Reverse Thinking

The Rasputin Guide to Personal Change

Years ago, before I came up with Reverse Therapy, I wrote a spoof called The Rasputin Guide to Therapy. The joke was that Rasputin - the so-called 'Mad Monk', sex-maniac, and Svengali of legend - might have had some useful things to say about personal change. I was also trying to get people to take psychotherapy less seriously and be more realistic about what it can, and can not, achieve.

In fact there is no real evidence that psychotherapy cures anything, although it can help in the search for solutions. That didn't satisfy me and was one of the reasons I set out on the path that led to Reverse Therapy. In the Rasputin book I wanted to draw attention to the things that anyone can learn to do in order to get back their mental health. That they didn't need a therapist to do that for them.

In my time I have met a few very, very good therapists. But their excellence had very little to do with their training and much more to do with their personal qualities: warmth, intelligence, experience of the world, emotional depth, resilience and imagination. I have also met a lot of poor therapists who were poor for the opposite reason: that all they really had was their training.

Here are some of the reasons why therapy is not as good as it could be:

• The focus on theories rather individual human beings. Most courses in therapy are academic: text-books, lectures, essays and written exams. With little time spent on learning how to do therapy.
• The focus on what is going on in the client's memories. But the problems most clients have is with the world outside their heads: with work; with partnerships, children and parents; with money worries, alcohol and abuse.
• Wasting time worrying about 'transference' (the projection of wishes, memories and expectations onto the therapist). It is likely that transference either doesn't exist or is just attention-seeking. Either way, this is time that would be better spent on directing the client's attention away from the therapist, and away from her neurosis, and towards her real-life problems.
• Nearly all clients who come for therapy say that their symptoms appeared while they were struggling with their anxieties over families, relationships and work. They get well again when they solve those problems (or leave them behind and move on). Very few approaches (Reverse Therapy is one exception) teach people how to do that. The very worst therapists sneer at people who offer practical help, seeing it as somehow beneath them.
• Academics have far too much influence on psychotherapy. The two dominant approaches - Psychoanalysis and Cognitive-Behavior Therapy - are usually taught and supervised by people who work in universities, and who rarely make contact with ordinary people.
• Many therapies focus on stories, memories and experiences from the past and spend endless time going over them. This does nothing to help clients learn how to be more effective problem- solvers in the present. Raking over the past often becomes an end in itself as time and money is wasted on delusions like 'the unconscious mind'. Similarly, other therapies focus on identifying the client's beliefs about reality and changing them, even though this is irrelevant to changing behavior..
• Some well-known therapies are just single techniques. These include Hypnotherapy, Focusing, EMDR, and old-style Cognitive therapy. NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) is a bundle of techniques borrowed from other therapies. These techniques are applied on a hit-and-miss basis to almost any problem. If they work, good. If they don't the therapist still earns a fee.
• Therapists are taught to keep themselves aloof from clients and not to divulge personal information such as their experiences, hopes, wishes, emotions, and likes and dislikes. They are also taught to remain impassive if the client gets upset. While professional boundaries are important, this attitude to therapy leaves many clients wondering whether they are just objects of analysis. They rarely get encouragement or praise or expressions of personal warmth. This, in turn, fosters the delusion that therapists are more developed, more mature, less 'irrational' than their clients. The inferior role allocated to the client keeps her in a state of low-confidence in which she is trapped.
• There is plenty of evidence from surveys that some forms of therapy and counseling make people more traumatized, confused, and helpless. The reason for this is the insistence that clients go back over traumatic memories again and again. In the end this becomes an obsession and the client's illness gets worse. And, indeed, fresh illnesses are created too. One German study of people who'd received psychotherapy showed that, on average, they were more likely to have a heart attack than people who had not.
• Many therapists are not themselves developed, mature or wise people with common-sense or, even, much real experience of life. In fact, quite the opposite. This may be why stress levels are higher amongst therapists than in the general the population.
• Psychotherapy usually ignores the spiritual, social, creative, physical side of human beings. Yet spiritual purpose, a connection to the community, creative activities and regular physical exercise are the factors  that show up time and time again in studies that look at the differences between people who become depressed and those who don't
• Psychotherapy is altogether too intellectual, too serious. It is light on laughs, smiles, jokes, irreverence, play, spontaneity or even enjoyment. Which brings me to Rasputin

What struck me about the stories about the way Rasputin worked was that he would often get people to do things that before they might have thought crazy, childish, 'dirty' or irresponsible. Some were told to go on pilgrimages, some to give away more of their money, some to party harder, others to take dancing lessons and still more were told to do more physical work or voluntary help. With worried, anxious, over-intellectual clients Rasputin discouraged them from reading books and newspapers and talking about their problems, and instead told them to join the peasants in the field and work. Wealthy, bored, spoilt clients were told to present themselves at Rasputin's house in Siberia, where they were put to work on charitable enterprises, taken on long walks, given simple meals, and taught self-help and prayer techniques which calmed the mind and raised awareness.

Rasputin was a self-taught healer (he was never actually a monk) who used these ideas himself. He once walked 3000 miles from Siberia to Jerusalem, along the way drinking in the sea, the mountains, the lakes and the people.  His favourite recreations seem to have been drinking, dancing, excursions into the country, making new friends and giving away his money.

Here are a few of ‘Rasputin’s’ tips for a healthy life.

• Never give away your power to another person. This applies to partners, employers, children, parents, teachers and – most especially – gurus who claim to have better answers than you do to life’s problems. As human beings they will be struggling with their own problems and will not know more than you do about your own best way forward in life.
• Trust in yourself. Learn to recognise what is true for you (and not for others) and be guided by your own emotions about things.
• Learn to dance, sing or play music.
• Whatever you do for a living, or if you care for others, then do it with a passion. If doing things is an obligation rather than a pleasure then be sure to balance these chores with other activities for which you do have a passion.
• Never look back. If things go wrong, or if you are sad and disillusioned, then move on and find a better way of life.
• Take risks – often. You will never find out what you are capable of unless you experiment. And the more you move outside the comfort zone Headmind has circumscribed for you the more confident you will become.
• Seek the humour in things. If you are not very good at doing that then spend plenty of time with people who are.
• Make time for people you love. And let them make time for you.
• Be honest. Don’t compromise on the truth just to keep someone else in their comfort zone. Practice gently opening your heart to others.
• Cultivate enlightened selfishness. If you don’t take a break or go easy on yourself from time to time you won’t be able to care for others. Even the Christ and the Buddha needed time off from their mission.
• Never be a slave to convention or 'the right way' to do things. Regularly take risks, dare to be different, do the opposite of what others expect you to do, break old habits, and go wild.

Finally, here are some of Rasputin’s mistakes to avoid:

• Don’t drink too much
• Don’t give away all you have
• Be selective about your sexual partners
• Don’t go with strangers who invite you to their house at midnight (they might want to shoot you)
• Don’t get mixed up with the Royal family

The Personality Surgeon

I am a big fan of Colin Wilson, who's written numerous books on the theme of The Outsider - people living on the edge of society, misfits who have to find a way to channel their passion into something creative. Otherwise, their passion will turn inwards and destroy them. So unhealthy outsiders become alcoholics, criminals, black magicians, madmen. Healthy outsiders become visionaries, spiritual leaders, artists or humble therapists. The difference is that the latter have connected to a purpose - something beyond self and society that keeps them connected and keeps them sane. I can vouch from personal experience that this is entirely true.

This weekend I read Wilson's novel 'The Personality Surgeon' again. I first read it in 1988 while I was wondering whether I wanted to become a psychotherapist or not. Most of my friends thought I was crazy as the pay was crap and you only ever got to meet dodgy people (they meant the other psychotherapists). But reading that book clinched it for me. And now, when I read it again, I am astounded by the fact that so many of the ideas that went into Reverse Therapy years later are in that book. It's just that I had 'forgotten' about them.

The Personality Surgeon is an ordinary GP called Charles Peruzzi working in South London who stumbles upon the reason why people become ill with Depression, Anxiety and unnecessary diseases. Their  personality has taken them over and squeezed the life out of them. Personality is the fixed identity we have taken over from the way other people see us and which we store in our head. When we identify with it too rigidly the effort required to stay in the strait jacket drains us of vitality. That is especially true if the personality we have adopted is timid, self-denying, conventional, or a people-pleaser.

In the book Peruzzi discovers that a shock or a crisis can be enough to catapult his patients out of the personality strait-jacket. A surge of vitality comes up out of the body to meet the crisis, overwhelm the fixed ideas of Headmind and (once the crisis has passed) point them to a new way of life.

I had also forgotten all the cases Wilson cites and, since he credits some medical doctors with help on the book, it is likely they were taken from real life.

• One man develops urticaria (a painful skin rash) after he retires and no longer has any purpose in life. He is cured when his daughter drives her car into the river and he goes into shock. Later on he starts up a new business.
• An airline stewardess tries to commit suicide as she can no longer live with the disfiguring facial scars she sustained in an airline accident. She 'sees' herself as a freak. But once she recovers she loses her poor self-image just by behaving differently with men: assertive rather than meek.
• A US Astronaut becomes severely depressed after the Moon landing project ends. But his real problem was that he chose the wrong career to follow next. Instead of following his real love: ecology, he becomes a politician. And once he loses that personality, his depression goes.

Colin Wilson writes about all the things we pay attention to in Reverse Therapy. How symptoms of illness come up when we are living a life based on repressed emotions and lies. How rigid ideas keep us trapped. How we get healthy again by taking risks. How we became ill by relating to people dishonestly and can get well again by becoming more authentic. Most, importantly, health depends on vitality, and vitality depends on exercising your love of life.

But if you are ever feeling depressed then read The Personality Surgeon. That alone will be enough to revitalise you. It's an inspiring work.

"Dr. Miller says we are pessimistic because life seems like a very bad, very screwed-up film. If you ask "What the hell is wrong with the projector?" and go up to the control room, you find it's empty. You are the projectionist, and you should have been up there all the time.”       
                                                                                                                                    Colin Wilson

 

Why Cognitive Behavior Therapy doesn’t work

Many people with M.E. will know that they are continually being pushed towards Cognitive Behavior Therapy as the treatment. You may even have been told: ‘nothing else works’ or ‘this is the only thing that has any scientific evidence going for it’.

Er…well, the problem is that there is no real scientific evidence that CBT works for anything. There have been about three worthwhile studies on CBT for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome published in the UK and only one of those produced any evidence at all that CBT could be effective in reducing symptoms. Yet even that one study compared CBT with relaxation techniques which (as anyone with CFS will tell you) are practically useless. I wonder how CBT will look when it finally goes head to head with a really effective contender like Reverse Therapy?

Cognitive Therapy, as I never tire of reminding people, was developed to treat Depression. Since M.E. is not depression why should anyone assume that it will work for that condition? Cognitive Therapy works on changing peoples’ thoughts, beliefs and expectations. But since Chronic Fatigue symptoms are not created in the head there is no reason to believe the belief that changing beliefs will make any difference.

In fact, about twenty years ago it was realized that changing thoughts doesn’t make much difference to Depression either. Or Anxiety. Or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Or anything else. That was why Cognitive Therapy was merged with Behavior Therapy - because it began to dawn on one or two minds that getting someone to change their thoughts about their problems isn’t going to make any difference until they do something about them. The truth of the matter is that it is probably the ‘B’ part of the process that is effective for a few people, not the ‘C’ part.

Unfortunately for the moguls that run the National Health Service there is no evidence that CBT is effective for anything else either. In one recent study in Scotland over 1000 patients who had received CBT years before were followed up. Of the 489 who could be bothered to talk about the therapy (were the rest too ill to come to the phone?) over half of them were still unwell and 30% of them still had severe symptoms. That means – in plain terms – that less than 10% of the original number were reporting any benefit at all. If you were a taxi-driver and only managed to get 1 out of 10  passengers to their destination you’d soon be out of business. Yet the current Government wants to spend £600 million pushing CBT on the rest of us. With the absurd claim that it has all been scientifically proven.

So why is Cognitive-Behavior Therapy the number one most used therapy in the UK and the United States? Well, folks, the main reason is that it is promoted by the Psychology industry, which is now well-embedded in the universities, the health services, in business, government and the press. And because it fits in with what the powers-that-be think people should be like: rational, reasonable, normal workers who can control their thoughts, act sensibly and not get over-emotional. In that sense what someone who goes in for CBT is really getting is an indoctrination in mainstream psychology. Don’t forget, nearly all the research that has so far been carried out on CBT has been organized by – you’ve guessed it – other psychologists. This is one reason why most of the research is unbelievably biased.

Here are a few reasons why Cognitive-Behavior Therapy won’t work for M.E.

1. No evidence exists that CBT can eliminate symptoms, only that it can reduce them.

2. CBT has a high initial drop out rate. Over 20% of people with M.E. do not go back after their first session.

3. M.E. symptoms are not created by thoughts so changing thoughts won’t make any difference.

4. Sufferers who have headaches, fatigue, muscle pain, IBS, sleeping problems, etc feel insulted by the suggestion that they can get better through positive thinking. Another reason they are unlikely to go back.

5. Forms. CBT makes people fill out endless forms, questionnaires and journals. Doing which not only creates frustration but triggers brain fog too

6. Since symptoms are created in the brain, glands and nervous system only an approach – like Reverse Therapy – that recognizes and works with Bodymind has any chance of reversing the condition.

7. This in turn means recognizing that the symptoms are created because the organism – the body – is in crisis. And that we have to address the organic cause, rather than the negative beliefs that people have developed after becoming ill.

8. When CBT does help in reducing symptoms it is not because CBT is effective but because it is accidentally – and without realizing what is happening – encouraging the client to try new activities that reduce Bodymind’s need to create symptoms as a warning call. But Reverse Therapy does that anyway.

 

 

Recovering from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

At my request, John Aitken is guesting today. He is a former counsellor who recovered from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and has now retrained as a Reverse Therapist. I think John's words speak for themselves so I don't need to add any more.

John writes:

My belief that I must succeed drove me to illness; and my insistence that I must be self-sufficient at all costs kept me there. My activities became extremely narrow. I was purely focused on training to be a Mental Health Nurse. The more tired I became the more I concentrated on this - reinforcing the problem. In fact one day I remember an old school friend asking me what I did to have fun. I was speechless. I didn’t have any fun.

I slowly became more and more exhausted.

I made an appointment with my GP, who arranged for blood tests and a depression study. These were clear and he diagnosed me (by exclusion) with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/M.E. I was devastated. I had previously made a joke that I was going to start an M.E. support group, but I couldn’t be arsed – that back-fired. At first I couldn’t get out of bed. It was like having a devastating hangover and the flu at the same time. I couldn’t believe this was happening to me. I had always been so active. How long was this going to last for? Would I have to consider being incapacitated for the long term? I looked on Google for more information and was completely overwhelmed – and my symptoms increased. Shit!! I had all the common CFS symptoms and couldn’t believe this was happening to me – I had always been a high achiever

All my dialogue was internal: “I have got to make the best of it” “How come other selfish people get away with it without getting ill?”. In fact since doing a person-centred counselling course, I believed that it was my role to do all the listening. I devalued myself and assumed that it was my sole function in life to be supportive of others.

Then I discovered Reverse Therapy and my life turned around.

This process highlighted the importance of paying attention to my emotional needs and my own personal truths rather than all the rules and expectations that I had inherited.

In summary, I was not expressing my emotional needs and was not having enough fun in my life. Reverse Therapy helped with this by showing me how my body reacts and causes symptoms. It taught me how to respect my symptoms as a clear message that something was not right in my life. That I needed to correct something in order to respond to my body’s needs. I now know how to be well.

I now live my life according to my emotional truths and not the learnt psychological rules that I have assimilated from society in general. I am much happier and stimulated by life again. Like everybody else I have bad days but I quickly bounce back and have more fun.

I asserted my need to be listened to sometimes and downgraded my role as a counsellor (taking on other’s issues). Ironically I am now better able to help people with their issues using Reverse Therapy.

Video Interview with John Eaton - Part 1

This is Part 1 of a video interview recorded by Chris Jefferson-Jones, introducing Reverse Therapy.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCwJah0mBIU&mode=related&search=]

The Rasputin Guide to Healing

Years ago, before I discovered Reverse Therapy, I wrote a spoof on psychotherapy called The Rasputin Guide to Therapy. The joke was that Rasputin - the so-called 'Mad Monk' of legend - might have had something more useful to say about getting people well than po-faced psychologists. In particular I was critical of the tendency of most forms of therapy to focus on Headmind, with complicated theories about why people get broken – not how they can be helped to get well. Specifically, how they can be guided towards connecting to Bodymind and accessing emotions. And then doing something about them.

Although I never published it there were some good things in it. In one chapter ‘Rasputin’ talks about the way people get trapped in convention and can become ill if they lose track of their passion. In another he discusses how so-called ‘intelligent’ people can actually become stupid if they get trapped in the intellect. In still another he advocates teaching people how to dance when they get stuck. In general Rasputin advocates that we will be healthier when we take time out to appreciate the simple things of life: friendship, love, nature, travel. In real life Rasputin once walked 2000 miles from Siberia to Jerusalem, along the way feeling inspired by the sea, the mountains, the lakes and the changing seasons on the way.

Here are a few of ‘Rasputin’s’ tips for a healthy life.

• Never give away your power to another person. This applies to partners, employers, children, parents, teachers and – most especially – gurus who claim to have better answers than you do to life’s problems. As human beings they will be struggling with their own problems and will not know more than you do about your own best way forward in life.

• Trust in yourself. Learn to recognise what is true for you and be guided by your own emotions about things.

• Learn to dance, sing or play music. At the very least you will get an endorphin rush.

• Whatever you do for a living, or if you care for others, then do it with a passion. If doing things is an obligation rather than a pleasure then be sure to balance these chores with other activities for which you do have a passion.

• Never look back. If things go wrong, or if you are sad and disillusioned, then move on and find a better way of life.

• Take risks – often. You will never find out what you are capable of unless you experiment. And the more you move outside the comfort zone Headmind has circumscribed for you the more confident you will become.

• Seek the humour in things. If you are not very good at doing that then spend plenty of time with people who are.

• Make time for people you love.

• Be honest. Don’t compromise on the truth just to keep someone else in their comfort zone. Practice gently opening your heart to others.

• Cultivate enlightened selfishness. If you don’t take a break or go easy on yourself from time to time you won’t be able to care for others. Even Christ and the Buddha needed time off from their mission.

Finally, here are some of Rasputin’s mistakes to avoid:

• Don’t drink too much
• Don’t give away all you have
• Don’t trust strangers who invite you to their house at midnight (they might want to shoot you)
• Don’t get mixed up with the Royal family