Health and Freedom

Freedom!

     A therapy that relies on the strength and goodness of the individual is an improvement over a therapy that blames the past and creates "memories". Experts agree that "Recovered Memory Therapy" is unreliable and false even when "memories" are vividly remembered.  In contrast to the destructive and unreliable therapies, Cognitive Therapy emphasizes that there are traps that hold people back from fully realizing their potential including:

1.  Assuming the intentions of others:  We assume that we know what people think without having sufficient evidence of their thoughts. “He thinks I’m a loser.”  This is destabilizing to relationships whether assumptions are correct or incorrect.
2.  Dire expectations:  We predict the future negatively: things will get worse, or there is danger ahead. “I’ll never be able to see my family again.” or “I won’t be able to be a good mother to my children." 

3.  Catastrophizing:  We believe that what has happened or will happen will be so awful and unbearable that you won’t be able to stand it. “It would be terrible if I failed.”  "If I get back in contact with my family they will all hate me."

4.  Labeling:  We assign global negative traits to yourself and others. “I’m undesirable,” or “He’s a rotten person.” or "My family are all horrible.  They hate me."

5.  Discounting positives:  We claim that the positive things you or others do are trivial. “That’s what wives are supposed to do—so it doesn’t count when she’s nice to me,” or “Those successes were easy, so they don’t matter.”

6.   Negative filtering:   We focus almost exclusively on the negatives and seldom notice the positives. “Look at all of the people who don’t like me.”

7.   Overgeneralizing:   We perceive a global pattern of negatives on the basis of a single incident. “This generally happens to me. I seem to fail at a lot of things.”

8.   Dichotomous thinking:   We view events or people in all-or-nothing terms. “I get rejected by everyone,” or “My family is bad.  I need to detach from them completely.”  

9.   Blaming:    We focus on the other person as the source of our negative feelings, and we refuse to take responsibility for changing ourselves. “My parents parents caused all my problems.  They always deny it.  If only my family was not "so abusive" or "so cheap".”

10.  What if?   We keep asking a series of questions about “what if” something happens, and we fail to be satisfied with any of the answers. “Yeah, but what if I get anxious?,” or “What if  my family contacts me when I have told them not to?”

11.  Emotional reasoning:   We let our feelings guide our interpretation of reality. “I feel depressed; therefore, my family must be terrible.”

12.  Inability to disconfirm:  We reject any evidence or arguments that might contradict our negative thoughts.  For example, when we have the thought  I have this depression so I must have had a childhood trauma and then we reject as irrelevant any statements or evidence of all in our immediate family that this event never happened. 

A partial list from Robert L. Leahy, Stephen J. F. Holland, and Lata K. McGinn’sTreatment Plans and Interventions for Depression and Anxiety Disorders (2012).

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Communication with Grace just prior to treatment in Walla Walla, Washington:

ALL Pictures are of life before false memories were recovered.

RESEARCH ON MEMORY BASED THERAPY
OUR DAUGHTER BEFORE TREATMENT
DARK AGES OF MENTAL HEALTH TREATMENT

 

MEMORY EXPERTS COMMENTS
BOOKS ON MEMORY BASED THERAPIES
LEGAL CASES AND PRECEDENTS
HARMFUL PRAYER MINISTRY
PERSONAL "MEMORY HEALING" STORIES
VIDEOS ON MEMORY BASED THERAPIES
EXPERT LECTURES ON HARMFUL THERAPIES
NEWS ON MEMORY BASED THERAPIES
CLINICAL HEALING AND MEMORY

Grace and I while visiting family in New England