Question: My friend is a victim of sexual assault, but does not want to report it. She does not want to go through the legal process or have everyone she knows find out. I am not very good at comforting and she does not want to go to a therapist for fear of the incident being reported. Would a therapist be required to report it?

Dr. Richard Schultz Says...:

Hello, and thank you for asking this very important question. Limited as you may feel in your ability to provide her with comfort and support, your friend is indeed fortunate to have you in her corner.

It is extremely unfortunate but quite common for individuals who have experienced sexual assault or other forms of criminal victimization to be fearful of coming forward due to concerns about any further trauma which may be triggered by doing so. We can only hope that efforts to reduce the stress of reporting such victimization will persist, and that they will be successful in reducing the cost to those who are ambivalent about telling their stories and seeking justice.

The secondary level of concern that you mention, that of mandated reporting by mental health professionals, is, I am glad to tell you, much more easily allayed. Although I do not know from where in the world you write, I will proceed based on the assumption that your friend resides in the United States (and please feel free to let me know if the facts are otherwise). In the U.S., individual statutory laws and rules vary widely in regard to mandated reporting (and also in what are known as "duty to warn/protect" laws), but the following overall guidelines are typically observed by psychiatrists, psychologists, and other licensed mental health professionals.

Mental health professional are typically permitted and/or required to report to law enforcement or other relevant agencies and parties in some or all of the following circumstances:

1.  When the licensed mental health professional has reasonable cause to believe that suspected child abuse has occurred, or is occurring;

2.  When the licensed mental health professional becomes aware that abuse, neglect and/or exploitation of a disabled adult or elder person has occurred or is occurring;

3.  When the licensed mental health professional becomes aware that a patient under their care is potentially violent and has made a clear threat of harm toward a readily identifiable intended victim; and

4.  When the licensed mental health professional becomes aware that a
patient under their care poses a significant and acute risk for self-harm.

Again, these are broad guidelines that are interpreted differently depending on individual state law, but all are observed to some degree by licensed mental health professional. In addition, the definition of what constitutes "abuse," "harm," and "significant risk" are varied and complex. However, these are the only circumstances in which a mental health professional is either compelled or permitted to violate the "doctor-patient" confidentiality attendant to the therapeutic relationship. Thus,disclosure by your friend that she has been the victim of a crime would not, in any case, be the grounds for required reporting by any mental health professional.

I hope that this response is of some use to your friend in reducing her concerns regarding confidentiality and therapy.

Finally, although you did not inquire about the appropriateness of mental health treatment for your friend, in the wake of such a traumatic event, I am going to provide you with the diagnostic criteria for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (commonly referred to as "PTSD"). This description may assist you friend in better assessing her response to the traumatic event, as well as her need for assistance or treatment:

The diagnostic criteria for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder are defined in
DSM-IV as follows:

1. The person experiences a traumatic event in which both of the following
   were present:
   
   1. The person experienced or witnessed or was confronted with an event
      or events that involved actual or threatened death or serious injury, or
      a threat to the physical integrity of self or others;
   2. The person's response involved intense fear, helplessness, or horror.
   
   
2. The traumatic event is persistently re-experienced in any of the following
   ways:
   
   1. Recurrent and intrusive distressing recollections of the event, including
      images, thoughts or perceptions;
   2. Recurrent distressing dreams of the event;
   3. Acting or feeling as if the traumatic event were recurring (eg reliving
      the experience, illusions, hallucinations, and dissociative flashback episodes,
      including those on wakening or when intoxicated);
   4. Intense psychological distress at exposure to internal or external cues
      that symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event;
   5. Physiological reactivity on exposure to internal or external cues that
      symbolize or resemble an aspect of the traumatic event.
   
   
3. Persistent avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma and numbing
   of general responsiveness (not present before the trauma) as indicated by
   at least three of:


1. Efforts to avoid thoughts, feelings or conversations associated with the
   trauma;
2. Efforts to avoid activities, places or people that arouse recollections
   of this trauma;
3. Inability to recall an important aspect of the trauma;
4. Markedly diminished interest or participation in significant activities;
5. Feeling of detachment or estrangement from others;
6. Restricted range of affect (eg unable to have loving feelings);
7. Sense of a foreshortened future (eg does not expect to have a career,
   marriage, children or a normal life span).


4. Persistent symptoms of increased arousal (not present before the trauma)
   as indicated by at least two of the following:
   
   1. Difficulty falling or staying asleep;
   2. Irritability or outbursts of anger;
   3. Difficulty concentrating;
   4. Hypervigilance;
   5. Exaggerated startle response.
   
   
5. The symptoms on Criteria B, C and D last for more than one month.
6. The disturbance causes clinically significant distress or impairment in
   social, occupational or other important areas of functioning.

Sincerely,

Richard E. Schultz, Ph.D.

www.drschultz.org

Question: I dunno if you can help me. I feel beyond lost, my own family have told me that im broken, incapable of love. I am struggling with my life, ive been a victim of every kind of child abuse from my family and oldest brother. Ive tried to get help and my family have banished/abandoned me. Ive two amazing children who have kept me alive, happy but i know that i cant allow them to know how afraid i am, how lost i get. ve scared that they (my family )may be right bout me... That i am broken or incapable of love. im not in a relationship since my divorce last year, i havent had a relationship since i moved towns... Is there something wrong with me? Am i truly broken? Am i unable too love anyone?

Dr. Richard Schultz Says...:

Hello and thank you so much for reaching out to me.

We are all capable of feeling and/or believing that we are "broken," "incapable of love," "lost," "banished," and/or "abandoned."

I am sorry that you have been suffering from these feelings and beliefs.  Please know that you were not born thinking and feeling like this, and that you never chose to think or feel this way.  Please also know that you LEARNED to believe these things about yourself because of the traumatic experiences you describe experiencing as you were growing up.  We learn to treat ourselves the way we are treated.

It takes a lot of courage and enlightenment in others, especially family members, in order for them to be able to truly see, hear or accept your painful truth.  Your painful truth may scare, threaten, or sadden your family, or trigger unwanted guilt or rage in them.  Their easiest solution may therefore be to simply label you as the "broken" and bad one, in order not to have to deal with your painful truth, or consider to their own.

YOU CAN HEAL from the painful, traumatic lessons you learned and the experiences you have undergone.  You can learn to accept yourself, despite the rejection of others, and feel stronger and more lovingly toward yourself.  If you work on healing yourself, your children will benefit greatly from seeing you model courage and growth and change, and this will be a gift to them, today and ever after.  You will demonstrate for them how we as humans can best conquer the challenges presented to us in life.  To be sure, there is no life without pain or challenge or disappointment, however ongoing suffering is optional!

If you have not already done so, please seek out a qualified mental health professional to work with you in your healing process.  Yes, it is true that time heals all wounds, but it depends on what you do with the time.  You will progress in your healing with the help of external resources MUCH faster than you will without them.  Don't ever try to climb Mt. Everest in flip-flops!  Use every good tool available to assist you.

Talk with a few therapists on the phone, tell them about your struggles, and ask them how they think they might be able to help you.  They should all have specific answers to this question that make sense to you, but many of them will not.  Eliminate these people from your list of potential therapists, and then choose the one whose answer made the most sense, and who you got the best vibe from.  Go and meet with this person and see if the fit between you is a good one.  Go with your instincts, but don't expect to be unafraid.  Directly addressing what has been troubling us, but which we have had to suppress, can be painful and scary.  And it will get less so over time. 

Ideally, the therapist you choose will have a strong grounding in empirically validated treatments (this just means treatments that WORK, such as cognitive-behavioral therapy).

Read as many of the best books you can on trauma, anxiety, family dysfunction and psychological treatment for depression, anxiety and anger.  Begin with "The Feeling Good Handbook" by David Burns.  This will help you begin to see yourself more fairly and objectively, and will help you cope with and reduce painful depression, anxiety and anger.  You may also wish to read "Trauma and Recovery" by Judith Herman.  For more suggestions, visit my website (http://drschultz.org/page6.html), my Twitter feed (@mindsetdoc) and my blog (mindsetdoc.com). 

If your levels of depression, anxiety or anger are severe or acute, or if you are not functioning adequately in your life as a result of these symptoms, you may also wish to consider consulting your physician about the benefit of using psychotropic medication to help with your recovery.  Most often, these medications are prescribed by non-psychiatrists, and you can start with your PCP or OB/GYN.  It is possible that you may very much wish to NOT go this route, for a variety of reasons.  Please just make sure they are the right reasons (such as "I have already tried them extensively and they don't seem to help at all") versus reasons that have come from your family and culture (such as "only weak and crazy people need medicine," "those things will turn you into an addict," or "I can't go talking to my doctor about this stuff, it's a sick secret").  These statements all reflect great inaccuracy, harsh judgment, and toxic shame.

Remember that hiding and suppressing your truth will always make you sicker than will telling and owning the truth.  Don't practice shame-driven behavior. 

After you begin to make some progress in your recovery, carefully examine your relationships with friends, family and romantic partners.  Disengage from those with whom you must suppress your truth, those who mistreat you, those who tear you down more than they build you up.  Don't participate in bad relationship deals.  If you wouldn't want one of your children to have such a relationship, don't subject yourself to it for any reason.  Identify the healthiest, highest functioning people in your life and get closer to them.  If you don't have any, go find some!  You may find them in a recovery or 12 step group.  In the initial phase of your recovery, it will be far better for you to have NO romantic relationships than to have any more bad ones!  So don't sweat that part just yet.  It is time for you to work on and make friends with YOU. 

With regard to your children, it is of course advisable to wait until they are old enough to make some sense of what they have seen you struggle with over the years before you share the truth with them.  Your therapist can certainly provide guidance about this, but do not make the mistake of trying to shield your children from the truth out of your own fear about the possible impact on them this might cause.  They know what has been going on, even know they don't know the specifics, and even though they may have been told lies.  They will ultimately need to know the truth so that they can understand what they have observed, so that they can learn about the challenges life puts in our path and how to deal with them, so that they can learn how not to own responsibility for YOUR difficulties, and so they can be freed from the toxic secrecy that pervades dysfunctional families and other systems.  If you don't tell them the truth, you will force them to make up distorted reasons for "why mommy gets upset" and these will always have a worse impact on them than will their knowing the truth.

Finally, this plan will work if you work it and It won't if you don't. We get better at whatever we practice and we are always practicing something.

Thank you again for writing to me, I hope some of what I have written is of help to you, and please keep me posted on your progress.  That will help you, me, and other readers who are facing related challenges.

I wish you great peace and courage in traveling the healing path.

Richard E. Schultz, Ph.D.

www.mindsetdoc.com

www.drschultz.org

@mindsetdoc

404.277.8690

Question: My ex tried to kill me and he burnt down my home. He was abusive for a long time and he swore he'd kill me if I ever left him. I kicked him out of my house and got a restraining order against him after the police were called when he was beating me a few months ago. He left but 2 months later he burnt down the house while I was in it. I got out but my dog died and everything I had is gone. The police can't prove that he did it but I am sure that he did. I have left the city and am in a place he doesn't know about. I am so angry now all of the time. I have a right to feel angry but it doesn't help me that I go into a rage when someone cuts in line in traffic or when the waitress gets my order wrong. Little stuff that doesn't matter and I totally lose control and scream. I don't even recognize myself after the fact. It's like I become a different person for a while. Why can't I control my anger anymore? I am sure it is related to what's going on in my life. More importantly, how can I get back in control of myself? I feel like I am not myself and I need some help but I don't really know who to turn to. I don't have a family doctor or anything like that and it seems weird to go to a clinic to tell my story to a stranger, because it sounds crazy. I feel like I am going crazy.

Dr. Richard Schultz Says...:

Hello:

Thank you so much for writing.  I am horribly sorry to hear about the awful abuse you experienced during your relationship, and for the loss of your home and your pet.  I am very glad you were able to summon the strength and courage to get yourself to a physically safe place, and that you are trying to move forward in your life.

When speaking of trauma, the term "recovery" is often used to describe the healing process.  In some respects, however, this word is misleading because it assumes that we can ever go BACK to thinking, feeling and behaving as we did BEFORE having experienced the traumatic events.  As is the case with such dramatic and impactful shifts in life (especially when they are so upsetting, scary and disruptive, and involve such loss), there really is no going back.  These events can forever change the way we see and feel about the world, and "recovery" means ultimately coming to grips with what has occurred, resolving acute symptoms, and slowly beginning to construct a new view of life and self.

The good news is that you have already taken some major steps in this direction, particularly in regard to your safety.  This is huge, and I hope you will give yourself a massive dose of credit for the work you have done so far.

And you are right on target in your belief that the anger and other difficult, unwanted feelings that have begun to emerge more strongly for you are very clearly related to the terrible and painful experiences you have lived through.  Some individuals will respond to trauma with paralyzing fear, some with sadness and depression, and some with anger and rage.  Sometimes, a variety of all of these emotions are present.  And yes, as you say, of course you DO indeed have a right to be angry.  Your world was shattered by violence, your home was destroyed, and you lost your dog.  And these events did not occur as a result of a natural disaster, but because of the actions of someone you may have once loved and trusted.  It is under these kinds of circumstances, those which are caused by a person, one who was quite close to you at one time, that the anger you feel would reach such great proportions. 

The fact that your anger and other painful feelings remain so strong is not unusual, but these are signs that you have not yet been able to fully process and work through the trauma.  There are questions and fears within you that have not yet been addressed, and your life is headed in a new direction.  It would therefore be unreasonable to expect that you could just "suck it up" and "get back in control" through sheer motivation alone.  This is where treatment comes in.

It is said that time heals all wounds, but it really depends on what you do with that time.  To best insure that you are able to redevelop a constructive and healthy life, and to begin to work through the residual anger and hurt you feel, I would strongly recommend that you do visit with a qualified mental health professional as soon as possible.  If you had been involved in a car accident, in which you suffered many injuries, you might be able to walk away (or limp away) from the scene, but your wounds would still need attention.  Yes, the idea of seeing a psychologist, psychiatrist or mental health therapist does seem "weird" to the majority of people, especially since most of us were not raised to seek help for emotional wounds.  Physical ones yes, psychological and emotional ones not so much.  We are probably quicker to get our car's squealing brakes fixed than we are to get help with our feelings.  But that is precisely what is needed in your situation.  Your story may "sound crazy" to you, but we in the mental health field are quite accustomed to helping individuals overcome extreme forms of stress, hurt and trauma.     

So, effective treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) typically involves re-processing of the event, and the thoughts, feelings and behaviors associated with it, receiving help in coping with physical and emotional symptoms related to the condition, and getting support and guidance as you resume some pre-trauma behavioral routines. If you wish to read more about PTSD, in conjunction with seeking treatment, I recommend the book, "Trauma and Recovery" by Judith Herman. 

As for finding a therapist, it sounds like you have already become aware of the existence of mental health clinics in your area.  You can also receive guidance in identifying a therapist by visiting www.apa.org, or by contacting your state's psychological association (just google the name of your state and "psychological association").  Of course, you can also ask friends, family or colleagues if they have worked with any skilled practitioners, if you feel comfortable doing so.  Based on the symptoms you experiencing, and the trauma you have survived, I would strongly suggest seeking out a provider skilled in cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), as this particular type of therapy has been used most successfully to treat PTSD.  It tends to be a very practical and goal-focused form of treatment, and the methods and techniques you will learn may begin to provide you with some relief after just a few sessions.

I do hope you have found this information useful. Please feel free to write back if you have additional questions, to keep me posted on your progress, or to get further guidance of any kind.

I wish you great peace and courage in your healing.

Sincerely,

Richard E. Schultz, Ph.D.

Question: I got attacked walking home from work a couple of months ago. I am a waitress and finish around midnight. This guy pushed me down and ripped off my jewelry and purse. He pulled my necklace so hard I had a red line around my neck for like 2 weeks after. Now, I don’t walk home alone any more but I find that I don’t even like to go home to an empty house so now I go out every night after work for a few drinks and now I think I am an alcoholic. I need to get drunk enough to pass out every night. How do I stop drinking? My friend said I should go to AA but if I don’t drink I am scared on my own so I don’t think this is going to work.

Dr. Richard Schultz Says...:

Hello:

Thank you so much for writing, and I am very sorry to hear of the terrifiying event you experienced. 

Such a traumatic incident, particularly one that involves feelings of helplessness, shock, and fear of injury to ourselves or others, can often give rise to the onset of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).  This is a form of anxiety that can negatively affect our thoughts, feelings and behavior.  PTSD may include distressing memories/flashbacks or nightmares about the event, avoidance of any reminders of the event, as well as a sense of numbness and/or hyper-arrousal (i.e. difficultiy sleeping or concentrating, or exaggerated startle response). 

Based on what you wrote, it would appear that your sudden avoidance of your empty house, and your attempts to suppress or medicate your anxiety and insomnia with alcohol are strong indicators of PTSD.  Although your friend's specific concern about your drinking is quite understandable, I believe it will be more important for you to first get some assistance in working with the primary underlying condition of PTSD that appears to be triggering the drinking and other behavioral changes.  AA is not designed to provide that kind of intervention.  I therefore strongly recommend that you seek consultation with a qualified mental health professional who can help you better understand how this traumatic event has impacted you, and help you to recover from your symptoms.  I also suggest you try and connect with a provider skilled in cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), which has be shown in research to be particularly effective for anxiety conditions such as this one.

Effective treatment for PTSD typically involves a re-processing of the event, and the thoughts, feelings and behaviors associated with it, help in coping with physical symptoms of anxiety, as well as a gradual return to your pre-trauma behavioral routines.  Paradoxically, the more we try to avoid thinking about a troubling event, having feelings associated with it, or being reminded of it, the more fearful of that event and it's potential for recurrence we become.  Through avoidance, we can even start to become afraid of our own feelings themselves.  Given the progressive nature of anxiety, it will therefore be best for you to seek help sooner than later.  This is not a rare condition, and it is quite successfully treated (with the right treatment, of course).

If you wish to read more about PTSD, prior to, or in conjunction with seeking treatment, I recommend the book, "Trauma and Recovery" by Judith Herman.  This will likely be helpful to you.  You can also receive guidance in identifying a therapist through your primary care physician, by visiting apa.org, or through your state's psychological association (just google the name of your state and "psychological association").  Of course, you can also ask friends, family or colleagues if they have worked with any skilled practitioners, if you feel comfortable doing so.

I hope you have found this information useful.  Please feel free to write back if you have additional questions, to keep me posted on your progress, or to get further guidance of any kind. 

I wish you great peace and courage in your recovery.

Sincerely,

Richard E. Schultz, Ph.D.  

Question: I am a 4th grade teacher and I believe that one of my students is having a problem at home and I am not sure how to help out. He is a very bright boy and he is very well behaved but in the last 2 months or so his behavior has changed and he is now very attention seeking and disruptive and paradoxically becoming a bit of a loner where he used to have an active social group of friends. He is showing a very noticeable shift in behavior. I have had 2 of his older siblings in previous years and I have come to know the mother to some degree. She is a single mother and in my experience she has always been very caring and conscientious and her children are always well looked after and always have their work done. I believe that education is a priority for her. After her son missed some school a while back it was explained to me that she had been assaulted at work and she was recovering in the hospital and her children were temporarily at relatives. After her son came back to school everything was fine but his behavior has deteriorated since then, he rarely does his homework and he often wears dirty clothes to school and looks as if he is un-showered. I have tried getting the mother to come in for a conference but she will not come in. When I ask her son how she is doing he says she is ‘fine’ but spends most of the day in bed. The mother also dodges my phone calls but on one occasion when I managed to connect with her she acknowledged that she was dealing with some PTSD from her attack I do not know what I can do to help. Under normal situations when it appears that there is a neglect situation my first move would be to contact child protective services. In this case, because I know the mother to be very caring and a good mom, I am very reluctant to go to this extreme because of the difficult consequences for the family that could result from it. If things continue as they have been, however, I will probably have no choice but to do it. What I would like to know is how can I, as a teacher, help the boys so that they are less impacted by their mother’s sudden disability; to enable her to have a little more time to get her act back together?

Dr. Richard Schultz Says...:

Hello and thank you so much for addressing this important question to me.

First, let me extend my admiration and deep gratitude to you, both for being so observant and concerned about your student, and for showing such compassion and consideration to the parent.  Obviously, educators such as yourself are in an excellent position from which to observe and assess changes in children's behavior.  Add that to the basic responsibility of educating young people, and I know that you have your hand's full!  Again, thank you for writing.

Based on what you have said, it would appear that there is indeed a correlation between the parent's recent trauma and the erosion in the child's behavior, performance and hygiene.  Adding to that, this parent does also seem to be quite reticent to seek treatment, let alone simply discuss her struggles.  This is not an uncommmon response to trauma, as it can have a shocking, demoralizing and shaming effect on the victim, and can cause severe withdrawal from what may now be percieved as a terrifying and dangerous world.  In addition, there may be sociocultural factors at play that also discourage the individual from seeking treatment, unfortunately.

Nonetheless, as you express very well, this victim is also the mother of young children, and the manner in which she attends to her symptoms, or does not, can certainly have a powerful impact on them.  Sadly, it is hard to imagine this impact would be anything but negative and destructive.

I completely understand your hesitatation to contact protective services; they may or may not be able to actually assist in this situation, and there is the danger of family disunification, which could worsen the current problems.  When clear abuse is occurring or suspected, I would not hesitate to take that step (and am, as a psychologist licensed in the State of Georgia, mandated legally to do so).  I am not sure what protocol is legally required in your state, or by your school or other governance board.

I wondered, while reading your question, if your school, or the district, employs any type of school psychologist or guidance counselor.  It would seem that such an individual would be in the best position to either advise you, or to intervene directly on the student's behalf.  If such an individual is not on the payroll, I would consult your supervisor before taking further action.  With that individual's guidance and collaboration, you could implement a plan to assist this child's family.  It might begin with a call from your supervisor to the mother, reiterating the strong concerns that have been raised.  This could then be followed by a registered letter urging the mother to come in for a conference, and letter her know that if she chooses not to do so, you will be compelled to contact a social service agency to address the issue.  Obviously, this is the step you least want to take, and hopefully one of the prior steps will work, making this consequence unnecessary.

An alternative idea would be to get into contact with a close extended family member or friend of the mother and recruit that individual to intervene.  You may have such a contact in the child's records, or the child himself may be able to provide the information.

Again, your active concern for this student's welfare is highly commendable.  I hope that some of what I have offered is useful to you, and that a constructive resolution to the problem is achieved.  Please do keep me posted in that regard, and feel free to write again if I can be of any further assistance.

Sincerely,

Richard E. Schultz, Ph.D.

Question: I was raped 2 years ago. This is weird to say but I don’t know how to be myself anymore. It is never something I used to think about but I always just knew who I was – I was me. Now I’m like bits and pieces. I am certainly less confident and assured than I used to be. I feel like I have lost my sense of myself and It’s like I don’t know myself anymore and I don’t like who I have become. I can’t really explain better than this but I know it’s hard to understand. Does this make any sense to you? Is this common? Is there anything I can do to stop feeling like this and start feeling like me again?

Dr. Richard Schultz Says...:

Hello:

I am so very sorry for the painful event you experienced two years ago, and for the very distressing effects this traumatic event has had on your thoughts, feelings and behavior.

What you are describing is not at all uncommon for those whose lives have been turned upside down by something as awful and upsetting as sexual assault. These symptoms are often given a diagnosis of "Posttraumatic Stress Disorder," and they commonly include unpleasant memories, nightmares or other re-experiencings of the trauma, a change in one's perceived ability to feeling loving toward others, difficulty remembering aspects of the event, a sense of fear or vigilance in otherwise harmless situations, difficulty sleeping, or a sense of numbness, as if one is not fully alive. It is therefore understandible that even just a few of these symptoms would lead you to feel very differently than you did BEFORE the rape. You have begun to question things you used to simply take for granted, such as being among a group of people or walking down the street. The fact is, you ARE different now, because you are aware that such an awful thing could actually happen to you.

The good news is that PTSD is highly treatable, and I therefore strongly recommend that you seek treatment from a qualified mental health professional immediately. Ideally, you would see someone with a specialization in treating trauma, and who uses empirically validated methods, such as cognitive behavioral therapy and/or EMDR. This treatment is designed to help you get back to the life you lived prior to the event, and to help you stop avoiding the people, places and situations that you may now be avoiding out of fear. This may be somewhat uncomfortable at first, but it will help you heal quickly. There are many excellent books on understand the effects of trauma on psychological and behavioral functioning, and it may help for you to do some reading as well. In particular, I would suggest "Trauma and Recovery" by Judith Lewis Herman. By reading, and working in therapy, you can move from surviving to thriving, even in the wake of something so destructive and upsetting.

Again, I extend my sympathies to you, and stronly encourage you to seek treatment. I am very glad to decided to write to me, and I hope this information has been of some use to you. Please keep me posted and don't hesitate to ask if you have additional questions or concerns.

Sincerely,

Richard E. Schultz, Ph.D.

www.drschultz.org

www.mindset.mobi