Compiled by NCRJ Director Mark Pendergrast

Myth 1. You must identify the root cause of your unhappiness (from your past) in order to heal and be happy in the present.	Reality 1. It is unfortunately the normal human lot to be frustrated and unhappy at various points in your life. There is no magic pill to make you happy, and your attitude in the present is much more the issue than anything that happened to you in the past.

2. Checklists of "symptoms" are reliable tools to identify disorders.	2. Beware of symptom checklists, particularly if they apply to nearly everyone in the general population. At one time or another, most people experience depression, troubled relationships, ambivalence towards family members, and low self-esteem. These are not necessarily "symptoms" of anything other than the human condition.

3. You can trust any therapist who seems compassionate, warm, wise, and caring. You do not need to ask about credentials, experience, training, philosophy, treatment approach, or techniques.

3. Just because a therapist is warm and caring does not mean that he or she is competent or can help you. Training, philosophy, and treatment modalities are extremely important. Therapists who dwell unceasingly on your past are unlikely to help you cope with your present-day problems. Therapy should challenge you to change your way of thinking about and dealing with the present-day conflicts that sent you to therapy in the first place.

4. Your therapist should become an extremely important person in your life, a surrogate parent.	4. Good therapists never encourage a client to become overly dependent. The goal of therapy should be to make you a fully functioning person capable of independent judgment. Any therapist who relishes the role of authority figure or guru should be avoided. Any therapist who tells you that he or she alone cares about you and understands you is a bad therapist. Good therapists constantly guard against "countertransference" in which they bring their own egos, needs, and biases into the therapy session.
5. Therapy is an art, not a science. Therefore, it is inappropriate to ask for a treatment plan.	5. Therapists who hide behind statements about how therapy is an art-form should take up painting and stop practicing their "art" on unsuspecting minds. Patients should not be used as guinea pigs for experimental techniques. Like brain surgeons, those who treat mental problems should base their treatment on scientifically proven, safe and effective methods. Patients should seek alternate opinions from therapists with different clinical orientations.

6. Your therapist is an intuitive genius who does not need to consult with other therapists or refer you to a physician for any physical problems. Therapists have an uncanny ability to discern the truth or falsity of your statements.

6. Therapists are no better than anyone else at determining truth or falsity. Enormous confidence in one's intuition turns out to be a drawback in terms of predictive outcome. "Clinical intuition" is notoriously inaccurate. In one study, clinical psychologists were correct less than 50% of the time in assessing sexual abuse. That being the case, therapists should remain suitably humble and seek outside consultation frequently, especially if clients present with physical problems. Such clients should be referred to competent psychiatrists and physicians for a full mental and physical evaluation.

7. All "Christian therapists" and pastoral counselors can be trusted because they are sincere and in touch with the Lord.

7. Unfortunately, more atrocities have been committed in the name of God than any other cause. True Christians believe in love, family unity, and forgiveness. Too many so-called Christian counselors and ministers are promoting hatred, family destruction, and no forgiveness. In the name of the Lord, they inadvertently conduct the Devil's work. Jesus warned that false prophets would arise in His name; He was correct.

8. Group therapy is always a good way to treat survivors of sexual abuse.

8. Group therapy can indeed be helpful in some cases, but it can be extremely damaging in others, particularly when there is peer pressure to conform to group expectations. In an "incest survivor" group, for instance, retelling and embellishing horror stories can create an emotional hothouse atmosphere in which those who do not have "memories" feel inadequate or left out, and they feel pressured to "remember" similar horrors. Similarly, they are often told that if they react strongly to a story, it is proof that they were abused.

9. Self-help books are always helpful and authoritative.

9. Self-help books can indeed be very useful, but readers should never forget that many publishers are interested primarily in profits, not accuracy. In other words, just because something is written in an authoritative style and is published in a best-selling book doesn't mean that it is true. Books such as The Courage to Heal are full of misinformation and have caused untold damage. Intelligent readers of such books should employ their own critical thinking skills and should also read books expressing contrary views.

10. If you recalled traumatic events on your own, outside therapy, they are reliable because you could not have been led into them.	10. Beginning in the mid-1980s, and extending into the 1990s, the idea that personal problems may stem from long-forgotten sexual abuse became so prevalent that almost all women have considered whether they might have been incest victims without knowing it. Many seeking answers to their problems have desperately sought "memories" both in and out of therapy. Many have recovered such "memories" after reading self-help books, being "triggered" by a talk show, or talking to a friend. They are led into this false belief system just as surely as in formal therapy.

11. All good therapy takes a long time and involves delving into the past.	11. The forms of therapy that have proven to be the most effective are cognitive and behavioral therapy that do not dwell on the past, but help clients cope with current life stressors, often by reframing the way they perceive their problems. Such therapy can often be short-term.
12. Memories are always accurate.	12. All memories are reconstructions of likely scenarios in which you fill in the gaps. Thus, all memories are somewhat inaccurate, though they serve us well enough under normal conditions. Under severe social influence, however, memories can be distorted or even entirely rewritten. Memory is largely a matter of rehearsal. The more often a scene is rehearsed, the more real it becomes to you. Experiments have shown that people can be induced to remember events that did not occur.

13. If you have a tiny intuition or a feeling that you may have been sexually abused, you probably were.	13. If you have a "tiny intuition or a feeling" that you may have been sexually abused and that you have repressed the memories, you have probably been influenced by The Courage to Heal, similar books, or the popular culture that has made such notions so popular. If you were truly sexually abused, the odds are very good that you would remember it all too well.

14. Repeated trauma is so distressing that it must be repressed or dissociated. You could have been raped for years and not remember anything about it.	14. There is no scientific evidence that human beings are capable of "massive repression." On the contrary, there is much evidence that repeated traumatic events are more likely to be remembered than others. There is no way to prove that massive repression does not exist, however, just as one cannot prove that ghosts or witches do not exist; one cannot prove a negative.

15. If you cannot remember chunks of your childhood, you were probably so traumatized that you forgot them.	15. No one remembers every event from his or her childhood. Most people recall the high and low points, but not much in between. This is normal and does not necessarily indicate any trauma in childhood.

16. You must remember and relive all traumatic events from your past in order to heal.

16. Although talking through recent painful events is often helpful, dwelling on long-past traumas tends to make people worse rather than better. The idea that you must "relive" or abreact the trauma to get better is simply not true. On the contrary, therapists who tell clients, "You must get worse before you get better," are misleading them. The endless downward spiral into retrieving more and more "memories" is harmful rather than helpful.

17. You have a huge storehouse of unresolved anger. You must "get your anger out" in order to heal.

17. It is natural to want to express justifiable anger, but it is seldom healing in and of itself. When rage is encouraged as a healthy outlet, it tends to feed on itself and create more rage rather than less. People need to learn to express their differences in an appropriate and helpful manner. Often, it is best to avoid confrontations until anger has subsided and a more rational discussion can ensue.

18. Confrontation is necessary for healing.	18. Confrontation should only be undertaken with the idea of achieving a better understanding and relationship. In other words, mediation in which all parties participate is preferable to judgmental confrontation. Confronting someone as a "hit-and-run" tactic, without allowing any dialogue, is cowardly and unfair -- certainly not "courageous."

19. If you were a victim of incest, you must completely detach from your family in order to heal. You must detach from anyone who does not completely support you or who questions your memories.

19. Even in cases of real, always-remembered incest, it is doubtful that complete detachment from the biological family is ultimately helpful. If the incest is on-going, temporary separation is clearly indicated. However, therapy should involve the entire family, including the perpetrator, in order to promote change and healing. True family therapy has proved to be helpful in many cases. Unfortunately, some therapists encourage separation and isolation from the family without ever meeting other family members. There is an inherent danger in isolating already disturbed and vulnerable people from their family and friends.

20. Multiple personality disorder is a common response to childhood trauma and is often only diagnosed during adult psychotherapy.	20. Multiple personality disorder (MPD, now renamed Dissociative Identity Disorder, DID) is a fad diagnosis of the last decade. If MPD exists naturally at all (which is doubtful), it is exceedingly rare. It appears that people only come to believe they harbor internal "alters" after entering therapy or reading a book or seeing a movie.

21. Your eating disorder most probably stems from repressed memories of sexual abuse.	21. Careful studies have shown that there is no significant correlation between eating disorders and a history of sexual abuse. The percentage of those with eating disorders who were sexually abused is about the same as in the normal population.

22. Your panic attacks are probably flashbacks to repressed memories.

22. About 35% of the American public have panic attacks at some time in their lives. Panic attacks are extremely frightening. If you have one, you may fear that you are having a heart attack. You may feel dizzy, experience a choking sensation, and feel disconnected from reality. Cognitive and behavioral therapy approaches can quickly help you with panic attacks, which stem from current life stress, not from past trauma. Panic attacks are neither life-threatening nor dangerous. They are treatable.

23. Hypnosis is a good and accurate method of recovering memories from your subconscious.

23. Hypnosis is defined as being a state of "enhanced suggestibility." Hypnosis may be useful for suggesting someone into a desired frame of mine; i.e., some people have used it to stop smoking. But hypnosis should never be used to retrieve memories. Research indicates that memories retrieved under hypnosis (or guided imagery or sodium Amytal) are likely to be confabulations -- a mixture of truth and fantasy -- based on the expectations of the hypnotist and subject.

24.Therapists must treat your "narrative truth" without consideration or investigation of historical truth. Therapists are not detectives.

24. It is indeed important for therapists to listen to clients and to distinguish narrative from historical truth -- but that does not mean that what actually happened is unimportant. Indeed, if clients believe that they have recalled previously "repressed" memories of sexual abuse, it is very important to the client whether these events actually took place. By validating these memories, the therapist is already acting as a "detective." It is the therapist's obligation to explain that such memories are questionable at best and must be corroborated by firm external evidence before they are taken seriously.

25. Therapists are experts at interpreting (a) dreams, (b) writings, (c) artwork, (d) bodily pains.

25. No one knows what dreams really mean, but true experts on dreams know that they reflect daily concerns. Therefore, it is not surprising that someone obsessed with an issue might dream about it. Dreams should never be taken literally. Similarly, just because someone concerned with an issue writes a story about it or draws a picture does not mean that the story or artwork reflects reality. Intense self-examination often leads to vague bodily pains. Therapists who believe that such pains are "evidence" of so-called "body memories" are practicing pseudoscience.

26. If you first remember one perpetrator, you probably were abused by multiple perpetrators and will remember them in time.	26. Illusory memories of sexual abuse frequently progress from one perpetrator to multiple perpetrators, from limited incidents to rapes throughout childhood, from vague intuitions to detailed, horrifying scenarios. True memories of long-term sexual abuse have always been remembered, even if the memories have been "parked" away from day-to-day attention.

27. There is a network of satanic ritual abuse cults around the world involving many "upstanding" citizens. These cults are usually intergenerational.

27. There is absolutely no evidence that satanic ritual abuse cults exist at all, at least as defined in popular culture. In other words, there are no cults in which babies are bred, sacrificed, and eaten. Isolated psychopaths, such as Charles Manson or the drug/cult in Matamaros, Mexico, may commit hideous atrocities, but they are not organized ritual abuse cults. Rebellious teenagers may draw pentagrams and murder stray cats, but they too are simply imitating popular cultural myths.

28. One-half of all women are likely to be sexually abused before the age of eighteen.

28. Statistics about sexual abuse vary, depending on the study methods and the definition of sexual abuse. Most women experience some form of unwanted sexual approach in their teenage years, which is unfortunate, but should not necessarily be considered sexual abuse. The incidence of sexual intercourse between fathers and daughters appears to be less than 1% in the general population, according to several studies. Incest is indeed a terrible problem, but it is far from the inflated figures often bandied about.

29. Trauma in your past, particularly sexual abuse, is so harmful that you will never fully recover from it.	29. Humans are resilient. There are thousands of examples of people who succeed in spite of their handicaps. Although severe trauma is terrible and does indeed leave life-long scars, it need not be the sole focus of your life.

30. Therapists do not need to inform patients of the potential hazards of a particular form of treatment or technique.	30. All clients seeking help from a medical or mental health professional should give informed consent before accepting treatments. Any therapist who does not inform clients of potential hazards is committing malpractice.