Why Marisa Peer Scares Me
A friend mentioned her, and then, by a strange confluence of events I heard about her through a group I signed up to.
She is a celebrity therapist and therapist of celebrity, a hypnotherapist and creator of online products and something called RTT - rapid transformational therapy.
Rapid being the operative and lucrative word.
Curious, I googled and found she was everywhere.
World-renowned and seemingly ubiquitous with her own (no-doubt expensive) training package for aspiring therapists, she claims to be able to cure everything from acne to overeating to depression and on to the odd existential crisis.
I couldn't find even one sceptic or nay-sayer.
But is that because her method and techniques are perfect and unimpeachable, or is it more due to exacting diligence on behalf of her army of digital marketers?
Is there a short cut to everything that we want in our lives?
Losing weight, stopping smoking, perhaps these things can be resolved through a course of hypnosis (although I have my doubts).
But Marisa Peer claims to have the answers to resolving childhood trauma, to financial success and to attracting our perfect mate - and our perfect life.
Its dangerous.
I understand that we all wish that a set of videos or a single consultation could help us resolve all the things we don't like about our lives and ourselves.
I also wish it was true.
But unfortunately, there are no quick fixes, overnight successes, wealth creation secrets or universal cures.
Perhaps Marisa Peer would say that I am just trying to defend a therapy that takes longer because that is how I make money. Although I might counter by saying that she makes far more money than I ever could and charges people exorbitant rates, I feel that there is something else here that needs exploring.
How does the length of therapy influence its outcome?
Why does it take so long?
Therapy is above all a relationship.
A very particular relationship in which the person seeking therapy learns about themselves through the prism of the therapeutic relationship. You talk about what has been going on, explore your responses and feelings and then you act on the learnings you have made.
Do you want to react as you have reacted in the past or find a new way of being in the world?
Psychotherapy should give you the choice and allow you to try on these different ways of approaching your life. It does not rely on a whizz-bang miraculous insight that having heard once will change you forever.
Getting beyond our defences and into the parts of us that we don't understand, don't know and may not even want to acknowledge is tricky work.
It takes trust - and that takes time.
Most of us have defences, and some of them are tough, prickly and as we often find out, unyielding - except through the hard yards of long-term psychotherapy.
That is why I think that Peer and her followers are dangerous.
They feed into our need to believe in instant gratification and quick fixes and can prevent us from starting the hard work of creating lasting change.