What My Mentally Ill Clients Have Taught Me That is Unable to be Learned in a Textbook

A person on Quora asked me to tell him what lessons I learned from working with clients all these years that could never be learned from textbooks, only lived experiences. Here is how I answered his question:

Thanks for this question I am a hypnotist and NLP master practitioner, but before ever getting involved with hypnotism I worked with severely mentally ill adults which gave me the foundation for the work that I was to do later on in my career.

1. Most clients do have a very good idea of how to help themselves if they are asked. To believe that because they have a mental illness that they have lost touch with how they feel and what they need is ludicrous. This is especially true when it comes to the area of overmedication and having to deal with the side effects of these medications. Some of my clients who were given no chance of healing, did amazingly well when they were actually listened to and given the care necessary and are still doing well a couple of decades later.

2. Clients easily see through their caregivers and the manner in which they can be hypocritical. In one of the programs that I worked in one of the clients laughed at how stupid it was to have a counselor who would go out drinking every night after work (she used to tell the stories to the clients of these outings) working with those with alcohol abuse issues.

3. Many people who get into the profession of mental health have their own mental health issues and are only as effective as the depth of healing they have done for themselves first. Without the healing, projection of their issues onto the client, and co-dependence become the negative effects inside the therapy.

4. With hypnotism, we know that our clients have all their own answers in their own minds — their subconscious/unconscious mind. We understand that our clients are the experts of how they developed their issues (as defense mechanisms), so we allow them to teach us how they created them to help the client to de-create the problems through the work we do together.

5. It is amazing how many people have come from dysfunctional families. Sad to say it affects every race, every socioeconomic class, and every religious background that I have worked with to date.

6. Deeply listening to one’s client will always get you the information necessary to have really great healing for your client. The problem is that too many professionals out there believe that their fancy licenses give them the edge, when in fact they do not. The client is the one with the answers to their issues, however, one has to be willing to be present and listen to what they are saying, not saying, and between the lines of what is being said to truly be able to help them.

7. Not all clients want to be well. Being emotionally dysfunctional gives them what we call ‘secondary gain’ in the business. This means that the diagnosis given allows the client to feel that they no longer need to do those things that emotionally healthy people do. For example, people with ADD will speak to the fact that they just are unable to focus, when in fact the problem is one of hyper-focus on those things they are interested in. Focus is focus, so if they were to find a good enough reason to focus on something that they say they can’t, they can. Those with depression are lacking the energy to do many things so it is an easy out to not do those things they prefer not to do anyway, etc.

8. 98% of the time if you treat clients with respect with the expectation that they will be able to heal their issues they will indeed do whatever it takes to heal which is the best part of doing this sort of work. It’s is the most fulfilling work one can do.

9. My most mentally ill clients were some of the most insightful and intelligent people that I have ever met — which makes them interesting to work with, yet can add to the challenges of being able to help them. One has to be able to uncover their capacity to manipulate their own thinking to get them to better understand how their thinking is creating the problems that they employed me to help them to resolve.

10. Perfectionism is a huge drain of emotional energy. I am so grateful to never have had that problem. I do like to be as careful as I can be with certain of life’s necessary activities — however, being ‘imperfectly perfect’ with the humility that it requires works out great for me.

I could probably come up with some other lessons from the work that I have done with my clients, but this is a good list to give some thought to working with these clients.

Thanks again for this most interesting question for those who will read the answer once it is posted.

If you are sick of never getting any real healing done, perhaps hypnotism is the way for you to get unstuck and on with your life. We can have a 45-minute free conversation by contacting me at: dawningvisions.com/contact_suzanne/