Homoeopathy with its emphasis on the mind of patients, appealed to this psycho-therapist. She learnt it.
I became a therapist in 1976, and always said if I knew a way to shorten the time it took to do therapy, I’d use it. I am traditionally trained, and have avoided therapeutic fads and trendy techniques, but I was sometimes frustrated by the lack of progress, and felt that something else, besides talking therapy, was needed. I felt that the mind/body split was an artificial one, and also resisted the idea that all mental distress is caused by some chemical imbalance in the brain. We have bodies and we have psyches and somehow we have to figure out a way to treat them both.
Around the time I was experiencing this frustration, there was a great increase in psychotropic medication being used: anti-depressants, anti-anxiety medications, sleep medications, or some combination of the above (and a few others occasionally thrown into the mix). I was the only mother in the carpool of six who was not taking an antidepressant. Clients would come to me and tell me their family practice doctors recommended antidepressants simply because they were in therapy, not because they displayed clinical symptoms of depression.
Don’t get me wrong – medication is an important aspect of treatment for some emotional and mental conditions. Some people can’t function without it, and others would have severely restricted lives without the benefits of psychotropic medication.
The problem is, it is frequently overprescribed, or poorly monitored, and just plain unnecessary. In these cases, people seemed to have more difficulty accessing their feelings and moving through things. Some people didn’t like the side effects, and others didn’t want to take medicine for other reasons – pregnancy or nursing, for instance, or personal beliefs. Others did not want to give their children medication for problems like ADD, even though their children clearly needed more help than school counseling and talk therapy could give.
After being treated successfully with homeopathy, and seeing my family and friends respond to homeopathic treatment, I began to refer my psychotherapy clients to homeopaths. While I had originally thought of homeopathy only as treatment for the body, with the evolution of homeopathy and my greater understanding of its uses, I could see its value for psychological conditions.
I noticed that the clients who received homeopathic treatment seemed to progress in therapy at an accelerated pace. They seemed less afraid to face what had previously felt unbearable, or they just simple seemed to get “unstuck.”
After a few years of referring my clients to homeopaths for treatment, I realized that I had the advantage of knowing them on a deeper level than the homeopathic clinician I was referring them to. I decided to study homeopathy myself, and to find a way to integrate homeopathy into psychotherapy. I went to a four-year training program at the Hahnemann College of Homeopathy, which was very psychologically oriented, and began to do my own prescribing.
Now about half of my clients are taking homeopathic remedies. It’s not for everyone, and some people need or prefer western medicine. However, I have fewer clients taking psychotropic medication than any therapist I know, and I believe the success of the treatment is at least comparable. I am able to treat nursing mothers with post-partum depression, traumatized children, older adults who are sensitive to medication, and I don’t have to worry about the side effects!
Naomi Richman, MFT, is a psychotherapist and homeopath with offices in Petaluma and Berkeley.
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