I divide clients into two basic types:  simple cases and complex ones.  When I was treating mental illness, occasionally I had a client who had not been sick for too long.  I could usually make this client well quite easily.  But if the person had already become institutionalized, had been psychotic for many years, had received much prior treatment, then their case had been made much more difficult.  This sort had a poor prognosis.  A very similar situation exists with physical illnesses.  Many people get sick only because they lack information about how to keep themselves healthy and about what made them sick.  Once they find out the truth, they take my medicine without complaint and almost inevitably get better very rapidly.  Some of these people can be quite ill when they first come to me but usually they have not been sick for very long.  Their intention when coming into my office is very positive and have no counter intentions to getting better.  There are no spiritual or psychological reasons that they deserve to be sick.  If this person had not found me, they almost certainly would have found some other practitioner who would have made them well.  This type of person honestly feels they are entitled to wellness.  And they are.

However, some of the sick are not sick for lack of life-style information; they suffer from a mental/spiritual malady as well, one that inevitably preceded their illness by many years.  In fact, their physical ailments are merely reflections of underlying problems.  This patient’s life is usually a snarl of upsets, problems, and guilty secrets.  Their key relationships are usually vicious or unhealthy.  Their level of interpersonal honesty may be poor.  There are usually many things about their lives they do not confront and so, can not change.  With this type of case, all the physical healing in the world will not make them permanently better because the mental and emotional stresses they live under serve as a constant source of enervation.

Cases like this usually do not have only one thing wrong with them.  They almost always have been sick for a long time; most have been what I call “doctor hoppers,” confused by contrary diagnoses and conflicting MD opinions.  When I get a case like this I know from the first that healing is going to be a long process, and a dubious one at that.  On the physical level, their body will only repair one aspect of their multiple illnesses at a time.  Simultaneously, they must be urged to confront their life on a gentle gradient.  There is usually a lot of backsliding and rollercoastering.  The detoxification process, physical and psychological, can take several years and must happen on all the levels of their life.  This kind of case sees only gradual improvement interspersed with periods of worsening that indicate there remains yet another level of mental unawareness that has to be unraveled.