What is different about this approach?

When I graduated from university, it was with a degree in engineering, which was the beginning of my first career in the Manufacturing Industry; what I didn’t know at the time was how helpful that training would be to my second career as a psychotherapist.

After qualifying as a psychotherapist, the first few years were daunting. People would sit before me with many forms of what I had been trained to think of as mental health disorders.

Although I had learned a wide variety of skills and techniques that would, in theory, allow me to help these people, I was often left feeling woefully inadequate, and that’s when I developed a new approach.

I stopped using the term mental health with people and replaced it with emotional health, which already helped put people’s minds at ease. Then, I started helping people problem solve, which is where I could use my engineering skills.

Although people’s conditions varied widely, there was also commonality.

They didn’t know what was wrong, but whatever it was, it was making life difficult, and they wanted help there and then, not six to twelve months out.

As an engineer, I was trained to treat the root cause, not the symptoms. Treating the symptoms can provide short-term relief but does not solve the root cause, thereby passing the problem further down the line. In Manufacturing, time was money, so the solution needed to be effective as quickly as possible and solved first time.

It was also important that the solution lasted, so sustainability was paramount.

Another part of my training led me to develop a common approach to problem-solving, allowing me to treat people more effectively and quickly. The more people I saw, the more I realized that there were similarities with the underlying causes of most emotional health conditions and that these could be treated in much the same way. This allowed me to develop a common approach, in particular, to help people with anxiety or depression.

So, as a psychotherapist, my work became…

Listen carefully to each individual describe their symptoms

Then, explain what I considered to be the root cause, how that could be treated, and why the recommended approach would work. Although many of the people I worked with had previously experienced help of many kinds, the cause of their condition had not been explained, and if you don’t know what’s wrong, how can you fix it?

Answer all questions and ensure the recommended approach fits each person. Finally, provide treatment in the minimum number of sessions possible, at the minimum cost, and in a way in which the recovery would be sustainable.

Conclusion

I treated hundreds of people face-to-face with this approach and subsequently created the Human Approach website to offer this treatment to anyone who needed help, anywhere in the world. When I retired, I transferred this knowledge into the Three-Week-Programs to still allow people access without needing to meet with me personally. I am no longer qualified to call the work psychotherapy, but it fits well as self-help, which, in truth, was how I always felt about my work. I could help, but the individual had to do the work.