Hello Sopia,

Thank you so very much for responding to my post and especially putting up with my long ramblings as I spilled things out there along with mis-spellings and the like.  I was feeling despite to be heard so I just put it out there this past weekend.  Presently I am dealing with motivational issues as well as realing from the barrage of recent traumas--the loss of my marriage and step child as well as the horrible misunderstandings, and my chronic kidney failure with having to keep up with dialysis's physical drainings.

Tomorrow is my birthday and for the most part, I will spend it at work and later at the dialysis center uneventfully.  I do have good support at work for co-workers who treat me with respect and avidly helped me though difficult situations yet professionally I could only go so far as to how much to disclose or vent. My wife was abusive and w/in the marriage she more or less kept me from friends; now that I am separated and surely headed for divorce, this is a very lonely time.  I know that trauma from early in life leads often to a pattern of abusive relationships for many.  For example, I found great comfort in alternative/holistic health such as accupuncture, Reiki, prayer and mediatation even crystal therapy yet my wife argued much with me regarding these practives. Hence I am utilizing this post.

Traditionally, over the past 26 years, psychotopics have had little positive effect on me and often determental effects.  I was on lithium from 1983 to 1996 and it caused me to shut down intellectually and also was the precuser to my kidney failure around 11 years later.  Psychiatrists for many years refused to listen to my pleas that certain medications were causing urinary pain and tried to pass it on to me as "fixation".  This is one of the primary reasons I try to empower my clients to get in touch with their bodies and to really ask questions with all their medical providers.  An example of someone I worked with, as a client, a few years ago in a dropin center was later complaining of extensive pain in her female areas.  Her regular doctor kept saying that it was psychosomatic and refused to do tests.  A medical provider at Cascadia Behavioral Health Care (where I work) intervened and insisted that the lady be given tests.  Finally the lady was given tests and the result was cervial cancer!  After a fairly long treatment this woman is now dead.  That is why that at least I feel at least holistic practices at least listen!

I am a strong advocate of energy medicine such as the study of the charkas and meridans.  There is some cool work being done by Dr Bruce Lipman on energy medinine and the Japanese Dr Emoto on the effects of spirituality/good-intentions and the positive effects on water (which the human body is mostly composed of).  Reiki is the most profound spiritual/healing modality that I have come accross; I am a second degree Reiki attuned myself.  In Reiki by lying on the table, the energy can be very calming--my usual shaking stops and I often have out of body experiences as well as re-associations with meanings in addressing my trauma issues.  To me, this has been more effective that traditonal psychotherapy.  However Reiki is expensive for me, around $50 a session so I can only afford it around 1x a month.

You asked about some of my own unique ways of therapy namely musical.  I've employed much is light physical fitness groups.  The main way I use it is buring CDs, downloading some songs, or use other regular CDs and coping (copy, paste on to word from an internet seach on a specfic song lyric, and then blow it up to around 14 font for it is easy to see).  When coping the lyric simply highlight the lyrics therefore bypassing the obnoxious advertisments etc so when it is pasted on to word it is clean and easy to read.  An added bonus is to add small drums, cymbols, tamberens (sp?), maracas, etc along with the encouragement to dance.  I for one become quite animated in which I dance myself.  Often we employ humor such as the song "Lean on Me" (for example) we might sing "Lean on me, and I'll topple over" or the song "Yellow Submarine" change the lyrics "We all live in a pink blimp".  I love to keep them guessing.  Often I have sang a song (often somewhat obscure) to someone who was experiencing internal stimuli and they were able to sing the lyrics back with joy.  Speaking of joy, people were able to dedicate songs to each other (as if a gift) and I remember one time that a client broke down with tears of appreciation.  By the way, most of the clients I serve are from the baby boomer generation so I was able to share my large music collection from the music I also grew up to enjoy.  On other occasions (in the past) we have had guest piano players or simply we had fun singing songs accopello.  On a few Cascadia events, we did karakote in which I would do a lot of the singing and spot some people in the audience singing along.  Then I gently put the microphone up to them, encourage them to continue--help them with the tempo and/or lyrics and (often) then let them finish the song on their own.  It is great for helping build up someone's self esteem such as helping someone ride a bike (at first training wheels, then hold it without the training wheels, then let them so with encouragement.