Case Study Part I
I walked in to schedule an appointment for a pedicure. The manicurist was on the phone, so I had a few moments to glance around her one room shop. A book on her table caught my eye: You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay - one of my all-time favorite books. When she got off the phone and we introduced ourselves, I asked her what attracted her to that book.
She said her current counselor told her to read it, thinking it would help her find “self-esteem.” I became increasingly interested and wanted to know more (I have been a therapist for 45 years and can’t help myself from “going deeper” with people). She shared with me that she had been in counseling off-and-on for most of the past 30 years, yet she was still experiencing significant trauma as well as PTSD. This was obvious to me through my observation in our brief encounter.
When having a PTSD fight/flight response, it is close to impossible to gain conscious control of our emotional reactions because they are so deeply, unconsciously engrained as survival mechanisms. We are setting ourselves up for failure if we try to control them. While I feel Louise Hay’s book is excellent, I didn’t think she could find her answers there.
Our conversation continued. I asked her what made her feel that she didn’t have self-esteem and what she felt she needed in order to have the self-esteem she wanted. She told me that she has let men mistreat and abuse her, explaining that she has a hard time standing up and speaking up for herself. We explored what contributed to that pattern and belief.
She recounted the longest and worst history of sexual, emotional, and physical abuse I have ever heard - and I have heard a lot of unbelievable horror stories of people’s past abuse. (I always let people know that I do not need to hear their traumatic experiences because they have had to re-live their past trauma too many times already.)
I have worked with these patterns successfully with hundreds of people, using the amazing skills and tools from NLP, as well as Educational Kinesiology (Edu-K).