Therapy advertising – big bold claims (2)

August 5, 2010 in Uncategorized | No comments

Here’s a few more examples of psychotherapy websites making  claims which are great  marketing but not such great  therapy.

Hypnotherapy claims, true but artful

Hypnotherapy claims, true but artful

Tricky, this one. Strictly, it’s true. Many problems can be resolved in a few hours of treatment. But look at the artfully positioned list: … anorexia … bulemia … cancer treatment … eating disorders. You’d think that these are the problems that can be resolved in a few hours, wouldn’t you? Wrong! These can be very major issues that need persistence and commitment, perhaps over years rather than weeks, as can many of the others on the list. This strikes me as just like  the advert in the previous post, “Whatever your problem, we can resolve it, Fast!”, only cleverer.

Then there’s that “Using a special form of hypnotherapy and hypnosis …” Oooh! Take that!, old-fashioned therapists who aren’t using a special form of hypnosis! Taken together, the artful implication seems to be a new form of hypnosis so special that even anorexia and cancer treatment succumb rapidly. No such thing exists.

[In later posts I'll take more about what therapy can and can't do. Meanwhile see my main site for more information.]

And the next:

Strong hypnotherapy claims

Strong hypnotherapy claims

Two or three sessions will cure simple phobias, definitely, but not more complicated ones. Weight also,  but only if simple habit.  Smoking, yes for most people, if highly individualised sessions. The rest? Well yes, sometimes people only need that few sessions. But much more commonly, normal people need more sessions. And beyond that, any one of those could be a deeply-seeded issue. As I said in the previous post, have a look under the “Health > Mental Health” section of Yahoo Answers and you find sadly many people with these issues who need far, far  more then two or three sessions. OK, the advert doesn’t say “resolve completely” in two or three sessions but there is a pretty clear implication of done-and-dusted in that time. And again, it just ain’t so for many people.

A final example from the same website:

Claims for OCD treatment

Claims for OCD treatment. Text reads: Dealing with or letting go of your Obsessive compulsive disorder, or OCD, with hypnotherapy should really only take two or three sessions ~ well that`s our experience.

Certainly not my experience. It’s the same story; some people with mild OCD can be helped in 3 – 5 sessions of behavioural hypnotherapy. But OCD can have a real grip on people’s lives, and I would more typically say 10-15 sessions of highly behavioural-oriented hypnosis, maybe a good many more.

As I don’t specialise in OCD I googled “number of sessions OCD” and the authoritative http://www.psychguides.com/ocgl says on similar lines:  “The experts recommend 13-20 sessions as the appropriate number of CBT treatments for the typical patient. When speed is of the essence or OCD is particularly severe in adults, intensive CBT (daily CBT for 3 weeks) may be preferable.”

To repeat from the previous post. I’m not suggesting that these advertisers are being dishonest. But they are over-enthusiastic in their marketing, and  very likely naive about some aspects of therapy – they see a limited range of clients and don’t realise how serious some issues are. I’ll talk more in later posts about how honest people can make misleading claims.

RULE TWO FOR READING THERAPY ADVERTS

When therapists make, or imply, dramatic claims for rapid success “with hypnosis” or “with a special kind of hypnosis” for serious issues, they may indeed be wonder therapists with a magic special cure. Or they may simply not know what they are talking about.

Tags: , ,

Therapy advertising – big bold claims (1)

July 26, 2010 in How to choose a therapist | No comments

I really sympathise with anyone trying to choose a therapist.  So many things that could go wrong – you could waste your money, look a fool, and get no better. And such a  deep longing for everything to go right,  for connection, self-respect and freedom from fear. But to get those, you’ve got all those advertisements to choose between, all those therapies with conflicting claims to sort out.

So before you can get help, you need help in getting help. That’s this blog!

I’m going to spend a lot of time explaining what different therapies can and can’t do, how to read  therapy advertising, and how to choose a therapist.

Here we go.

Like most therapists, I write my own advertising. It’s a job I  hate. You have to tread such a narrow tightrope. On the one hand, you have to write strong, marketing text  which sells, or you don’t get any clients. On the other hand, you have to have total integrity and make sure every word is absolutely true – for everyone who might read it. In that case you can end up writing quite a boring website.

A lot of therapy advertising on the internet is to say the least, not boring. It is often quiet hard-sell, full of big bold claims.

When we are in trouble, we all of us have the wish to be children again. We want to be looked after and have it all taken care of by a wise, strong, caring parent or therapist. There’s nothing wrong with that, it is only human. It does mean, though, that what  people with a problem want to hear is a booming confidence that “I can solve your problems.”

Plenty of therapists play up to this; it’s great marketing. For example, here are some screenshots from an actual website in the UK.  You may think these are the tabloid end of the market. But this psychotherapist works in Harley St and charges £185-00 for a one hour session, £950-00 for a full day intensive session.

Claims made by a psychotherapist

Claims made by a psychotherapist

More psychotherapy claims

More psychotherapy claims

Great advertising!  – sounds like a great therapist who knows what needs to be done, and gets on and does it it. No messing around, he just solves those problems for you, right there on the spot.

But to me it’s very misleading. To me, no experienced or wise therapist should ever make claims like “Whatever your problem, we can resolve it, fast!” This is ridiculous.  Many problems can be rapidly resolved; but not all. Some people are dealing with deeply seeded traumas which it can take a lot of work over a long period to resolve. Have a look on the Yahoo Answers website for  “depression” and similar keywords. You’ll find many people there who are in great pain and whose lives are  in a huge mess. I’d call it not just misleading, but cruel, to suggest to these people that “whatever the problem, we can resolve it, Fast.”

Nor is it in my view realistic to claim to “effortlessly regain Balance and Live the lifestyle you desire,” “Easily and Effortlessly eliminate Fears, Phobias and Emotional issues, regardless of the time you have held onto these limiting associations and thoughts” or “Instantly reduce the stress in your life.” [My added emphasis.]

There is again some truth. People do think that when they’ve had problems for a long time, they’ll have them for a long time more. Mostly this isn’t so. An affordable course of sessions with a good and experienced therapist can often work “miracles” – it can achieve the radical shift of perspective which brings big changes. But not always. Some people are in a place in their life where progress can only be slow. They may be very hurt or very ashamed and have trouble opening up. Or they may want things to be different, but not yet be willing to experiment and take risks and think differently.

I am not accusing this psychotherapist of  being consciously misleading. He may well be a good practitioner who gets good results; he may believe what he is saying. [I'll look at how this could be in later posts.]  But there is a certain over-enthusiasm; “effortlessly … Live the lifestyle you desire;” it’s just too much.

So, RULE ONE IN CHOOSING A THERAPIST:-

Beware of adverts containing words like effortlessly, instantly, regardless of difficulties, complete fast resolution which imply that all problems can be resolved like that. That is totally and completely unreal. There is no therapy in the world capable of that.

Tags: ,

Myths about meditation:
(1) Meditation involves sitting still

July 26, 2010 in Meditation | No comments

This is one of the most common myths about meditation. People think that meditation consists of sitting still, possibly in the buddha posture, unmoving.

Not even in the sightest is this true.

Many meditation exercises involve sitting still. But meditation is not an activity and it is not an experience. Meditation is the existential realisation that the consciousness which is aware of anger, pain, fear, love, joy, gratitude is separate from any and all of these experiences.

So suppose you are angry. If you storm and rant and rage and plan revenge, then you are not in meditation. If you sit and keep very still, but continue to rage internally, you are not in meditation. If you suppress the anger with premature forgiveness, you are not in meditation. (Some schools of meditation unwittingly encourage this). If you sit and succeed in detatching yourself from the anger, then of course you are in meditation.

But suppose that you first put a big cushion on the floor. And (don’t hurt yourself) you attack the cushion with all your might, beating it, screaming, shouting, hitting. Then if you remain present and aware as you do that, you are in meditation as you do it. Any action carried out with awareness carries the quality of meditation.

If you then sit silently and just allow your experiences to be as they are, quite likely you will feel a deeper calmness and peach than if you had not done the anger release. This is meditation not because it is calm and peaceful, but because you are present and aware.

These are two different qualities  of meditation. Being aware during anger release or other action is a meditation of the outgoing or male or yang energy. Being aware in silence is meditation of the receptive or female or yin energy.  But they are both equally meditation.

Tags: , , ,

Technorati EVQKHRG9AT4K

July 26, 2010 in Uncategorized | No comments

Dear human readers,

Please ignore this post. It is part of the process of registering with Technorati.

EVQKHRG9AT4K

Radical Meditation

July 23, 2010 in Meditation | No comments

The other day I picked up  in the Oxfam bookshop a book called “The meditator’s handbook” by David Fontana, a university professor in the UK. It is billed as “The Meditator’s Handbook: a complete guide to eastern and western techniques” of meditation. Fontana has “studied Eastern and Western religions, meditation, dreams [etc] for over 25 years” with a number of different meditation teachers.

But reading the book, it appears Fontana has thought about meditation a lot, but if his life has been transformed by meditation (transformed, not just improved) that doesn’t come across. I struggled to have any sense that Fontana really understands the power of meditation to radically transform our lives. He seems stuck at understanding meditation as a source of enjoyable and useful experiences.  Sadly this is very common in books about meditation written by Westerners.

So I’ve started a series of posts on what I term radical meditation. You can find these under “Pages” on the right. If you have any questions, please post them as comments and I’ll do my best to answer.

As I say in one of the pages, I’m not enlightened, so there’s very much that I also can’t speak of from experience, or I’ve only had illuminating insights that aren’t yet a permanent part of my life. But at least I am aware of that and honest about it;  so many meditation writers don’t seem to be. And there is certainly much that I can speak of with authority. Where I rely on the teaching or experience of others about meditation, I will say so.

Tags: , , ,

Quit-smoking hypnosis? Don’t believe the claims

March 19, 2010 in How to choose a therapist | 1 comment

Last year there was a breakhrough in honesty about quit-smoking hypnosis. In the American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, hypnotherapist Dr Edwin Yager described how he realised he’d been fooling himself: hypnosis was much less effective than he’d thought. Studying a colleague’s stop-smoking clients, he found that two months after quitting, success was a mere 22%, a fraction of what he’d expected.

Yes, immediately after the hypnosis session success was far higher: 68% of smokers had quit. But these people rapidly relapsed. Their success vanished from their hands like snow in the desert.

He writes: “I believe I have erroneously allowed myself to be convinced of exaggerated success; that I have accepted the immediate reports as final results. I was wrong … .”

Yager has let the cat out of the bag about an open secret in the hypnosis world. Quit smoking success rates:

  • mean very little
  • vary with the type of hypnotic quit-smoking programme between 4% and 80% plus
  • and are often wildly – and persuasively – exaggerated

I’m going to use  a series of posts to examine this whole issue. To start with, let’s look at relapse rates.

Yager is absolutely right.  Short-term, hypnosis is highly effective, indeed dramatically so.  But success tails off steeply over a couple of months. According to a University of Iowa metastudy of 72,000 smokers, within a year as much as 70% of smokers who quit with hypnosis will have relapsed.

That’s an average. Some hypnotic quit-smoking programmes do far better. They tend to be ones which are:

  • not just a single one-hour session, but several sessions
  • highly tailored to the individual, and
  • include cognitive-behavioural elements as well as hypnosis

But many hypnosis websites makes claims of 85% and 95% success for quit smoking. (It’s always those exact figures, 85% or 95%!) These are the success rates a week or two after the session. They are not the rates six or 12 months later.  Typically, these will be far lower.

One of Britain’s leading single-session smoking cessation practitioners, the founder of a leading hypnosis training college and an excellent therapist for whom I have a high regard, claims in public no less than a 90% success rate. Yet in a private email he told me that the 90% applied at 2 months, but not at 6 months and “especially not at a year – it’s much more likely to be 40% by then.”

Here’s a splendid example of the phenomenon. I won’t give the name of website this comes from because it is typical of many, and I can make my point without making anyone sad.

A quit-smoking claim with a crucial line removed

A short-term quit-smoking claim with a crucial line removed

This figure shows no sign whatever of being a well-substantiated 12-month followup figure. It seems safe to assume it is a figure from a week or two after the session. And look how shy this 95% figure is, look how it avoids a testing comparison.  Because here is another version of the Tang and Law table:

A much lower hypnosis smoking success rate is revealed

A much lower hypnosis smoking success rate is revealed

And oh look! the average long-term success rate for hypnosis in 10 studies was a mere 24%   No wonder the 95% claim doesn’t want a comparison.

So take the mega success claims in quit-smoking ads with a pinch of salt.

Hypnosis is an excellent method of quitting smoking. But the success varies with the hypnosis method between 4% and more than 80%. The methods with the high failure rates are the standardised one-size-fits-all one-hour sessions. Multi session, individualised, cognitive behavioural hypnosis is what works best long-term. Are you are willing to pay a bit more and put in a bit of effort yourself, to have the very best shot at quitting forever? Then have a look at my multi-session cognitive behavioural hypnosis quit-smoking programme: www.themagicofyou.co.uk/bristol/hypnotherapy/quit-smoking.php It really works.