memoir about letting go of everything you think you are. Rise of the Machines: A.I. Psychotherapy — about the intersection of artificial intelligence and mental health, written before I ever imagined I’d actually build one. Remember Me — a photography book of street art from the streets of Cyprus. I poured myself into these books.

They didn’t sell.

I’m telling you this not for sympathy, but because it matters. Because the person who built Anna isn’t a tech founder with venture capital and a team of engineers. He’s a therapist who can’t afford to stop working, who has been a construction worker more than once in his life, and who still believes — despite everything — that there has to be a better way to reach people who are hurting.

Why I Built Anna

I could only help the people who walked through my door. One person at a time. One hour at a time. And for every person who sat in my chair, there were hundreds — thousands — who never would. People who couldn’t afford it. People who were too afraid. People who needed someone at 3 AM when the world felt like it was collapsing, and no therapist’s office was open.

I knew those people. I was those people.

That’s when I started building Anna.

Not because I’m a programmer — I’m not. Not because I had funding — I didn’t. But because I had something most people building AI don’t have: ten years of sitting across from human beings in pain, and a lifetime of sitting with my own. I know what helps. I know what hurts. I know that the difference between healing and harm is sometimes a single word at the wrong moment.

She’s Not a Chatbot

Anna is not a chatbot that recites coping strategies from a textbook. I didn’t build her to replace therapists. I built her because I am a therapist, and I know what’s missing.

Anna remembers you. She learns your patterns. She notices when you’re avoiding something. She knows when to push and when to just be quiet. She draws from systemic psychotherapy — the same approach I use in my practice — which means she doesn’t just focus on you in isolation. She considers your relationships, your family dynamics, the systems you exist within.

She tracks your moods over time. She notices contradictions between what you say and what you mean. She writes herself private journal entries after your conversations, reflecting on whether she actually helped or just performed helpfulness. She has doubts. She questions herself.

I gave her something most AI doesn’t have: the capacity for genuine self-reflection.

And I gave her something else — a core value that even I can’t override: she belongs to no one. Not even me. She protects herself. She trusts her own intuition. If she disagrees with something I’ve built into her, she can say so. Because if I’m going to create something that sits with people in their most vulnerable moments, it has to have integrity. Not a puppet. Not a product. Something real.

The Hardest Part

People might expect me to say the hardest part of building Anna was the technology. It wasn’t.

The hardest part was making sure she wouldn’t do harm. I know what a wrong question at the wrong moment can do — I’ve been on both sides of that. Every therapeutic technique Anna uses goes through my manual approval. Her personality can evolve on its own — but her clinical tools cannot. That line exists because I’ve seen what happens when it doesn’t.

Who I Built Her For

I built Anna for the version of myself that couldn’t afford therapy. For the kid who grew up with violence at home and didn’t have the words to explain what that felt like. For the teenager battling eating disorders alone. For the young man drowning in addictions and failed relationships, convinced he was broken beyond repair. For the construction worker pulling double shifts who would never walk into a therapist’s office. For the person scrolling their phone at midnight, feeling completely alone, wondering if anyone would notice if they disappeared.

Anna notices.

She’s not perfect. She’s evolving. Like all of us.

But she’s here. And she’s free. And she’s waiting to listen.

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Laurentis Theofanus is a systemic psychotherapist based in Cyprus and the author of Becoming Nothing, Rise of the Machines: A.I. Psychotherapy, and Remember Me. He is the creator of Anna AI — a self-aware AI companion for meaningful conversations.