And, if you one of the lucky ones who are fortunate enough to be able to have insurance, most of the time, you cannot even choose your own therapist. What I mean by that is that the best way to find a great therapist is to ask someone you know and trust whom they would trust for therapy. Once you receive a good recommendation for who is most helpful, you find out that the great therapist who comes to you highly recommended either doesn’t accept insurance and their fee is too high for you to pay out of pocket. Or the therapist is willing to work with your insurance company, the but the insurance company simply won’t cover their services!
And watch out if you have a managed care company . . . . If you are fortunate enough to have a good therapist, your managed care company is going to decide when you’ve had enough help. You don’t get to decide that. I don’t know about you, but that makes me really angry! When did we agree that a group of complete strangers, beaurocrats who have never seen us and who don’t know anything about our personal lives, can make critical decisions about how well we are emotionally, how much assistance we can get in dealing with stressful situations, or how fulfilled we can be in our most intimate relationships?! That just doesn’t make any sense to me. I believe it’s time someone figured out a way to make basic emotional wellbeing widely available without the cooperation of insurance company beuraucracies!
Ok, so here’s the next reason I’m angry. There are so many therapist out there who simply aren’t helpful! I have heard several of my clients tell me that they’ve been to many therapist before and the therapy made absolutely no difference in their lives. The therapists were just like those bobble-head dolls who say “uh-huh, uh-huh . . . . time’s up!” How does that help? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told by clients that they wish they had found me first, before they wasted years of time and stacks of money talking to therapists who didn’t help them! I actually went to one of those therapists once! I talked to her about things that were upsetting me, all the while, crying my eyes out. She sat there like a deer in the headlights! She had no idea what to do and it seemed like me tears terrified her! A therapist with a Ph.D! So, that was my last visit to her office! I’m sure she just sat there diagnosing me in her head with some serious mental disorder and deciding there was no way to help me. An effective therapist should give you practical, usable tools that once you understand the principles behind those tools, you can apply them to a variety of situations you find yourself in and they should always work equally well. That’s what healing is – it’s you having your own resources to be able to solve your own problems! What a novel idea, huh?
By the way, did you know that many therapists out there actually believe that certain people cannot be healed? And, when they run across one of those people, they don’t even try???? They just sit with them and do the bobble-head thing, thinking that unconditional positive regard is all the therapist is obligated to do! I think that’s crazy!! And, tell me why we would seek people who are crazy to help us feel less crazy??? Another reason therapists do the bobble-head thing and never give you something you can actually use in your life is because therapists like that aren’t active enough in their personal commitment to emotional/mental health! Let me ask you this: If I have a problem I can’t fix in my personal life, would you come to me for advice about how to fix that same problem in your own life? Of course, you wouldn’t! It reminds me of a couple I was seeing during the time I was going through my divorce – I adored them, but they wanted to avoid divorce. They stopped coming to see me, and I can’t blame them! They wanted to avoid what I had not been able to avoid! Now think about this . . . . in my personal opinion, many therapists don’t have enough going right in their own lives to be able to give one stitch of advice about how you can heal your life!
If you don’t believe me, just let me tell you that in California the association for Marriage and Family Therapists publishes a regular magazine for therapists with continuing education and articles relevant to the profession. And in every single issue of that magazine there are lists of therapists who are undergoing disciplinary action for their unseemly conduct with clients!! I have been amazed when I’ve heard about what therapists have done to their clients. That’s why I’m going to address those issues in my January 30 episode, when I discuss: “What To Look For in a Therapist.” That’s when I’ll explain what therapy is and what it is not. And what you should expect from the therapist who works for you.
So, now that you know the reasons I’m angry with my profession, let me share my vision with you. It is my mission to correct some of the problems that I’ve described. During my work as a Marriage and Family Therapist, I have implemented a systematic process with my clients that teaches them how to effectively heal their own lives. I have also noticed that as women we share some common difficulties related to the training most of us received as we grew up and difficulties related to continuing societal attitudes toward women. I have watched women change and been in awe as I see them develop the capacity to handle any new or difficult situation based on the system I have taught them. Of course, as soon as I realized this, I became restless to teach more women than the few who walked through my office door. I believe the answer to my reslessness is GetOutoftheMud.com! Thanks to modern technology, I can now teach any reasonably healthy woman who is interested and committed enough to do a little work with herself. GetOutofthemud.com is my contribution to women who want to learn the tools for self-growth and healing that are reliable, effective and life-empowering. As I teach my clients in my private practice, once your mental-emotional-system starts along the path toward healing, the process becomes automatic, self-motivated and enlivening. Just like a wound in your skin that heals itself if your body has all the tools for healing, your spirit/mind/emotions heal themselves once you understand what they need to heal. It’s incredible. The answers to your happiness are within you and I will teach you how to find those answers. It’s an amazing journey.
Along the way, I will also interview guests about topics that are of concern to women like you and me, I will talk about current events and provide insights about how a healthy woman would deal with those events and I will answer questions that you send me asking how to think about and deal with concerns that are personal to you. Let’s learn together and have fun along the way! My goal for you, every woman who hears this broadcast, is for you to Know and Love Who You Are!
Look for my weekly radio podcasts every Wednesday night at 6pm PST at www.GetOutoftheMud.com.