The Dangers of Therapy
Many years ago, my first wife went to a therapist who told her that she should get a divorce, that she should not have to live with abuse and neglect in a marriage. He didn’t define “abuse,” but it was exactly what she wanted to hear so she didn’t ask. He referred her to his ex-wife, the divorce lawyer and my wife became my ex, with all the devastation to our four children of a bomb blowing up in the middle of our family. A member of my church went to the same therapist and was told the exact same thing. She left her husband and came to stay with us for a short time. Then she realized that she really wanted to be married, that she wanted to be with her husband and children, but her husband was so angry that she had filed for divorce that he would not take her back. She was devastated, doing all she could to beg him to take her back! The end of this story is not good either, they divorced, and she moved away, and I have not heard from her since. I later had a patient who had gone to the same therapist (I live in a small town) who told her the exact same things, but this ending was good because she did not listen to the therapist, realizing that he was just drumming up business for his ex-wife.
Most people don’t consider that a therapist has an agenda. The therapist knows nothing about you. Many therapists offer advice before knowing the situation. They only hear one opinion, only one side of the story. Moreover, the therapist has a point-of-view, and will follow their own agenda no matter what the needs of the client are. Therapists, like everyone else in the world, work for themselves. Since human beings have no way of understanding anything we have not personally experienced, the therapist only has the tools of their own experiences. The most dangerous therapists have an underlying agenda of feeling bad about their own narrative, which they project on to their clients sometimes with disastrous consequences.
“ACE’s”
A friend of mine has a beautiful, sweet, young daughter who was depressed and went to therapy. The therapist “helped” her uncover her “suppressed adverse childhood experiences” (ACE’s) which became an accusation of child abuse and complete separation from the family. She accused my friend and other family members of many things that never happened, and indeed could not have happened. Over several years she became separated from her family and friends who love her. She has now become the complete opposite of how she grew up, deciding to be a witch. She will no longer speak with anyone from her childhood, especially her family.
People do have terrible childhoods. Some therapists who had difficult growing up experiences will project those experience on to their clients, creating “suppressed memories” that then affect the client in big ways. A young woman who wants to please the therapist comes up with all the expected “memories” and doesn’t know what to think. She no longer knows who to trust. The carpet is completely pulled-out from under her and she is just falling with no foundation and no place to land. Everything she thought she knew is gone. Everything in her life is a lie. There is nowhere to turn, and nobody to trust. This is overwhelming. The therapist gets paid and moves on to other clients, telling them the same things, leaving devastated families in their wake.
“You deserve...”
In my many years of going to counseling and therapy I have found out one thing: “good” therapists tell me what I want to hear. I want to hear that I’m good, and that I deserve to have fulfillment of all my fantasies. My therapist tells me that it’s not my fault, that I am just reacting to terrible things that happened to me. My reactions are normal. One therapist did tell me “you deserve better.” She was recommending that I leave my wife and find a different woman who would fulfill my childhood fantasies and take care of my needs. Thank God I had the presence of mind to not believe her, as much as I wanted to.
The very thought of being deserving of anything in life is selfishness and leads to devastation. Some narcissistic people feel like they deserve to be in charge, creating despots that kill millions of people. Others feel like they deserve to be loved just as they are, that they should not need to give or become anything, they should be loved just for being. The concept of deserving breaks up families and nations... and the therapist continues to get paid, moving on to other clients.
Pill Therapy
Another patient of mine was having issues with his wife. They are going through hard times because she feels like she no longer needs him, and he still needs her for emotional support. He gets very anxious, not having her to comfort him. Sometimes he cannot handle his anxiety and “freaks out.” This has happened several times in the past few years. She insisted that he go to a psychiatrist who diagnosed him with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and put him on an amphetamine. Now he can’t sleep, and has worse anxiety, palpitations of his heart, chest pain, and panic attacks. He sleeps on the couch. His wife told him to come to see me because she thinks he has bipolar disorder -- manic/depressive. He gets depressed, and then he has hyperactive episodes of “mania.” After listening to the two of them discuss their issues it became clear that she was done with him, and he was dependent on her. She treated him like a child. He needs to stop having temper tantrums like a four-year-old child, grow up and be a man, strong, independent, and to protect and provide.
In this case, the counselor told them what they wanted to hear. “It’s not your fault. It’s a chemical imbalance. This pill will fix you.” The idea that a pill can fix such problems is a fantasy that pervades the whole world. It is a lie. It has been proven to be a lie since the beginning of time, but society continues to teach it. Over a hundred years ago, the “father of modern medicine” tried to stop people from taking patent medicines. In his frustration he concluded:
The desire to take medicine is perhaps the greatest feature which distinguishes man from animals.
--Sir William Osler
It’s not that medicines are always useless or damaging, but rather they are used to perpetuate a fantasy that the pill could solve a problem. When people use pills to change how they feel, they are going down a road of persistent problems. This is especially true of mental, emotional, and spiritual problems.
Not all therapy is useless or hurtful, but everyone must be careful who they counsel with. If a therapist does not teach love, then they are not going to help. However, those few therapists who have experienced love are able to see it and teach it to clients can actually help because they will not tell them only what they want to hear. They will instead guide them through the process of learning to love, not just to be loved, but to love so they can be loved. Love is the answer to all problems.
Love is hard
Though I am not a counselor, I had a patient who came to me for advice about his situation. He was leaving his wife and daughter and was going to marry his girlfriend. I told him that he had another option: he could choose to love. I explained that he could go back and love his wife and daughter, then he would grow up and become a man, and change the course of generations. Those after him would know love. He said that he didn’t want to be with his wife because she didn’t love him. She didn’t want him. She doesn’t pay attention to him. She doesn’t desire him. She doesn’t want to have sex with him. She is not like his girlfriend who desires him. He wants to be loved. He wants unconditional love -- just the way I am -- with no strings attached. He wants her to anticipate his needs and comfort him. He feels like he can get this from his girlfriend, but not from his wife.
He does not want to love, but to be loved without having to love. He wants to be an infant in his mother’s arms -- coddled, cradled, comforted, accepted, loved, fed, clothed, bathed, with everyone bowing to his every whim. In short, he wants to be a parasite. I know his girlfriend well, so I know that she has the same physical, emotional, and mental issues. I can easily see that she cannot love him, not having the capacity to love. As long as she remains a girlfriend she would coddle him, but when they get married, she will not put up with that for long. One very important characteristic of infants is that they grow up, becoming more and more independent. At some point, the new wife is going to decide she cannot be his mother, that he would need to be an adult and stand on his own. She doesn’t have the strength to hold him up for long.
This man gave up the opportunity to grow up and find true love, for the fantasy that he will always have a mommy to comfort him. He wants to remain a child. Perhaps his own mother didn’t give him such love as an infant, and he missed that stage of life. Maybe he was loved as an infant and cannot give it up and move on. The problem is that therapists generally advise people to find the missing love, which causes delayed development. It seems easier to find someone else to fill his infantile needs. He decided to remain an infant, and filed for divorce.
The true way to find love is to love. Love is not a feeling. Love does not give me what I want. Love is a decision I make to sacrifice what I want so others can grow. Self-love is the sacrifice I make so I can grow. A friend of mine went to a therapist and was told that her problems are all from her childhood, but she rejected the notion. She realized that there is more to life than what happens to her. She had to take responsibility for her response to the ACE’s. She decided to love, to give herself for the benefit of others. She got married and loved her husband and children, finding the love she had desired and missed as a child. Love is not passive. It is not something we receive. It is not a gift. Love is earned through sacrifice. Ironically, a psychiatrist came up with the most complete and succinct definition of love that I have found:
Love is the will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth. ― M. Scott Peck
The Need is the Problem
While most therapy will do more harm than good, there is a way to help that is not damaging. The first step is to acknowledge that each one of us is incomplete. We are all damaged. We all need repair. One way to define the heart is by desires, wants, and needs. My problem is that my heart feels like I need things in the world. In my efforts to get what I want, I may hurt others.
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? (Jeremiah 17:9)
I saw a video interview with a man on death row in California. When he was asked how he felt about what he did he replied, “I just did what everyone else does; I’m just trying to get what I need. I needed the woman’s car, and she wouldn’t give it to me. I had to kill her; what else could I do? Anyone else would have done the same thing in my situation.” His point is very selfish. Everyone is seeking what they need. He just got caught doing it.
The world runs on wants and needs. Ayn Rand pointed out that the entire economy runs on the selfish needs of others. Indeed, the world contains all that it does because people are “just trying to get what they want.” It’s perfectly natural, but natural is not good. My needs are natural. They are real. I have needed love since childhood. But, just being natural is not loving. Love is the opposite.
For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father. (Mosiah 3:19)
My needs define what is in my heart. If I cannot have what my heart desires I will have a broken heart. It feels like death. It is so hard to do because it takes away the very foundation of all I know and feel. My heart assumes that my needs are paramount. Even God should fill my needs. I pray for relief. I pray for love. I pray for help to get what I want, but what I want is not what God wants. I need to learn that I am the one who is off.
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. (Isaiah 55:8-9)
God is different. God is love. Love is God. The ways of love are different than the natural ways of man. Love is higher. Love thinks differently. Love is not seeking my own wants and needs, but sacrificing them to help others to grow. My problem is not that my needs aren’t met, but rather that I am seeking to fulfill them in the first place.
Choose to Love
The second principle is choice. Clients need to know that they are responsible for how they feel, and have choices that can correct the problem. The therapist must acknowledge that no matter what happens to a person, they still have the option to choose what they will do from this moment on. My only choice is to sacrifice my heart, my wants, needs and desires -- or not. Love is like the fast, where I give up eating for one day so I can give what I would have eaten to others.
The ultimate sacrifice is the death of the heart. I completely and permanently give up what I want or need. The death of the heart leads to resurrection in love. If I want to live, to save my life, I must make that paradoxical sacrifice. Sacrificing my own needs, indeed, my own life, allows me to turn to God, and come to know His ways, as defined by Jesus:
Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it. (Luke 17:33)
If I seek to save my life by filling my own needs, then I will lose the very thing I seek. My patient who left his wife and child to find someone to love him is not going to find love. He will lose the very thing he is looking for. He is sacrificing his only possibility of finding his life. Fulfillment will not come because he chose to give it up. On the other hand, if he chooses to give up the girlfriend and stay with his wife and love her, giving up the fantasy of being loved, then he will find peace, love, and satisfaction of the very desire he is seeking. He can only preserve what he wants by losing it.
People who are depressed have lost hope in finding love. They can be given hope by telling them how to receive love by giving. They can be taught how to love so they can know love.
People who are anxious have no foundation because they don’t know love. Love is a sure foundation that can bring stability to their lives. The knowledge that they can choose to love others gives them a foundation that cannot be taken from them.
...it is upon the rock of our Redeemer, who is Christ, the Son of God, that ye must build your foundation; that when the devil shall send forth his mighty winds, yea, his shafts in the whirlwind, yea, when all his hail and his mighty storm shall beat upon you, it shall have no power over you to drag you down to the gulf of misery and endless wo, because of the rock upon which ye are built, which is a sure foundation, a foundation whereon if men build they cannot fall. (Helaman 5:12)
Follow Jesus
The therapist says, “Follow your heart.”
Jesus says, “Come, follow me.”
The therapist says, “Be true to yourself.”
Jesus says, “Whosoever wants to be my disciple must deny himself.”
The therapist says, “Believe in yourself.”
Jesus says, “Believe in me.”
The therapist says, “Live your truth.”
Jesus says, “I am the truth”
The therapist says, “Whatever makes you happy.”
Jesus says, “What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?”
The therapist says, "Integrate all your parts."
Jesus says, "Be one in me."
Jesus shows the true way to love by sacrifice of self. It must be understood first that "the natural man is an enemy to God." Then I will realize that I will need to let go of all the things in my heart that are not of God. I will have a broken heart. I will die to all those things I desire that give me life, breath, and enjoyment. Everything that feels good will be removed, and I will be devastated. At that point, I can begin to build my life on a different foundation -- the Rock of Jesus Christ. Then I am on the path to learning true love and charity.
Those who seek therapy in psychology, or the philosophies of men, may never find love. Love is what heals all wounds. The bandages provided by therapists only hide the wounds temporarily. God is love. He heals all wounds. There is no other way to heal. Permanent healing brings rest to the soul.
Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. (Matthew 11:28-30)
Every psychological method of healing those deep wounds of the heart is just temporary, like a dream in the night. I wake up to find myself still in the nightmare of reality. I can suppress it, say it doesn’t matter, or that it doesn’t exist, but it’s still there. There is only one way out. There is only one way to find peace. Jesus offers peace. The night before He died on the cross, He told His disciples how He gives them peace and comfort:
But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you. Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. (John 14:26-27)
The Holy Ghost is the Comforter, teaching about the love of God, which is His sacrifice for me, and helping me to remember Him. His love is the greatest love. It is worth all the effort of heart and soul to find it. His love is called charity. Charity is pure love, which heals all wounds.
But charity is the pure love of Christ, and it endureth forever; and whoso is found possessed of it at the last day, it shall be well with him. Wherefore, my beloved brethren, pray unto the Father with all the energy of heart, that ye may be filled with this love, which he hath bestowed upon all who are true followers of his Son, Jesus Christ; that ye may become the sons of God; that when he shall appear we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is; that we may have this hope; that we may be purified even as he is pure. Amen. (Moroni 7:47-48)
Let Jesus be your Counselor
The Lord, Jesus Christ, is the best counselor to have. He loves all. He loves each person in spite of faults. He knows the motivations and thoughts of every person in my life. He can help me to love everyone as well. He helps me to love those whom I would not otherwise be able to love.
Early in my career. When I had a series of unfortunate events where I lost my business, my license, and all my income potential I felt righteously angry at the person responsible. I had done her a favor. She asked me to go to her house and evaluate her. It appeared like she had gastroenteritis so I gave her appropriate treatment. She went to three other doctors, including the Emergency Department at the hospital who sent her away with the same diagnosis. When it was finally found, two weeks later, that she had appendicitis she had to have part of her colon removed. I felt bad so I wrote her a letter of apology, which she promptly took to a lawyer and initiated a lawsuit, leaving out all the other doctors. I felt singled-out, but I was the only one who was doing her a favor! Because of this, the Medical Board revoked my license and put me on probation. I was devastated! I lost my practice, my income, and everything I had worked for.
I have read and understood the scriptures to say that we must forgive everyone in our hearts, but I couldn’t let this go. It wasn’t just money, I lost everything I wanted. I became “a hiss and a byword” among my peers, friends, colleagues, and patients. I could no longer practice. I spent lots of time and money getting my license back, but couldn’t get a job. I opened my own office, but it didn’t work. I couldn’t take insurance and couldn’t make rent and payroll. I prayed for the Lord to help me forgive her, and tried to change how I felt, to let it go, but I couldn’t.
One day I was at church and saw her sitting with her family and I saw what was in my heart. I prayed, “How can I forgive? How can I let go? This is too hard! What she did hurt so many people, including everyone I love.” Just then, the Lord taught me a lesson that changed everything. He gave me the bigger picture of what happened. “She had to suffer appendicitis and surgery, as well as the ongoing problem of diarrhea, so that your prayers could be answered, and she did it willingly.” I immediately knew what He meant. I had prayed for humility. I knew I needed to be humble, and this certainly was a humbling experience. Suddenly, everything changed. I was no longer a victim, I was blessed by her sacrifice. She loved me enough to suffer for my benefit! I didn’t need to forgive her, I needed to thank her. I suddenly felt more gratitude than I could express!
The Lord completely changed my heart by giving me information that I didn’t have before. I was so self-absorbed in my own world that I didn’t see anything but my own suffering. But just one little snippet of knowledge changed everything for me. That’s how the Lord gives information to change a heart. He knows all things. He knows the motivations of everyone. He understands everything. He has been from the lowest to the highest. He is the best counselor because no matter who you are, or where you’ve been, or what you’ve done, He understands. He has been there.
...his name shall be called, Wonderful, Counselor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. (2 Nephi 19:6)
If I take Christ as my counselor, then I will have peace. He gives peace. This is not a temporary armistice, but a permanent peace of my heart. This is the peace the gospel brings.
Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. (John 14:27)
If your heart is not troubled, you cannot be depressed. If your heart is not afraid you cannot have anxiety. He brings peace to everyone in every situation. He understands how it happened, and why, and He knows the way out. He is the way.
Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. (John 14:6)
The way to achieve peace is to seek Him. He already understands my heart; I now need to understand His heart. I do this by searching the scriptures and praying always. If I know Him, and always remember Him, I can have His Spirit to be with me. Then I will have the comfort I need. Then I will have hope, and charity -- and “the peace of God, which passeth all understanding.” (Philippians 4:7) This is real therapy because it changes the heart, bringing love and peace, healing all emotional and mental wounds.
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