“In every area of the helping professions there are good people but there are also people who either lack proficiency or specifically set out to make money out of other people’s needs. They will all tell you they can help and this is how much it will cost, which means telling the difference isn’t straightforward. What they tell you, their training or qualifications, website, advertising, publicity, articles in magazines, the number of years they have been in practice and their reputation, still may not indicate whether they can genuinely help you. And it gives NO indication if they are deliberately setting out to harm you.

The lack of regulations protecting the public and the inability of the professional organizations to prevent unethical practitioners continuing to operate after complaints have been made against them, means that best protection is knowledge. Information needs to be made available to the public. It is not only individuals but their partners and families who can be affected. The more knowledge is made available, the greater the chance people have of being able to avoid potentially harmful situations. When I started to question whether my therapist was helping me or harming me, I had no idea where to turn for genuine help and that concerns me, especially when it seems that my story is not unusual and could well be the tip of an iceberg which will only melt by information being passed on whether that be word of mouth, through the world wide web or media coverage. People can only avoid the dangers, if they know what they are.

Public awareness needs to be raised about the dangers of emotional exercises and mind altering techniques that cause a negative emotional state and a negative thinking pattern.

The rising phenomenon of people who are taken for an uncomfortable psychological ride by therapists or self development workshops whose sole aim is to make money from vulnerable people who have questions they want answered is a current issue, not only for women, it is a concern for anyone who has questions about their lives and is considering going to someone to help them answer those questions. Anything from why do I feel this way, why can't I make more money, why am I depressed, why aren’t I more successful in my life, to why me? We all have questions at some time in our lives and whether it be the break up of a relationship, or the death of someone close to us, or for another reason, most people will seek help at some time in their lives.” says Gena Dry “Intelligent, educated and professional people from all walks of life can be drawn in by a workshop leader or therapist who claims to have THE answer to these kinds of questions. If we hand our power over to professionals and believe what they tell us, there is a problem. Because the professional has a perceived authority, they can change the way a person thinks, but if that ‘professional’ doesn’t have their clients best interest in mind, they have the power to induce a depression and create a dependency which leaves the client thinking they need more of the therapy or workshop and sign up for more ‘help’.

A therapist or self development workshop leader is in an incredibly powerful position. There is an unequal balance in the relationship and it can never be equal because when a person goes to a professional they hand their power over. When a person goes to a doctor, they usually accept what the doctor says because the doctor is the professional and people assume that they will have training, knowledge and experience that the patient doesn’t have. When a person goes to a doctor, they don’t expect their doctor to kill them and when a person goes to therapy, they don’t expect their therapist to **** them up. The same applies to the leader of a self development workshop. Unfortunately not every therapist or self development workshop leader has their client’s best interest in mind. It is an easy way to make money when there are so many people who want answers to their questions about their lives.

Have You Heard That Therapists And Self Development Workshops Can Cause Harm Instead Of Help?

Because even if you have, being able to tell if therapy or a self development workshop is causing harm instead of helping is problematic when a therapist or workshop leader knows exactly how to give their clients an induced ‘high’. The courses or sessions may seem to make people feel better about themselves or their lives but often the person hasn’t made any real changes. The person will get a ‘high’ and this is a really important point because people can be so uplifted they genuinely believe that they’ve had a good experience. They may never realize that the leader used techniques to make people have a ‘high’. It could be an emotional exercise that is used to generate the feelings, from expressing anger, beating cushions and shouting through to expressing love or even singing. It could be from the leader making themselves appear to understand the client’s problem. The energy and assurance of the leaders can generate the ‘high’ as much as the leader’s confidence that they have the answers. Or if the first experience is in a workshop, it could be the escape from that person’s real life for the duration of the workshop that enables them to ‘feel different’ for a while. It isn’t real. These people know exactly when and how to give the client a boost by saying the right line that will draw them in. Which ever way the ‘high’ is generated, it’s very addictive, because the experience is temporary. Just like alcohol, the high doesn’t last and the fall back is a ‘low’ or a depression. The idea of developing a sense of well being that doesn’t involve artificial and potentially addictive or physically harmful effects is appealing, naturally, a person is likely to be extremely tempted to go back for more, not realizing they may have added trying to get out of the low that naturally follows the ‘high’ to their original dilemma. If it was this kind of workshop, the original dilemma has only been temporarily sidetracked by the ‘high’ and will surface again. So even if they are not tempted to go back immediately, they are likely to look for help again at another time and whether they go back or look for a new avenue to pursue, the dangers are still there.

Whether it’s a therapist, workshop leader, alternative health ‘guru’ even a psychic can be perceived as having knowledge we don’t have. That means every statement they make and every question they ask of their clients and how they respond in words and by their demeanor is vitally important, their opinions can have a strong influence even when the client doesn’t agree with the professional. People may be aware that a therapist is not supposed to give their own personal opinions and beliefs as it may influence their client and they are supposed to remain impartial but if it’s a professional belief, it does not mean it has any less of any impact. The professional’s authority makes their professional view powerful, it can be life changing, in a way that often gets overlooked. When my therapist analyzed a client’s dream, the client might have ideas he agreed with but there was always the implication that only he ‘knew’ what the ‘right’ interpretation was because he was the professional. Consider the actual power of this. It made his clients questions his opinion and therefore doubt themselves. They learnt a lack of self belief as their own picture of what they thought, was repeatedly called into question by the professional who ‘knew better than they did’.

My experience of doubting, is that it’s painful and the lack of self belief affected my life choices significantly. Negative emotions and negative thinking, rolled into one by a steamroller that not only flattened my emotional state but then spread into my life. Once I made changes in my own life to accommodate the negativity he’d induced, he’d had some control over me. It was a powerful negative influence. He didn’t have to tell his clients what to do in so many words, because we were responding to the doubt and lack of belief in our own opinions. Doubt and lack of belief almost invariably will cause a person to freeze or hold off from taking steps or any kind of risk, until they’ve thought it through or talked to someone who they imagine might know better than them, see the catch? The client might take an action that plays safe or give up a dream as result, whether that’s a good thing or not, what happens in their lives next has been influenced by their thinking being influenced.

Unless the professional is helping the client to think more positively and empowering them to make their own decisions and to take actions and make positive changes in their lives, the client is in danger of being influenced much more significantly than they may be aware. The negative effect may last significantly longer than the session or workshop. We all have an experience of that teacher at school who told us… and we gave up drawing, dancing, painting, singing, sport or whatever as a result. A professional can cause the level of self questioning and doubt that will make us decide to give something up. My experience of giving my dreams and aspirations is that it’s painful and causes me to feel depressed. They can claim, we’re an adult and we are responsible for our own decisions, but that is ignoring the power of the influence they have over us and how come it is crucial to be aware of whether their underlying line of thinking is coming from, negative or positive. Not their words, see what I am driving at? Behind their ‘professional’ front, what is their real agenda? Are they steering you towards putting more money in their bank account, or are they genuinely helping you? Are their opinions confusing you? Are their opinions causing you to question and doubt yourself? Or are they helping you to think positively and think in a way that enables you to make your own decisions and to make positive choices in your life that are best for you?

A most crucial question is do you have a choice?

Do you feel you have a choice about every aspect or is it all about following someone else’s rules or way of thinking?

My therapist used his professional training and experience to impart a very strong opinion about what was ‘really going on with his client’ this constantly put his clients into a double bind or catch 22, where they thought they had NO CHOICE. It seems to be a little known fact that a double bind statement by a person in a position of perceived authority has the power to cause a double bind pattern of thinking that becomes a recurring experience for the victim, which doesn’t end because the client leaves the therapist or workshop, it can go on affecting them for years after. Click here to read more about double binds.

My therapist completely crossed the line in many ways. The suggestion that his clients were angry was extremely powerful and caused his clients to feel permanently angry because all his clients were told to think about, talk about and express was anger or variations of anger, rage, fury, violence. There were never any alternatives. Perhaps discussing fear would have been more productive, but the cure for fear didn’t seem to be expressing extreme levels of fear. We never even talked about fear, because my therapist wanted his clients to be fearful. He would shout instructions forcefully in workshops, like an army officer, he wanted his clients to be afraid of him. He used fear to control his clients. Fear if they didn’t show up to a session on time, fear if they didn’t go every week, fear of not paying the money he demanded on time, fear if they didn’t do what he told them they should do if they wanted to get better, fear of the implications of his diagnoses, fear of the levels of anger his ‘emotional exercises’ stirred up in us, fear that they would never get out the anger, pain and depression they were in, fear of the low that followed the ‘high’, fear if they weren’t committed to ‘therapy’ they wouldn’t get better, the power of his ‘professional opinions’ induced extreme levels of fear. Perhaps the most frightening and cruel damage was caused by the power of his suggestion and ‘professional’ influence of the idea that his clients had been sexually abused. He only had to suggest it indirectly and his clients would question his professional opinion and doubt themselves. I spent years wondering if I had or if I hadn’t been sexually abused even though I hadn’t had that concern until I went to therapy and it was only after he planted the idea that I started to wonder endlessly and have flashbacks to what I can only describe as nearly remembering being sexually abused, I could see it all but I couldn’t see who did it. I now realise that my therapist’s suggestion was the cause of immense unnecessary anxiety and what I can only describe as psychological torture.

The negative emotional state and negative thinking pattern was impossible to get out of as long as I spent my time with people who were in this negative mentality. It wasn’t until I cut all contact with the therapist and his other clients who were all locked into a negative thinking pattern, that I was able to get out of it. Being surrounded by negative people is like a virus. Being around people with a positive attitude helped immensely. Being able to tell if a person has a negative or positive attitude underneath their professional image or persona or the words they speak is crucial if we are not to be taken in by their professional opinion. It’s an idea I discuss at length in my book, how do you look past the words that are spoken and recognise the underlying line of thinking the person is on? In a nutshell, it’s an eggshell, there will always be flaws but you have to look or listen very carefully to spot them, the devil comes in extremely pretty packages.

The experience of bad therapy is all too common but what is more alarming is that my ‘therapist’ isn’t simply not very good at his job, he is abusive and a bully and uses techniques to deliberately harm his clients. To put a client in a negative emotional state or negative thinking pattern is cruel beyond comprehension. He is running what is becoming known as a psychotherapy cult. Most people think of cults as religious groups but nowadays the term applies to the growing number of psychotherapy and self development workshops where emotional exercises and mind altering techniques are used to cause a negative emotional state and negative thinking pattern to keep people dependant and paying extortionate amounts of money.

Psychotherapy cults range from large organizations to smaller self development type workshops or therapists and the mentality affects individuals who attend groups or see professionals in sessions. Essentially they create a negative way of thinking and a dependency which is unhealthy and is the opposite of the health, wealth and happiness they claim to promote.

www.TheFiveQuestionsYouMustAskYourTherapist.com aims to publicize the excellent resources and information that is available on where people can go to get help if they think they or someone they know is being affected by any situation from bad therapy to a psychotherapy cult. This includes self development workshops, spiritual healing or alternative health type ‘gurus’, any situation where the practitioner or leaders are seen as professionals with training and experience which means they are in a position to influence their client’s emotional state and thinking.

The information collected so far is on the right hand side of this page listed under resources. I recommend if you have any concerns that you talk to professional therapy organizations, there are good organizations out there, read their code of ethics, read the Test Your Therapy questions on the Stop Bad Therapy! website and also contact cult information centers, there is a lot of good free help and advice available.

Click here to SIGN THE LIST. I am asking people to sign the list of people have been affected negatively themselves or have been affected by members of their family or partners who have suffered from any kind of therapy or self development workshop.”

Gena Dry © 2007 All rights reserved