I’ll start right out by saying that my opinion as presented in this post might not be very popular — however, when it comes to my opinion (to quote Jane Austen), I must speak as I find.
So. At the end of my post regarding the elements I believe have been important in our healing thus far (Internal Communication is the Key to Everything), I opined that a person’s system will provide the keys for how to progress when they are ready and willing to do the work involved.
What I didn’t mention in that post — but will mention here — is that my answer was a little sophistical. Although it is true enough that each system could provide this information, odds are that they never will — because most people (regardless of what they say) do not actually want to do that kind of work. What they want is to feel better right now, or as quickly as possible. They want therapy to improve their immediate functioning and maybe smooth their emotional turmoil to a bearable level. For most people, that is enough.
And they are supported in that intention (or lack thereof) by the vast majority of mental health professionals, hospitals, and networks. Most professionals absolutely refuse to touch the deepest mind control programming, and they steer their patients away from addressing it as well. They are complicit with the patients in believing that a little improvement in current day functioning is enough.
To be fair, being content with this level of improvement is not beyond understanding. After all, it takes long enough just to achieve that much. Developing stable and solid internal communication and cooperation between the alters most responsible for daily functioning, learning to manage feelings, and processing the most intrusive memories — doing that much can take years. Who really wants to devote yet more years to therapy when they can function well enough without it? And who’s going to pay for all that therapy? We’ve had to make enough of an investment in our healing — doesn’t there come a time when there are better uses for our time and money?
Well… yes and no.
Here’s the problem with cutting therapy short as soon as the surface world has been smoothed and soothed — and this is a problem for which I believe the world of mental health care is at least equally responsible, to their shame.
The problem — as I said before — is that, if the deep programming is never addressed, never touched, never undone — then each and every person who has been subjected to mind control programming remains vulnerable to their own perpetrators and to any other predator who knows how to take advantage of them.
Furthermore, I would be willing to bet everything I have spent on therapy (which amounts to a lot more than everything I have) that many people, although they may believe their involvement with their abusive group is in entirely the past, are still in contact. Not every week or every month — once every year or eighteen months would be enough, and there is absolutely no reason the individual would know or even suspect it had happened — but contrary to popular misconception, programming does not maintain itself indefinitely. Someone who knows how that person’s system operates is checking in every once in a while to make sure that the programming remains intact.
So — what I am saying is that no mind control/RA/SRA survivor can truly be safe while they are still vulnerable in this way. In fact, they probably aren’t half as safe as they think they are.
Therefore, the fact that it is so difficult to find a therapist who can or will do the kind of work necessary to break these controls is a tantamount to a crime against survivors. Those therapists who claim to do trauma work should lose sleep pondering their abject failure of the population they claim to serve. Even hospital trauma units will not do this kind of work.
This is easier and safer for them. In the first place, they aren’t risking the potential dangers (and subsequent potential lawsuits) involved in approaching such sensitive material (and both potentialities are very real, considering how few mental health professionals have the expertise necessary to do this depth of work safely). And in the second place, who’s going to pay them for their time and expertise, even assuming they have any? Insurance companies no longer support long-term therapy or lengthy hospital stays without a “good reason” (by their definition), and most survivors are not in any position to afford these services on a cash-pay basis.
However, by taking this hands-off approach, the mental health professionals are making the perpetrators’ jobs easier, and thereby doing a grave disservice to the survivors coming to them for help.
On the other hand, is anyone pressuring them to do things differently?
I don’t believe anyone is. In fact, I believe most survivors are perfectly content with the status quo as they know it. And in further fact, when given the opportunity to do something deeper than surface level work, most survivors will take the first excuse to turn tail and run. So why would mental health professionals bother to develop an expertise that nobody wants anyway?
The front worlds prefer to delude themselves with the belief that head pats and surface comfort will heal them, and out of expediency if nothing else, the professionals are more than happy to agree with them. Nobody is really trying to reach the dark worlds; nobody really wants to reach them. People want to know how to control their troublesome alters more than they want to heal them, and therapy tends to encourage this “bandaid” approach — as a result of which, even the first step in true healing is left incomplete.
Although therapy can help the front worlds function somewhat better, there are still entire sections of people’s internal systems that are being left untouched and unhealed, except insofar as they are being “controlled” to prevent them from causing trouble — and this tiny ray of light in the pitch blackness is what most survivors and nearly all mental health professional consider “healing.”
Each person has the right to make their own choice regarding their therapy, of course — but as long as this definition of “healing” prevails, I don’t think we need to worry about how to approach a level of work for which no real interest exists.
