Emotional Health

Today I wanted to talk about the subject of emotional wellbeing and how this affects our physical wellbeing. Some of you may know that I have a background in psychiatry as a Mental Health Nurse. I have worked in this field for more years than I care to remember. I started out in the area of Forensic Psychiatry working in a regional secure unit in the south of England. Most if not all our patients were subject to Home Office restrictions and were under section 37/41 of the Mental Health Act, meaning that their detention in hospital was indefinate. No doubt in some cases this was warranted as most of the patients were guilty of serious crimes including murder. At first and during my early years I followed the routine of dispensing medication to patients and engaging in individual therapy including supervising patients in the gym.

As I progressed in my career and became a community Mental health Nurse and in fact as i developed as a human being I became more and more cynical of established western psychiatry that seemed to treat mental disorder only in chemical terms, citing the long established mantra of 'chemical imbalance'. Of course till this day there is no established test that can demonstrate that a chemical imbalance in the brain actually exists.

During my time as a community mental health nurse I came into contact with an amazing individual whom began to teach me how to be a 'real' human being. Under his guidance I began to understand more about myself and people in general. How we think, feel and act. Our responses to various situations and the levels on which we function. It is during this time also that I began to formulate my ideas on what in fact causes mental illness and up to 85% of physical disorders. I came to the conclusion that most psychological and physical illness has an emotional basis and if this emotional issue were to be addressed then the other manifestations wether physical or psychological in nature would dissappear!

It was during this time and when I was studying at the London School of Clinical Hypnosis, that I was introduced to a simple technique known as Emotional Freedom Therapy. By applying this simple technique almost 99% of emotional issues can be resolved. I use the term resolved to mean irradicated as opposed to just managed or reduced. Over the years I have treated a great deal of people using this technique with a 100% success rate! People diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Phobias, Anxiety all have responded favourably to this intervention. Now i know that at the moment interventions such as Cognitive Behavioural therapy are in the ascendancy however my issue with CBT type therapies are that they demand too much intellectual effort from the individual, monitoring ones thoughts constantly is exhausting and what is not made clear by the established CBT community is that the relapse rate is high. Methods such as Emotional Freedom therapy or EFT, require little intellectual effort and work by extinguishing the high/negative emotions associated with a bad or unpleasant experience.