Psychotherapy added by inducing in the client altered states, clinical hypnosis, imagery…RELAXATION!
As an ethical counselor, I believe in these techniques ONLY when appropriate for the client.
I experienced them, practiced them as a certified practitioner. I also KNEW when NOT to use them on clients whose minds were too frail for such practices, and the transe could have been done more bad than good! Some of these conditions: major depression, bipolar, schizo.
In other words BEFORE you allow anyone to put you in a relaxed, altered state of mind, make sure the therapist/hypnotist or both KNOWS and UNDERSTANDS when this technique should be dangerous. Please give your true and complete health history, including your families.
The truth is,I only understood the complexity and importance and danger of allowing a therapist to use altered states on mind inadequately, only when I was PERSONALLY BEEN THE VICTIM of its consequences…
Just like cancer, or suicide, our minds do not accept such tragedies could happen to US!!! But they do, and suddenly anyone could be accused of child abandonment, of horror things they never did! How this happens? The client in a state of altered state is first open to any suggestions the therapist makes, second, they put together bits and pieces of memories and fantasies that happened and were done by many people or imagined. Of course, ONE person must be blamed, and that could be YOU!!!
This was when I started researching, the what was in the 1990s “RECOVERED memories,” but thanks to the bad name it received thanks to solid research, it is now called FALSE.
In my devastation try to understand the facts, what has happened and how within one hour of “therapy” the most important relationship of my life fell apart I started my research and fight against unethical use of therapy techniques!
To protect the identity of those I love, and knowing they were themselves the victims of unethical therapy practices, meant to financially benefit the therapist, I am writing this FIRST post (in a series of many) to bring awareness to this topic and to the truth that NOT ALL THERAPY IS THE SAME!!!
Each mental health condition, each person, is different. Some conditions improve with the use of Dialectal /Cognitive Behavior Therapy, some therapists, myself included, believes in the Adlerian family model because we live in a family and this influences us.
I am currently reading a heartbreaking book, ‘Lost Daughters, Recovered Memory Therapy and the People It Hurts,’ by Reinder Van Til.
It is a personal tragedy, not solid research of how the mind in an altered state could put bits of truth and fantasy together to create stories of incredible abuse and destroy lives!
I am a researcher by nature and also am reading the body of scientific work of Dr Elizabeth Loftus, and ‘The Seven Sins of the Mind How the Mind Forgets and Remembers,’ by Professor Daniel Schacter, who, at the time (2001), was the Chair of The Harvard University’s Department of Psychology.
In fact, I have a stash of 8 books and links to scholarly articles which discuss the unreliability of obtaining “false” memories under an ALTERED state, and more scary, how a therapist one trusts could manipulate such “memories.”
This post is the BEGINNING of a series of articles about various schools of psychotherapy, HOW TO choose a therapist and to learn not ALL therapies are the SAME. In fact, there are over 200 various schools. I will write a post on EACH of the top ten, so my readers are educated and aware about therapy and what it could do or not. Positive and Negative.
Meanwhile, thank you for reading my blog. You know every time I post, a part of my heart goes to YOU! KNOWLEDGE IS POWER!!!
The Nude Truth by Rodica Mihalis 