Excerpt
And then, a young woman in a very serious state came to see me after a traumatic event. She was extremely overwhelmed and suffering so much, that I suggested she consider going to a psychiatrist in order to get anti-depressants and anti-anxiety drugs. I treated clients in this condition before, but it was always accompanied by pharmaceutical treatment. However, due to the clients religious beliefs, she was afraid the psychiatric treatment would hurt her chances of a potential future match for an arranged marriage. She refused outright.
I was consulting a more experienced therapist who told me that if this was the case, I should just be with her in her pain. I did not accept this advice. If it were me on the other side, I wouldnt want someone that would just be with me in my pain, in the same manner that if I had aches in my back I wouldnt want the M.D. to just be with me in my pain. I think that as therapists we should fight for more.
During my quest for new ideas, I stumbled upon a book at the bookstore called, The Instinct to Heal: Curing Depression, Anxiety and Stress without Drugs and Talk Therapy, written by French psychiatrist, Dr. David Servan-Schreiber. I was immediately attracted to the title because I had never really connected professionally to the "Freudian" therapy method, and "without drugs" was exactly what the client wanted; I hurriedly rushed to buy and read it. Two chapters in the book were about a therapeutic method called EMDR or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. It was a method I had never heard of; not in university and not at any phase of my mental health training in the psychiatric ward or mental health clinic. The things written there were so amazing to me that it literally caused my jaw to drop.