Alternative mental care part 2

Hardy said, “All behavior stems from childhood trauma before the age of eight. Bad relationships, anger, sadness, depression and other health problems are all treatable by hypnotherapy. Hypnotherapy allows the person to get in touch with repressed problems and allows them to address them so they can heal faster.”
One of the benefits of hypnotherapy appears to be the potential for very fast results, “Three two-hour hypnosis sessions can yield the same results as six months of therapy, it’s almost like healing backwards as we identify the underlining problems first, then work the individual through it,” Hardy said.
Ruddy, as stated previusly, works in multple forms of alternative therapy, but is noted for her work in neuro-linguistic patterning. According to Ruddy, “NLP is a light trance in which the patient is still conscious, a sort of mini-hypnosis. It strives to understand that every individual receives information differently and by tapping into the unconscious and then using linguistics to talk the person through his/her problem, healing can begin.”
Despite many individuals who have used NLP to work through emotional issues, it is, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, devoid of any empirical evidence supporting its claims. Because of this, it has had little to no support from the scientific communitty, and has no impact on mainstream psychology.
Despite this, practitioners like Ruddy and Hardy argue NLP as an effective therapeutic treatment.
A University of Arizona senior, Zachary Roughan, recently tried NLP and hypnosis to combat a case of stress-induced insomnia. Roughan was previously prescribed to a sleeping pill by a psychiatrist, but disliked that he wasn’t able to sleep without it.
Roughan did three sessions of hypno-therapy and NLP while home over the summer.
“It wasn’t miraculous, but I did end up sleeping better,” he said, “I learned that because of my older brother who was heavily into drugs and screwing up, that I feel pressure to make my parents proud. The stress was getting to me and manifesting as insomnia.”
Whether the scientific community is buying it or not, there is no question that these alternative therapies have become very popular and in many cases yield results.
Dr. Lila Flagler, who practices alternative therapies like homeopathic medicine with her husband Dr. Samuel Flagler out of their private clinic at 6737 E. Camino Principal, simply explains the trend.
“People are dissatisfied with drugs and are looking for something that digs deeper into the individual,” she said, “Drugs like Prozac mask the issue instead of allowing the person to confront the issue and heal. The drugs suppress the symptoms, but the the disorder is still present.”