Going for therapy is not like going to the doctor. When you fall ill you feel you have no alternative but to visit your GP. Your aim is to feel better and often a prescription does the trick. [A placebo can sometimes improve a patient’s condition simply because the person has the expectation that what they are taking will be helpful].

When, on the other hand, you are mentally unwell, going for therapy is often the “last straw”. In most cases you don’t want to admit that you have a problem or, sometimes, the problem is not really yours and the root of it is caused by others. In a few cases that I have seen, “a problem” has been going on for 40 or even 50 years. To admit to having a problem is not easy and it takes courage to seek help.

However therapy is not like seeing the GP. It is not a tablet, syrup or cream that one can use or apply when needed; it is, in fact, hard work for the therapist and for the patient too.  #  The patient must desire change. #  The longer the problem has been with a client, the more difficult, in some case, will be to change…beliefs. Beliefs create the convictions that mould our relationships and control our behaviour.

This is why I deem positive a here-and-now approach in therapy, listening carefully to my clients, observing their body language, interacting with them with tests, metaphors and even jokes, while building in them a positive outcome and general well-being.

With regards to general well-being, a client of mine questioned my request for blood tests and amino acids tests. She just didn’t see the point in providing them, she refused and said: “what do you expect to find”?

I am a great believer of the Whole Body. I also check very much what you eat and drink (hence my detailed questionnaire on line). There is little point in telling me that you cannot sleep well at night if you drink coffee, coca-cola, Red Bull and are also taking Guaranà. You don’t want to make changes? Simply go back to your GP and he might send you to a psychiatrist (as they often do when they don’t have a solution – as per Davidson’s Medicine Book, 22^nd Edition, page 244) or he will prescribe you medications.

Why blood tests and amino acids results? As it happens, a lot about our body and mind is also influenced by nutrition. Your GP will tell you that eating too much fat will cause high cholesterol and a variety of consequences. I can simply tell you that the wrong type of nutrition can deplete your body of important vitamins and amino acids which, by the way, can cause, just to name a few, these symptoms: bipolar depression, allergies or inflammatory depression, asthma, schizophrenia, drug withdrawal, Parkinson’s disease, attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), osteoarthritis, sleep apnea, insomnia, anxiety, facial pain, a severe form of premenstrual syndrome called premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD), grinding teeth during sleep (bruxism) and Tourette’s syndrome. [Worth checking this book: “Mental and Elemental Nutrients” by Carl Pfeiffer, Ph.D., M.D.]

Hence there is really little point in addressing clients suffering with forms of depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, ADHS or else if, for example, you have low amounts of L-tryptophan in your system. [Oh! One important point to address: all of my clients tell me that their diet is excellent – when, really, we soon find out that it is not].

If you ‘simply like to talk’, there are many therapists that are happy to listen to you and might even ask you: “And how do you feel about this”?

Personally, I am satisfied when my clients achieve, where possible, results – but commitment is necessary. To achieve well-being, in my opinion, one must look at the wider picture and not merely focus on Freud’s five stages of development, Galton’s theories of perception, Erikson’s theory of psychological development, Jungian “Types” or Rogers’ personality theory (the notion of self or self-concept), etc.etc.

Remember – mind, spirit, emotions and body… is one.