What is Wrong With the World of Mental Health?

What is Wrong With the World of Mental Health? – Vol. 278, Sept. 25, 2014

Over the past few months I have been very active on Linkedin – in the groups that are designed to be forums for therapists and coaches to gain insight and advise from their colleagues. I had begun my journey there a couple of years ago, until two brazen female therapists were so rude as to first decide what was appropriate for me to share and then to overrun my boundaries telling me that I should get a license to practice mental health, having zero idea of who I am, what I do for a living and how I came to become a hypnotist. I left the group for over a year deciding that if this is what I was to be thrown, I needn’t be involved.

Well, a year of more later, I find that one needs to be involved in these forums to gain a bit of credibility, to get known by one’s colleagues and to most importantly be of service, because there are many more who read the postings than who take the time to reply to the postings. Many people are fearful of what may happen if they should post on these forums with all of our professional information on our profiles on linked-in.

Well something very interesting has dawned on me in the time that I have been involved in posting replies to others questions – or others replies to those questions. I have come to realize something that I noticed first when I was doing some demonstrations for the licensed mental health professionals in the town in which I resided many years ago now.

I had asked the group a very simple question: “Why is it that after all the time and monetary investment you made in your profession, that you are still not able to make the sort of income that you feel you deserve?” The answers that came up were generally ones that went back to some feelings of being ashamed, hurt or feeling that they were impostures, not really capable of doing the work that they are now licensed to do. Many of them had many memories of sexual abuse going on, while others were still very angry with divorces that happened years ago. In short it was evident that even though one is to go through one’s own theraputic process as one goes through mental health credentialing, many never really clear the psychic pain of their past. These pains come across in how they interact with others quite boldly as some will force their methods of treatments onto others feeling this is the best course of action – never allowing for many other very helpful treatment methods to be acknowledged. For others, it is about telling their story of “woe is me” and this is why one has to be super sensitive to all those who have the same problems as I am still fighting. And, still for others, it is just a chance to be a “bully” or a “martyr” all coming across so interestingly to those who can sit back and observe the behavior through the words written for anyone to read.

I realize that most, if not all people who enter the world of mental health care giving do so because they are interested in learning more about how to heal themselves. Sometimes it is understood as how one can help others. However, the real reason one gets involved is to find out how to heal one’s self. The only problem with this order of work, is that one can never help another heal when one is still struggling with one’s own story of dysfunction, one’s own saga as to why one’s world is not as one wanted it, one’s own limiting belief that their life is the story that they tell themselves.

Wayne Dyer states emphatically, as a man who never knew his father and was in an orphanage for a time because his mother couldn’t make enough money to support him and his brothers, that, “It is never too late to have a happy childhood.”

As a hypnotist I fully recognize the fact that our lives are an illusion and are given the exact meaning that we give them. So, this is the challenge that I have for any of you who are out there, and especially anyone who is a licensed mental health worker: Are you willing to stop telling yourself stories where you are the victim? Are you willing to stop bullying others to your way of thinking? Are you ready to actually hear what others are saying, without your having to take it personally when it isn’t personal? Are you willing to do your own work on yourself before asking others to trust you to do work with and on them?

Because I am here to take a stand for those who like myself were terribly harmed by your inability to clear your own chaos, your own lack of self-respect, lack of self-love and instead infiltrate my life with the dysfunctions that you felt you needn’t concern yourselves with first. However, I am fine now, and thank God, so are the many who came to me for treatment who couldn’t feel “heard” by you as you set your own agenda for what needed to be treated with the patients who were well educated, clear in their thinking and their desire for the sort of assistance they originally came in to receive. They could care less about your trials and tribulations unless there is a story – a metaphor of regaining one’s self growing to a higher level of understanding with love and grace to share. In that case share all the stories of your past that you can – to share a journey of self-understanding, self-compassion and self-growth, these are what heal. Those are the sorts of healers that change the world as Wayne Dyer among many others have demonstrated can be done on a very huge level. Those are the people that are my heroes and I would like to be able to count you as one of them.

About Suzanne

Suzanne Kellner-Zinck founded Dawning Visions Hypnosis in 2002, She has become an innovator in the use of hypnotism and neuro-linguistic programming in the areas of obsessive compulsive disorders such as: eating disorders, sexual addiction and substance abuse as well as working with those with anxiety and mood disorders.

Her clients have come to work with her from across the United States and as far away as Africa to help them to finally be freed from these emotional issues that once ruled their lives. Today she is in the process of bringing her work to many more in the form of ebooks and other downloadable formats.

She is a member of American Holistic Medical Association and the American College for Advancement in Medicine.

Prior to founding Dawning Visions Hypnosis, Kellner-Zinck worked within vendor programs for the mentally ill working to help them to live up to their fullest potential. Many of her previous clients were able to move out on their own and find fulfilling work.

Kellner-Zinck is a Certified Trainer of Hypnosis and Neuro-Linguistic programing through Tad James Company, Inc. and a Master Hypnotist and Master Practitioner of Neuro-Linguistic Programming through Advanced Neuro Dynamics. She holds a bachelor’s degree in education and political studies from Curry College.

Dawning Visions Hypnosis is teaching people that they can indeed leave their unwanted behaviors behind as they move forward to living fulfilling and joy filled lives.