zealtrace

I may be misreading, but it sounds like you’re offering this to people that work together? I have trouble seeing how someone, particularly a vulnerable individual, can freely consent given the combination of group dynamics and their livelihood being involved.

I find it concerning you list experience providing psychotherapy in clinical practice on your CV. These terms are strongly associated with someone who has specific training, a license, and is answerable to an ethics board. It may give a mistaken impression to someone who is considering working with you.

You could do a lot of good therapy around your boundaries of disclosing vulnerable information with a stranger. A good therapist, and the right therapist for you, would support you in not disclosing more than you’re comfortable with.

The cargo cult science part was and is a big concern of mine as well. In practice it hasn’t been much of an issue. Yoga or music is another analogy for this — the theory isn’t nearly as important as the experience, and a lot of this eventually comes down to something more like practice and intuition rather than theoretical models.

I used to have the same opinion and found my model has shifted quite a bit. There are a surprising lack of high quality studies on a lot of this. However, there’s really good data on a couple points: Therapy is likely to create significant, lasting improvements compared to placebo, and the more significant factor is therapeutic relationship, not modality.

There’s a lot of evidence for CBT because it’s a modality that is relatively easy to study, and so it’s studied a lot. It’s very structured and designed to produce results quickly. This doesn’t mean it’s superior in general.

Chronic psychological disorders are strongly correlated with early attachment issues and adverse childhood experiences. There are many ways to address this, but I would view a successful long term therapy as reprogramming a nervous system rather than talking to a friend or building new habits. In my experience, even many therapists fail to understand this distinction. Like hiring any skilled professional, finding the right match can be a time consuming process.

This is covered in the actual studies, which are quite readable if you're curious. The metric of concern is suicide attempts, and the rate is about the same between placebo and control groups. Long term followup data will be informative, particularly as they attempt to scale up the treatment.

Depressive effects aren't typically the greatest concern with this population. The risk to manage is traumatic material and sensations coming on more strongly afterward and overwhelming the person's capacity to regulate. This is one of the reasons the trauma informed psychotherapy aspect of the treatment is important.

It’s mentioned elsewhere, but Prazosin is commonly prescribed for this and can make a significant difference for some people.