How to choose a therapist

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Therapy advertising – big bold claims (1)

July 26, 2010 in How to choose a therapist | 1 comment

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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 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 the  voice of an all-powerful parent, 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 it’s totally 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 issues involves deeply seeded traumas which it can take a lot of work over a long period to resolve. And some people have been very, very hurt by life. 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  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, looked at from a particular direction. People do think that when they’ve had problems for a long time, they’ll have them for a long time more and getting rid of them takes endless analysis. They don’t realise just how very helpful modern brief therapy can be.  An affordable, sometimes even very short, 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 necessarily accusing this psychotherapist of  being consciously misleading. He may believe what he is saying, for reasons I’ll talk about in other posts.   But

“effortlessly … Live the lifestyle you desire;”

… it’s just ridiculous.

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 and no therapist in the world capable of that.

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Quit-smoking hypnosis? Don’t believe the claims

March 19, 2010 in How to choose a therapist | 2 comments

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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.

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