A worker who seeks and gets help for psychological problems is more productive, better equipped, and a far more valuable company asset. So why the bias against therapy?

HealthDay/BusinessWeek reported a survey from the American Psychiatric Association that found: “More than 40 percent of the 1,129 respondents said their employer was supportive or extremely supportive of their workers seeking care for health concerns. However, the online survey also found that barriers persist for workers who said their workplace is unsupportive of employees seeking treatment, especially for mental health concerns.” Among those surveyed, 76 percent felt their work status would be damaged if they sought treatment for drug addiction, compared to “73 percent (who felt that way) for alcoholism, and 62 percent for depression, compared with 55 percent who thought seeking care for diabetes would affect their work status and 54 percent for heart disease” (Preidt, 1/31).

The problem, as I see it is a general public bias against those who seek help for mental health issues. I don’t see a quick fix for that.

One “work-around” -
For those providing therapy, I recommend telling clients/patients who come for sessions that they tell their friends and especially co-workers that they are doing “job enhancement” or “personal development” or “performance enhancement” work with a specialist or coach.

This is called a “reframe”. And it’s the truth!

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In an interesting coincidence, the Rapid Eye Technology (RET) eye directing device (called a wand) is moved in a hexagonal 3D pattern just in front of the face – a pattern that due to its spacial character may be very familiar to the aforementioned part of the brain.

University College London researchers have discovered that the brain lays out a grid of cells that represent a map of spacial orientations and locations in space. That in itself may not be any big news to most readers – “so what?” This grid has been known to exist in mice since 2005.

Well, the cool thing is that this 3D grid within the hippocampal formation and associated brain areas, now discovered to exist in humans as well, forms triangles in hexagonal formations – sort of like a honeycomb. Study co-author Dr Caswell Barry said: “It is as if grid cells provide a cognitive map of space. In fact, these cells are very much like the longitude and latitude lines we’re all familiar with on normal maps, but instead of using square grid lines it seems the brain uses triangles.”

In an interesting coincidence, the Rapid Eye Technology (RET) eye directing device (called a wand) is moved in a hexagonal 3D pattern just in front of the face – a pattern that due to its spacial character may be very familiar to the aforementioned part of the brain. Further, the signals flowing through the brain from eyes to visual cortex stop off for an emotional load at the hypothalamus which is attached to the memory-gating hippocampus – the seat of this honeycomb-like spacial mapping grid.

Research team leader, Professor Neil Burgess, commented, “…grid cells may help us to find our way to the right memory as well as finding our way through our environment. These brain areas are also amongst the first to be affected by Alzheimer’s disease which may explain why getting lost is one of the most common early symptoms of this disease.”

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“What we’re learning is that poor adult health is, in part, manufactured in childhood. It is multiple and cumulative childhood experience that predisposes adults to poor health.”

The Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London studied 1,000 individuals from birth to age 32 as part of the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study in New Zealand. Their research suggests that sustained health risks stem from childhood abuse, neglect, social isolation or economic hardship.

Adults who had been maltreated as children were twice as likely to suffer major depression and chronic inflammation. Children who grew up poor or socially isolated were twice as likely to show metabolic risk markers at age 32. Adults who had two or more of the adverse childhood experiences were nearly twice as likely to have disease risk factors as those who hadn’t experienced trauma in childhood.

“We live increasingly longer lives and our extra years of life should be healthy, productive and enjoyable, not years of disease and disability,” says lead author Dr Andrea Danese, Clinical Lecturer at Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and MRC Social Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre, Institute of Psychiatry at King’s. “In this study, we observed that childhood experiences may affect health in old age, regardless of the risk factors that health policies are currently targeting. Therefore the promotion of healthy positive experiences for children is a necessary and potentially cost-effective target for the prevention of age-related disease.”

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I think addressing physical symptoms is the key to healing just about any emotional issue that includes a physical aspect. Addictions, colds, alergies, irrational fears/phobias, weight issues, and a host of others I find respond well to healing modalities, like Rapid Eye Technology (RET) and Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), focused on “What do you feel in your body when…?” rather than “How do you feel (emotionally) about that?”.

Emotions are so nebulous and esoteric for most people, I think. However, even those who profess to have no emotional energy about something may still feel something physical (a sensation) related to an emotion.

For example, I once worked with a lawyer who had absolutely no emotional responses to “How do you feel about your divorce?” But his body was wracked with pains of all sorts that he could not explain. And even for those aches and pains he could explain (over-exercise, etc.), they ALL responded to RET’s Instant Release Technique – but ONLY if I asked “what sensations do you feel right now in your body [as we're talking about the divorce]?”. He had four sessions and turned his life around completely (fortunately, his wife did RET sessions at the same time, so they felt they were working together to rescue their marriage – which they both felt was worth preserving after 40+ years).

Honoring Emotions

Interestingly, I’ve had many clients who really wanted to dig into their emotional problems – over and over and over again. These clients get a certain amount of pleasure from RET particularly as they feel they are HONORING their emotions – and sometimes finding new ones they did not know they had. Each time I’d see them, they’d report the very same emotional issues – over and over and over again. They were recreating rather than healing – or so I supposed. Actually, they were healing – IN THEIR OWN WAY. One shoe does not everyone fit.

Just because RET is fast and effective for most people does not mean that everyone who wants to do RET wants to deal with their issues quickly. Some want to “drag them out” and enjoy/honor their emotional journey. When we RET technicians hurry them along, we dishonor their process. And how does one identify such clients? For the most part, they tend to book multiple sessions in advance. They tend to want to “wallow” a little bit in their emotions. And many I’ve seen tell me to slow down a little. Think how disappointed and dishonored such a client must feel when they completely resolve their issue in their first RET session. I’ve had clients call me and complain that it felt we went too fast – even though we completely resolved their issue and they were happy with the results.

As fast as RET works, we still must encourage some of our clients to entertain the notion of doing multiple sessions where we can delve and explore more fully their emotional depth – far beyond mere “healing” – into the realm of “what’s next” in their personal evolution. “What ELSE is there?” or “What’s next for you?”

You can make those life changes you want to make in the blink of an eye.

New research out of MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research, shows that brain neurons can change in as little as two minutes even in adults. For years scientists have known about the plasticity of the brain – that it can change neuronal connections and even grow new brain cells. But until recently, no one had studied the speed at which these changes can occur.

It is unlikely that a brain cell would grow to maturity and make all those dendrite connections in just two minutes. Some other mechanism must be at work.
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