Therapists And Their Families

Helping Those We Love by Jane Thurnell-Read

Many of us do 'strange therapies' that our nearest and dearest find difficult to appreciate. They are often resistant to us practicing our skills on them, and this can be the source of much heartache for us. The old adage about a prophet in his own land offers little comfort.

I've found the best approach in these circumstances is to say "Humour me - let me just see if I can help you." This allows them to have you work on them as a 'favour' to you rather than because they accept 'this weird stuff'. Hopefully, with time, when they have done you enough of these 'favours' they begin to believe "there might be something in it after all".

I don't really have an answer though to the situation where they experience the benefit but don't attribute it to what you did. I had a classic example of this with my mother. She was visiting me and complained about a bad back. We agreed I would use my kinesiology skills on her. An hour later she got off the couch, and I asked her how her back was. "Oh, it's much better," she said, "It's amazing what lying on a hard surface for an hour can do." I pointed out to her that I had been working on her during that time. "Oh, that too," she said without conviction. I suppose we have to just be happy that we have helped them even if they don't recognise it.

I used a different approach with one of my sons when he was a teenager: I paid him! As a teenager he slouched around town with dreadful acne and a loutish air, and I felt embarrassed to have such a bad advertisement for what I did. Every offer of help was rebuffed. Eventually I offered to pay him - 4 GB Pounds an hour (approximately US$8.00) - this was about 10 years ago so you might need to offer more now!

He accepted this, but earned 2.00 pounds a session, because he was only prepared to comply for half an hour at a time. He was unwilling to attribute any improvement to the work I had done. I decided it was best not to push for this recognition, but just be grateful that he let me do more work. Over time he stopped asking for his pay and then one day he asked me to work on him for a specific problem. Afterwards he rather grudgingly agreed that things were better, and that it might be something to do with the work we had done together. As he came out of his teens he began to respect what I did, and now is immensely proud of me, and eager for kinesiology when he needs it.

Copyright 2007 Jane Thurnell-Read Online Wellness Store