A very warm welcome to this edition of the Professional Hypnotherapists Podcast. Dr. Pradeep Chadha, the drugless psychiatrist has been in practice in Ireland since the early nineties . In this podcast you will hear Dr. Chadha reveal the real truth about therapy and therapies. We gain an insight into his method of practice revealing an holistic and person centred intervention. We hear about what influences the therapeutic outcome and he discusses the politics at play in the therapy world. We talk about Trauma, Stress and Depression. Would you like to know the real truth about Diabetes? Listen now and learn from probably one of the most experienced and sought-after mental health professional experts, Dr. Pradeep Kumar Chadha, the Drugless Psychiatrist.
https://www.drpkchadha.com
Telephone: +353874104123
Hi there, thanks for listening and please like this podcast where you listen to your podcasts.
The European Association of Professional Hypnotherapists is a group of like-minded hypnotherapists who are accredited professionals in their field. Many of our therapists have many many years of experience behind them which means you are probably in the best possible hands, available to you.
Why not pop on over to eaph.ie and choose the hypnotherapist that suits you. Many provide online hypnotherapy. eaph.ie
We welcome feedback on your listening experience at eaph.ie
A very warm welcome to this edition of the Professional Hypnotherapists Podcast. Dr. Pradeep Chadha, the drugless psychiatrist has been in practice in Ireland since the early nineties . In this podcast you will hear Dr. Chadha reveal the real truth about therapy and therapies. We gain an insight into his method of practice revealing an holistic and person centred intervention. We hear about what influences the therapeutic outcome and he discusses the politics at play in the therapy world. We talk about Trauma, Stress and Depression. Would you like to know the real truth about Diabetes? Listen now and learn from probably one of the most experienced and sought-after mental health professional experts, Dr. Pradeep Kumar Chadha, the Drugless Psychiatrist.
https://www.drpkchadha.com
Telephone: +353874104123
Hi there, thanks for listening and please like this podcast where you listen to your podcasts.
The European Association of Professional Hypnotherapists is a group of like-minded hypnotherapists who are accredited professionals in their field. Many of our therapists have many many years of experience behind them which means you are probably in the best possible hands, available to you.
Why not pop on over to eaph.ie and choose the hypnotherapist that suits you. Many provide online hypnotherapy. eaph.ie
We welcome feedback on your listening experience at eaph.ie
Aidan Noone
00:06 - 00:06
0013.
Aidan Noone
00:04 - 00:21
Dr. Pradeep Chadha - The Drugless Psychiatrist. Welcome to the Professional Hypnotherapists podcast, a production of the European Association of Professional Hypnotherapists, that's www.eaph.ie
Aidan Noone
00:36 - 01:35
A very warm welcome to you in this edition of the professional hypnotherapist's podcast. I'm your host Aidan Noone. Dr. Pradeep Chadha, the drugless Psychiatrist has been in practice in Ireland since the early 1990's. In this podcast, you will hear Dr. Pradeep Chadha reveal the real truth about therapy/therapies. We gain an insight into his method of practice, revealing a holistic and person centered intervention. We hear about what influences the therapeutic outcome, and he discusses the politics he plays in the therapy world. We talk about trauma, stress and depression. Would you like to know the real truth about diabetes? Well, listen now and learn from probably one of the most experienced and sought after mental health professional experts: Dr. Pradeep the Drugless Psychiatrist.
Aidan Noone
01:34 - 01:39
Dr. Pradeep Chadha welcome to the Professional Hypnotherapist's podcast.
Dr. Pradeep Chadha
01:41 - 01:43
Thank you Aidan.
Aidan Noone
01:44 - 01:56
You described the services that you provide as a drugless psychiatry, or, in modern day terms, integrative psycho-psychiatry. Perhaps you could expand on that first please.
Dr. Pradeep Chadha
01:59 - 03:21
Yes, it may sound like a paradox, but, drugless psychiatry is without drugs. Integrative psychiatry is integrating all the knowledge that we have. That knowledge also includes our knowledge of medicines. So psychiatric drugs are psychotropic drugs. So psychotropic drugs, herbs, nutritional supplements, hypnosis, hypnotherapy, and everything that we can use basically. In a more elaborate expanded format of practice I'm also involved with a group in which we make use of allowed services, including massage, acupuncture, gym, and sound therapy and we have combined it into a very powerful combination. In fact, these kind of services are provided in Switzerland, in some of the most expensive addiction clinics in the world. So I use all of it, in whatever manner I can.
Aidan Noone
03:22 - 03:46
So it's very much a holistic approach. And in terms of what the client brings to therapy Dr. Chadha, to what extent does what the client bring to therapy have, on the effect of the outcome of therapy? What major part does it play? Does it play a major part in therapy? If I'm making sense in what I'm saying.
Dr. Pradeep Chadha
03:46 - 05:06
You are making perfect sense. It is a very important question that you ask. There is a lot of controversy about what the therapist is bringing in, and what the patient brings in. One of the classical things about this particular kind of knowledge with regard to therapy is missing; and that is about what the client brings. I have an old research paper from a journal that used to be published many years ago. I think it is no longer being published. It was called "The Therapist". It was published in the UK. And I have this article cutting somewhere in my archives. It states that according to one report about 40% of the impact of therapy is what the client brings to the table. So it is just literally half. if you look at it, 50% is half, 40% is less than half. So the major part of the contribution of the impact of therapy is what the client brings. 30% is what the therapist brings as his or her personality. So the relationship between the client and the therapist is 70%, the rest of the 30% are the techniques and all that.
Dr. Pradeep Chadha
05:30 - 06:24
The interesting thing is that when things go wrong, you read a lot about what the therapist did wrong in literature or in a news item, or what went wrong in therapy and blame the therapist for whatever had happened. You very rarely hear of what the client did or what the client has been doing. We are living in a consumer society. So whoever pays has the upper hand. So the client pays and the therapist is always at a disadvantage because no one asked the therapist what the issues could have been. If things go wrong, it is the therapist or the therapy that is blamed whereas literally half of the impact of any therapy or therapeutic process is the responsibility of the client.
Aidan Noone
06:26 - 06:43
And also through your work and experience Dr. Chadha, you are enabled to innovate, discover, and develop some of the simplest and most powerful techniques that are evidence-based. And how important is evidence-based therapy?
Dr. Pradeep Chadha
06:44 - 07:06
Yes, evidence based is important, but to be honest, I do not understand what evidence based means. Michael Curry (now deceased) was a very good friend of mine. He was a very prominent psychiatrist. And as he used to say: if one pig can fly, then all pigs can fly.
Dr. Pradeep Chadha
07:09 - 08:55
So basically speaking, what is possible to do with one client is possible to do with the other clients. As a result, you can have very powerful, yet very simple techniques. In my view and experience, and because I've worked with probably thousands of clients, I have found that when you are working with human physiology, how the body works, once you know how the body works, the science behind it, the physiology behind it, any therapist can become an innovator because; the body follows certain principles. And once you know how those principles operate, and what they are, you can modulate them and change them, change the implication, according to your usage. And that's exactly what I've been doing. So the things that I do are very simple. For example, there's a exercise which I call the hand pressing exercise. One of my students therapists has gone online and taught the hand pressing exercise. He tells me, that the feedback he has learned from hundreds of clients of his, and even people who have seen that exercise online, everywhere in the world, have given him feedback, which is quite astounding. And it's a very simple exercise. So you can do wonders with very, very simple things, provided you know how to do that.
Aidan Noone
08:56 - 09:12
So what I'm hearing from your Dr. Chadha, is that it really doesn't have to be that difficult or complicated. For example, you place great emphasis on guided imagery and focused attention. Perhaps you'd speak more on that for us.
Dr. Pradeep Chadha
09:15 - 10:13
True focused attention is the definition of hypnosis according to Milton Erickson, which is very interesting. One of the most interesting things that I have learned of while working in psychiatry and done psychotherapy is the politics that runs in all professions, including mental health and including psychotherapies. I do not know how many of your audience is adhering to one of the I would call it accredited therapies. But what I have noticed over the years is that so-called accredited therapies like CBT, rational emotive therapy, psychoanalysis, humanistic type they have their own politics, and they do not entertain or let the word hypnosis slip into it.
Dr. Pradeep Chadha
10:16 - 11:48
They literally hate in my view as I've seen it and maybe I am wrong. They literally hate the word hypnosis when it is put into place. Whereas some of the most powerful therapy techniques are hypnotherapy techniques, even in behavioral therapy and CBT. An exposure technique is a very typical hypnotherapy technique. No one uses the word hypnosis in it. Exposure therapy gets a lot of kudos for what it is. And everyone claps with CBT. As far as hypnosis is concerned, 'hypnosis oh what is hypnosis"? And this is the norm everywhere. So there's politics everywhere. And that's the reason why you and many other people would ask a question, "why is it that what I do is not very well known?". I hate these kinds of politics. I have had the occasion and the opportunity to tell the world what can be done or what is possible to be done. But believe me, the kind of response I got as a result of that was not very pleasurable or not very happy. And some people did not like what I was doing or what I was saying, because I was making things real.
Aidan Noone
11:49 - 12:22
I suppose it is a case of protecting the institution at all costs. As we are in the midst of a COVID 19 pandemic and we are now dealing with the Omnicron variant of it, to what extent does a virus, or an illness, or sickness, or stress, contribute or does it have an effect on our immune system?
Dr. Pradeep Chadha
12:27 - 13:46
It is a very interesting question you ask Aidan. When we talk about the immune system it is not only relevant from our physical health perspective.The Immune system is also relevant from our mental health perspective. Over the last one and a half decades a lot of talk has started to come up with regard to how inflammatory processes can cause for example, depression. Obviously when inflammatory processes are going on in the body, the body is producing inflammatory chemicals in the body. And depression has been now, been touted as one of the phenomenon that happens when the body goes through oxidative stress. But the same principle also applies to loading or weakening of the immune system because Inflammatory processes also weaken the immune system that cause a physical body; a human being to be more prone to have physical illnesses.
Dr. Pradeep Chadha
13:48 - 14:54
So you now have a situation in which science is coming to a point where it is starting to acknowledge that the oxygen of stresses or a hit to the immune system not only causes physical problems, but also causes mental problems. I was reading a paper the other day with regard to Alzheimer's. Even Alzheimer's is an organic condition, in which brain damage is caused in the brain , it is now starting to be acknowledged as an inflammatory process. So the body's inflammation causes the production of these elements. If I may use the words very simply, not going too scientifically, Alzheimer's disease and other organic disorders and other dementia are now known to be caused by inflammatory processes. So you have inflammatory processes causing a loading of the immune system causing mental illness and causing physical illness.
Dr. Pradeep Chadha
14:55 - 15:30
So is it then a surprise that a small quantity of virus creates havoc in the world? Because people who were highly stressed out had the oxidative stress going on in the body, inflammatory processes going on the body, with weakening of the immune system having being caught up with this particular virus and those who didn't have the virus,
Dr. Pradeep Chadha
15:30 - 15:52
because they were confined into close spaces, they had difficulty coping with those closed spaces. And because of the tension and the inflammatory processes in the body, well that's one way to look at it, they started to have conditions which are, which we call, mental conditions.
Dr. Pradeep Chadha
15:52 - 15:30
I have another explanation for why it happens other than the oxidative stress for that. It is important to understand how the body absorbs trauma. How the body absorbs stress. There are two very popular books currently out in the market. One written by Gabor Mate "When the Body Says No". The other one is by a Psychiatrist called Basel Van Der Kolk " The Body Keeps the Score". So these two books are saying the same thing. They are talking about the immune system being compromised by the body; holding on to a lot of stress and that stress is being absorbed by the body. As long as the stress is absorbed by the body, the body continues to be in a high state of tension with a lowered immune system and here you are inviting trouble.
15:30 - 17:13
,
Aidan Noone
17:16 - 17:23
To what extent does the auto-immune condition play/or have a role in all of this?
Dr. Pradeep Chadha
17:28 - 17:49
An auto-immune condition happens firstly, because the immune system gets a beating, the immune system is hit hard. It is also related to weight by the way. When people gain weight and when they are not looking after themselves they gain weight and the body
Dr. Pradeep Chadha
17:49 - 18:60
tends to become overwhelmed with fatty tissue. So when it has more fatty tissue than it needs, then those fat fatty tissues they start to behave like a hormonal system of it's own and that hormonal system starts to produce inflammatory chemicals and those inflammatory chemicals they tend to be responsible for the auto immune response. The body starts to fight against its own tissue and you have problems. But all the research and all the understanding that I've had and the reading that I've done and practically seen, the best way to live by in my view, needs to incorporate some form of physical exercise and some form of meditation, forever, every day.
Aidan Noone
19:02 - 19:07
That sounds a very healthy prescription. Is there anything else that we ideally need to be doing?
Dr.Pradeep Chadha
19:08 - 20:17
The first thing is you need to sleep well. In some quarters or on the internet, I read that a person should not be sleeping too much, or they should be sleeping less than certain hours a day. At the end of the day, each person's sleep cycle is their own. Some people do well with six hours. Some people can do very well with seven. And most of the people do very well with eight hours. Sleep is half the healing. If you are not sleeping well, you are causing a lot of problems to your body and your mind. You are actually increasing body stress. You are lowering down your immune system. I don't have the statistics with me, but I read a few years ago that almost all the accidents or a very high percentage of road traffic accidents in Ireland happen because people have not slept well and they're sleeping on the wheel.
Aidan Noone
20:18 - 20:21
I actually recall reading about that statistic.
Dr. Pradeep Chadha
20:22 - 20:25
Thank you.
Dr. Pradeep Chadha
20:25 - 21:57
So sleep is one. Eating good food is another. Eating good food. Even if we do not take into concentration the climate change and all that. Even despite that, good food, a good diet usually incorporates a lot of fruits and vegetables and meat is not necessarily an integral part of a good diet. Now that might sound controversial. I was just watching a program only yesterday on television on an Indian channel and there was this Bollywood hunk, very well-built young man who was a very well-known actor. The anchor asked him the question, "what is his diet?" And he says, "I'm a total total vegetarian". And if you see his body, he is very well-built. He is one example. But for those people who say that proteins are only to be found in meat, I think, I think they need to reconsider and revisit the whole protein issue because in India, literally half of the population doesn't eat meat.
Aidan Noone
21:59 - 22:07
What's the fallout as a result of someone who may have had COVID and recovered in terms of their mental health?
Dr. Pradeep Chadha
22:08 - 23:47
I have read that there is a lot of mental issues that tend to come up when people suffer with COVID. It's not only COVID that does that in actual fact. Any kind of physical illness will cause depression or anxiety. It is very commonly known in medical circles that a person with cancer can have anxiety and depression, and it is widespread. People with diabetes will have depression. So it's not exclusive to COVID, but when you are physically ill, your whole body's energy is geared towards healing you physically. And obviously that drains the nervous system. And I wouldn't say it causes depression. Depression happens only in my view when people tend to have a lot of locked up dramatic emotional issues that they can't get rid of. Otherwise the human body is quite capable to quickly handle any emotion and come out of it fast. But if it lingers on, well, then the person had, and they usually have issues that they have never addressed or they trivialize, or they say, "well, it happened, but it was not important." Or "I have dealt with it", but the body hasn't; and here is the importance of the books that I stated earlier, "The Body Keeps the Score" by author Bassel Van Der Klok.
Aidan Noone
23:49 - 24:02
You are the author of two books. The first 'The Stress Barrier'. And the second one 'The Road to a Happy Life'. What motivated you to write 'The Stress Barrier'?
Dr.Pradeep Chadha
24:04 - 25:47
Well, the first one was basically written at a time when I was very excited about what I was learning about the human body and mind. And what I had learned at that time about emotional health, I say to all my clients, that your emotional health determines your health overall. If you are emotionally healthy, you will be physically and mentally healthy. And what does emotional health mean? You are able to deal with day-to-day life stresses and strains and come out of it quickly without leaving any or holding any emotional baggage behind. And that simply means if there are times when you need to grieve, you grieve, you come out of it quickly. When there are times when you feel angry, you feel angry, you express it in whatever manner you do and you come out of it. If you're feeling happy about something, you're not over the moon, all right, but you feel happy and you can also process it and come out of it quickly if and when the need is there. So there is a sort of an emotional flexibility there. All psychiatric conditions, functional psychiatric conditions, if I may call them, in which people are suffering a lot, happened because of the emotional inflexibility. So people become emotionally stuck on something. It could be the loss of a near and dear one. It could be anger or trauma regarding anything. Anything can be major and anything can be minor.
Aidan Noone
25:49 - 26:43
It's very interesting that some people who are suffering with trauma and depression or anxiety or whatever you name it, don't want to give up on what they're holding onto.That compounds their suffering. So all - all emotional healing is about letting go. And that is what emotional health is all about. So that was when I wrote the first book.The idea of writing the first book was to challenge people to think and find answers for themselves about what I had written in the book, which was about emotions. The fascinating thing was I learned a lesson that people don't want to ask questions themselves, or explore things themselves. They wanted ready-made answers in the books. My book did not give any ready-made answer them. I'm sorry about it,
Aidan Noone
26:44 - 26:47
Talk to us now about your second book, 'The Road to a Happy Life'.
Dr. Pradeep Chadha
26:47 - 27:32
That is a very interesting book again. I've actually given all the techniques that I use more or less in that book or what I've used successfully over the years. Again, it was an experimental book. I wanted to see how people would respond. And interesting for me, It just went over the head of the people, I don't know for what reason, but that was the reason I wrote the book because it has almost all the techniques I've used or I'm using. It's out of print. I don't know whether there are copies available.
Aidan Noone
27:33 - 27:39
Tell us what your approach is to a client when they present to you with trauma.
Dr. Pradeep Chadha
27:39 - 29:08
Trauma is a very interesting concept in human life because everyone goes through traumatic experiences. Some people go through major traumas. Some people go through very minor traumas, but everyone experiences trauma. And in my view the definition of trauma is that it happens suddenly. It's not expected. It happens suddenly. It is unpleasant. And the person wants to either do away with it, avoid it, or run away from it. So you feel angry or you feel fear. And the other thing that happens is that in almost all the cases in which there is trauma involved or trauma experience, the person holds on to the emotional impact of it. The person doesn't let go of the emotional impact. And that is what causes the trauma, having a damaging impact in the long run.
Aidan Noone
29:09 - 29:12
What do you say to a client who says, "well, I'm not holding onto anything"?
Dr. Pradeep Chadha
29:12 - 30:14
I simply ask them to do one simple exercise. I ask them to close their eyes and remember that particular trauma that they are talking about; that they think or feel is no longer relevant and run through the trauma in their own mind. And then I ask them to open their eyes and I ask them about their feelings. Most of the time they have feelings which are very strong, which are either of fear or anger. And if the emotions of fear and anger are still carried by them in their body a long time after that trauma has ended, well, then the trauma may have ended time-wise, but in their body, the trauma is still alive. And that's a classical example. That trauma is still affecting them.
Dr. Pradeep Chadha
30:16 - 31:31
Now, why does that happen? It happens because, as we read about/study hypnosis, there is an an unconscious mind. The unconscious mind was supposed to be a Freudian term at one stage. But now with neuroscience, as we know it, there is a part of the brain that is called the limbic system, which is actually the seat of the unconscious (if you may call it that) and this unconscious has the ability, as Freud would have said, to defend or to make the organism survive. Now, we also need to understand that the cognitive mind, the reasonable logical mind, which neuroscientists say is encased in our prefrontal lobe is also there actively trying to defend the organism. So you have this trauma and the unconscious mind gets aroused. Then the conscious mind says, "be quiet, shut up and don't respond. Don't react".
Dr. Pradeep Chadha
31:31 - 32:17
So you now have a situation in which one part of the nervous system is saying, "I don't want to see it". And the other part of the system is saying, "well, it's fearful, I don't like it, but it's fearful. And you start to have a battle going on within the body between the so-called unconscious and the conscious, and what happens as a result is the body gets aroused. The whole body starts to prepare itself for fight or flight. So the blood pressure goes up, cholesterol levels go up, blood glucose becomes high and so on and so forth.
Dr. Pradeep Chadha
32:19 - 34:10
The problem with trauma is if it is short-lived and it can be processed quickly, that's fine. But if this battle between the cognitive and the unconscious mind carries on you know have a situation in which your blood glucose and your blood cholesterol are going to be raised perpetually. You now have a health problem. When I was reading in medical school, in Davidson's book of medicine, there was a small sentence which stated that diabetes is triggered by stress. At that time, a lot of emphasis or rather a hundred percent of emphasis was on a family history of diabetes. It's only very very recently that the doctors have awakened to the fact that trauma triggers the diabetes. You may have a family history of diabetes, but having a family history of diabetes is not a guarantee that you are going to have diabetes. It is the trauma that goes on in your life or something that had happened in your life that has triggered the diabetes. And very recently I've heard a patient of mine say that his doctor, his diabetologist has said to him, "you can come off these drugs If you look after yourself properly". I was pleasantly surprised and quite pleased with what was being said to him. Because until a few years ago, people were being told that diabetes could never be cured without medication. And once you are on these tablets, well you take them for the rest of your life and there is no way out of it.
Aidan Noone
34:11 - 34:14
Thanks for that Dr. Chadha,. Please talk to us now about depression.
Dr. Pradeep Chadha
34:14 - 35:35
I will speak in general terms. There are so many new, different types of medication that are being discovered every day, which is an interesting phenomenon and astounding as well. But at the end of the day, as hypnotherapists and therapists in general, people do know that our body has its own pharmacy. There's actually a book on the body's pharmacy. And to be very honest with you, the body has its own pharmacy, but because no one gives money for this pharmacy, no one charges money for this pharmacy, no one makes money out of it, very few people in the medical system are prepared to talk about it or are prepared to promote it. In one of the things that I have found in medical practice over the years is that almost all the medical doctors who have tried to look at things slightly differently have either been hounded out of the profession or have been marked as someone who were insane or who went out of their mind.
Dr. Pradeep Chadha
35:35 - 36:59
And this has not happened with one. Each one, every doctor that I've come across that I've heard of, that I've known of, who has tried to explain that there are the body's abilities to do things as well, which are, if not better, at least at par with how medication works. So antidepressants work on the principle that they all no matter even if there are newer ones that will be found, they are all blocking your nervous system. They are all blocking your emotional expression. They numb you emotionally. That's what they do. So when a person comes off medication after six months or a year, many times there is at a rebound effect and the person becomes depressed again. So they have to be given an antidepressant again. Now that happens because the trauma that is involved underlying the depression, or the anger, or the fear, that is there, that needs to be expressed and dissipated and processed, just stays in the body and the medication simply numbs that impact.
Dr. Pradeep Chadha
36:59 - 37:09
So the moment you take the medication out of the equation, it happens again. And that's how anti-depressants work. And all of them work like that.
Dr. Pradeep Chadha
37:09 - 38:26
Irrespective of whether they are modern, whether they are ketamine or roxanalon or whatever new drugs that have come or the more that will be coming out, it does not matter. All of them suppress and numb emotions and all hypnosis and hypnotherapy processes, no matter what they involve, they all bring up that trauma that the depression is a result of. I remember reading, Dr. Gibson's book. There is also an old book that I have on hypnosis by Wrachsman and it is very categorically stated in that book that you don't do hypnosis with people with depression and with psychosis. Well, to be honest with you, Aidan, I do it on a daily basis because times have changed. We have learned so much and yes, if done properly, hypnosis is in my view, is the most powerful tool, whether you call it placebo effect or whatever, that can be used to heal human mind and human body.
Aidan Noone
38:26 - 38:32
Thank you, Dr. Chadha. What is it about hypnosis that makes it so special? What is that secret elixir?
Dr. Pradeep Chadha
38:33 - 39:47
The elixir of hypnosis is that the moment you close your eyes, you actually go as meditators would say, you go into your inner self. So the moment you close your eyes, you actually open doors to your inside. And for people who are very, very busy, in their day-to-day material life, when they close their eyes, what runs in their mind at that time are all the thoughts about the present and the future and the work that they have to do today and tomorrow and the day after, and a week later ,and down the month. And that's what runs in their mind because that is what their inner mind is all about. So the elixir is the inner mind. The moment your inner mind becomes clean; thought free, trauma free, fear free, anger free, your immune system kicks in. You can go through any kind of pandemics and epidemics. The likelihood of you having infections will actually be quite low because your immune system is strong. That's the elixir of hypnosis.
Aidan Noone
39:47 - 39:56
Dr. Chadha, what is your advice to any Hypnotherapists out there who may have a client present to them, who is on medication?
Dr. Pradeep Chadha
39:56 - 41:48
It entirely depends on their experience of hypnosis, of psychiatric medication and their own training and qualification. I would suggest that for those who are not familiar with psychiatric drugs, that you don't damper or try to tamper the drugs or advise people to come off them, you can still work with people on medication, but without changing any medication or asking them to reduce their medication or not take their medication, don't do that. Let them continue to be on medication. You can still work with them with hypnosis. But be careful, hypnosis relaxes people most of the time, because it acts on the parasympathetic system. And when people are on medication, they are highly stressed out. Their sympathetic tone, their sympathetic response is very strong. And that sympathetic tone is, I'm talking technical here for those people who are in medical field, they would know what I'm talking about. But because all medications affect the sympathetic system and all hypnosis affects the parasympathetic or the relax system, you have to be very careful that when you start to relax those people, the trauma can be uprooted. It can come up. So you have to be very careful about it. And if you do not feel safe or comfortable working with people who are on medication, don't do it, refer them to someone who is experienced and who would be willing to work with them that way.
Aidan Noone
41:50 - 42:21
That's excellent advice, Dr. Chadha. Now, I do know for a fact that all EAPH members would always consult with a client's doctor when necessary, and would never under any circumstances tell a client to change their medication or come off medication. But your advice is very well given. Thank you. Dr. Chadha, perhaps you will talk to us now about working online with clients. I'm presuming that you yourself are working online?
Dr. Pradeep Chadha
42:21 - 43:42
90% of my work is online currently. People ask me if the exercises I do or the therapies I do are as effective as when I see them face-to-face or work with them online. There is no difference. The reason for that is whether you are working with me face to face, or whether you're working with me online, thousands of miles away, your body's physiology is still going to work the same way, whether you are here or there. Once we know how the body works and how we are able to guide things, it is effective. I've had clients in the United States, I've had clients in Switzerland, in Sweden, in Norway, up to Australia, and all of them have done well. Some of them I've never met. Some of them were on medication. Now they are medication free. So as far as my work is concerned, in my way of online therapy is concerned, there is no problem. It is equally effective.
Aidan Noone
43:42 - 43:46
What, in your opinion, are there any disadvantages to working with clients online?
Dr. Pradeep Chadha
43:48 - 44:50
The disadvantage that I would have is that I can't see the expression on the person's face when they are doing therapy, I cant' see the changes happening in them. That's the disadvantage, but I can see them as such on the screen. That's the only disadvantage I have, but again, the other disadvantage can be that you may not know how the therapy session ended and you might be confused about it, not clear about it. It's always good to do a follow-up check by just sending a text message. If everything is fine, though I've never felt the need to do that, but that is something that can be done if you are in doubt about anything, as far as the online sessions are concerned. But I also find that some therapists have difficulty. They are not comfortable doing online therapy sessions.
Aidan Noone
44:51 - 44:54
What if the client has a major abreaction?
Dr. Pradeep Chadha
44:54 - 45:22
Look if the major abreaction has to happen afterwards it can also happen when you are doing face-to-face therapy anyway. So the chances of having an adverse reaction, after the online session is equal, but honestly speaking it, I've never had that experience. So it might it may be an unfounded fear. I've never seen any abreactions happening like that.
Aidan Noone
45:22 - 45:37
Thank you for that. Dr. Chadha, perhaps, an idea might be to arrange with the client, to get the name or address of somebody who is close to them and you could contact them just to see that they're okay?
Dr. Pradeep Chadha
45:38 - 45:43
Yes. That's it. That would be a very good way to look at it and do things.
Aidan Noone
45:44 - 45:50
Thank you for that, Dr. Chadha. That was wonderful. How might somebody contact you should they want to contact you?
Dr. Pradeep Chadha
45:51 - 46:58
I use an office these days in Clarehall. I have given up my own proper office because there was no need. COVID took away my office because all my clients had come online. And I had not used my office for 10 months, so I gave it up. But now I'm using an office in Clarehall in Dublin, one or two days a month. I have a website and it's my initials www.drpkchadha.com. And my contact email is on that website. People can also text me, on the phone, on SMS. My number is (Irish code) 00 3 5 3 8 7 4 1 0 4 1 2 3. They can text me or email me and will I respond as quickly as I can.
Aidan Noone
46:59 - 47:05
That was Dr. Pradeep Kumar Chadha, the Drugless Psychiatrist. Thank you, Dr. Chadha.
Dr. Pradeep Chadha
47:06 - 47:07
Thank you Aidan, it was a pleasure again.
Aidan Noone
47:12 - 47:26
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