ACUDESTRESS - For Whom?
ACUDESTRESS -
When I started in 1995, I was looking for a treatment for patients who were feeling “stuck,” poorly responsive to psychoactive medication, or not really doing very well with psychotherapy. These patients tended to do very well with AcuDestress - but we didn’t know at the outset what we could add to the success. We’ve learned over the years that we can add a lot. Now we have an even higher success rate among people who weren’t succeeding at all. We’ve also learned why people haven’t done well with traditional means of dealing with stress. Our brain requires neurotransmitters to feel good, and several physical disease states deplete our neurotransmitters. We even found one patient who had no neurotransmitters at all. We usually get the difficult cases in the beginning. Nothing wrong with that, as that’s where we started. We don’t mind the tough cases. Depression that hasn’t resolved with medication, anxiety which has defied psychotherapy or hypnosis, obsessive-compulsive disorder which simply hasn’t budged despite treatment - personality disorders (especially Borderline.) Psychotic patients who are controlled by drugs but are lifeless as a result.
1.) People with malabsorption diseases - like celiac disease, gluten sensitivity, even irritable bowel syndrome and ulcerative colitis or Crohn’s disease, tend not to absorb sufficient amounts of amino acids to refurbish their store of neurotransmitters. This means if they are put on psychoactive medications that work for other people, say Paxil or Prozac or Wellbutrin (there are many more) their medication doesn’t have anything on which to work. If the underlying condition goes undiagnosed, which can be for as long as 10 years in some cases, the person will have downswings without any stress-related reason, including suicidal thoughts, which are generally not brought up in conversation, because the person cannot identify a reason for their occurrence.
2.) People with heavy metal poisoning (it sounds like one would have to be working in a mine for this to happen - but it’s not the case), can also have suppressed neurotransmitters. This can happen in firefighters who absorb heavy metals from smoke. This can happen in multiple sclerosis. If your doctor diagnoses you with a malabsorption disease or heavy metal poisoning, reversing this has to be your first priority.
We would normally think that efforts to reverse malabsorption ( the elimination of foods which cause it,) and the replacement of unabsorbed nutrients (like iron or vitamin B12) or the treatment of heavy metal poisoning (chelation) would also reverse the emotional results, but experience is that this is not the case. Our brain, by the time we are diagnosed, has usually been struggling for 10 years or more, and settles for a “primitive” pattern of defensiveness. Rewiring the brain is usually necessary, and AcuDestress is one fast way this can happen.
3.) Not everyone does well on psychoactive medication, and if it is used for over 16 weeks, usually the person wants to get off it. It is not a free ride. There are side effects, and after while most people would like to get off their medication. AcuDestress is one way that makes it possible. Other people enter psycho-therapy and become “stuck.” These are the people who we started with, and were the people who suddenly began to have major success in short order. So AcuDestress works when other things have been tried, and after some time, are just not working. Sometimes this actually alerts us that malabsorption or heavy metal poisoning may be lurking in the background. At other times, it just helps to try something different.
4.) While the above indications occur because whatever is being done is not working, AcuDestress can actually be used for anyone, and since medication or psychotherapy is not usually indicated for normal people wishing to access what is extraordinary in them, some of our recipients, particularly those who repeat or tweak their AcuDestress with a few extra sessions months or years later, do so because they are wanting to move from a non-stressed state to an extraordinary state of functioning. So this is an unusual reason for signing on, but certainly one we can work with. AcuDestress certainly leads to extraordinary functioning, beyond simply combating stress.
5.) While youth is fifth on the list, it is really first in my heart. AcuDestress is superb for young people who are struggling. They soar! Do you know that 15-21% of them struggle with a treatable mental/emotional problem at any given time. Yet only one in six of them will get the treatment they need. If they don’t get it, it will carry over into adulthood. My contact with youth (which is considerable as I designed a program for 10-19 year olds which ran over five year period) is that psychotherapy is not a modality suitable to young people. In our program, we had to forbid adults from giving direct advice. Their poorly developed prefrontal brain renders them risk-takers and psychotherapy is about smartly deflecting risk. AcuDestress spawns intuition. Kids can hear their intuitive voice because it doesn’t sound like their parents or teachers raking them over the coals once more.
Those of different generations of a family may profitably attend together. As their intake sessions are separate, and as there is little if any talk about the past in these groups and as they will be able to share as much or little of what they tell me as confidential or waive confidentiality together, this treatment (experienced as transpersonal psychotherapy) is appropriate for those 16 and over, including married couples who choose to come together. It is not appropriate for those needing to talk out marriage problems.
