Healing A Broken Mental Health System: Todd Goodwin Of Goodwin Hypnosis On 5 Things That Can Be Done To Fix Our Broken Mental Health System
An Interview With Stephanie Greer
When people seek my help, their chief complaint is almost always a symptom of an underlying cause that they may not be aware of. I acknowledge their symptoms but focus my attention on resolving the root issue that causes them. This usually involves neutralizing the emotional charge from distressing memories, changing problem-causing beliefs to ones that empower them, and reconditioning their nervous system to become calm first. Doing this usually changes their emotional and behavioral responses rather quickly, and it’s typically long-lasting. Using the mental garden analogy, my method pulls the entire weed out by the roots. If the system at large were to adopt this sensible paradigm, it would make a huge difference.
The current state of the mental health system is a conversation that echoes in the halls of policy-making, the corners of social advocacy, and within the private struggles of individuals and families. As we continue to witness an unprecedented need for robust mental health support, the shortcomings of the existing system become more glaring. It is within this backdrop that we seek the insight of those who are at the forefront of behavioral health. In this interview series, we are talking to behavioral health leaders, policymakers, mental health practitioners, advocates, and reformers to share their perspectives on healing our broken mental health system. As a part of this interview series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Todd Goodwin.
Since 2007, Todd Goodwin has empowered thousands of clients to overcome their emotional and behavioral challenges. Today, Goodwin Hypnosis helps people throughout the world via Zoom to resolve trauma and its negative effects. Todd has degrees in both behavioral science and nutrition and is one of only a handful of hypnotists to earn the title of Board Certified Fellow from the National Guild of Hypnotists. He is the author of Break the Chains of Smoking: How to Escape the Mental and Emotional Prison That Keeps You Addicted.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we start, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your background and your childhood backstory?
You’re welcome! And thank you for the opportunity to discuss this issue with you. I grew up in Philly and had a somewhat normal childhood. I went to Washington University in St. Louis, where I had a powerful personal awakening during my junior year. From the start of the year, I got sick several times, so my grades suffered. My diet was bad, and my social life was not much better. I was experiencing persistent anxiety and depression, I had low self-worth, and I had gained about 30 pounds. I even thought about suicide. Fortunately, through the help of some wise friends, inspiring books, and a lot of self-help, I was able to turn it around. After realizing that my thoughts (and diet) were responsible for my misery, I stopped blaming others and took full responsibility for my recovery. In the coming months, I changed my diet, practiced stress management, dropped the emotional and physical weight, and went into my senior year knowing for the first time what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to help people overcome their personal issues and feel better like I had. I graduated with a degree in behavioral science, and then went to Simmons University in Boston where I earned a master’s in nutrition and health promotion in 1999.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
It’s a quote by Mel Weldon that I discovered early in my career as a hypnotist. “My mind is a garden. My thoughts are the seeds. My harvest will be either flowers or weeds.” Looking back, it clearly applied to my personal struggles in college, as it also applies to everyone else. And it’s a great metaphor for the work I’ve done as a hypnotist for 17 years.
Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. It is often said that “the mental health system in America is broken”. What does that statement mean to you? From your perspective what is “broken” today?
Wow. Where do I begin? Our overall health care system, which includes mental health, does a poor job of effectively treating or resolving the causes of most health problems. While it’s certainly made progress in some areas over time, it’s fallen way short of its potential. I’ll give several examples, all of which originate from what I believe is wrong-headed thinking. Just like faulty thinking caused problems for me in college, it has also caused problems in society and in the health care system.
First, the symptom-focused paradigm is short-sighted and foolish. This is primarily the fault of the dominant allopathic model. Instead of considering the whole person and targeting the underlying causes, allopathic medicine attacks undesirable symptoms with medication, surgery, or other potentially harmful methods. The reason it doesn’t work is simple. If you’re only treating the symptoms, it’s unlikely you’ll fix the cause. Using the mental garden analogy, psychiatry and psychopharmacology are spraying weed killer. It might work in the short run, but the side effects could poison the flowers and soil. It’s a profitable model for drug makers and providers of certain products and services, but it’s extremely costly for consumers, not to mention unethical. If I had started taking psychiatric meds in college, I would have masked my problems. I may have never realized that my mental and physical health issues were caused by my thoughts and diet and not some mysterious chemical imbalance. By the way, the old assumption that a chemical imbalance is the originating cause of mental issues is widely held but not proven.
Another area that’s broken is the focus on conscious-level treatment or therapy. Everyone knows though experience that willpower rarely changes habits. Most people also know that merely talking about or analyzing our problems rarely solves them. The reason is simple. Thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are aspects of the irrational and emotional subconscious mind, which controls most of what we think, feel, and do. Despite these undeniable facts, most well-meaning physicians and talk therapists communicate entirely at a rational, conscious level. That’s why so many people don’t follow the instructions from their doctor or dietitian, and why talk therapy often takes a long time to produce any lasting changes, if at all. In the mental garden, this would be like labeling the invasive weed’s species, discussing its negative effects on the surrounding flowers, and speculating about its origin. It’s all very interesting, but you’re still left with a weed! Remember that revelation is not resolution. Too many health care interventions and therapies fail to address the underlying causes at the subconscious level, so people retain their problem and stay dependent on their ongoing treatment.
A third area that’s broken relates to the short-sighted tendency to label people or encourage them to identify with their mental or behavioral health problems. Many 12-step programs, behavioral health recovery programs, doctors, and therapists do that. Saying, “I am an addict who is powerless over my addiction,” makes sense in theory but is harmful in practice. While doing so can help an individual get real about their situation, believing that statement aligns the self-image with the problem, and identity dictates behavior. If someone believes that he IS an alcoholic (who, by definition, drinks and struggles to quit), rather than someone who subconsciously chooses to use alcohol to feel better, it becomes harder to break the pattern. Defining oneself as an addict or other such term is an oversimplification that’s disempowering and limiting to the individual. Believing oneself to be powerless simply makes it worse. Most people in the grips of a strong, compulsive habit may be powerless consciously, which is clear from the high failure rate of recovery programs. But everyone is extremely powerful subconsciously, or else there wouldn’t be any addictions. Health care providers whom their patients trust must watch their language, or they could harm the very people they’re trying to help.
A fourth problem with our system is the stigma associated with mental health challenges. It’s directly related to the identification with a problem state, label, or diagnosis. When someone convinces himself that there’s something inherently faulty or damaged that makes him an addict or an anxious or depressed person, it’s natural to feel shame. In fact, that’s the very nature of shame. So it can be embarrassing to admit it publicly or ask for help. This issue is more common among men, because so many men have been culturally programmed to believe that vulnerability is shameful. When people are encouraged to feel ashamed of their imperfect nature or guilty for their behavior, they’re more likely to remain stuck in the undesirable pattern. That holds true for anxiety, depression, compulsions, and addictions. As a result of this, far fewer people with mental health challenges seek help than if their challenges were physical in nature, where there’s much less stigma.
The fifth aspect of the system that’s broken is related to health insurance, where the economic incentives are backward. Because our health care system is so inefficient and ineffective, people must pay absurdly high insurance premiums, so it makes sense that consumers would not want to pay out of pocket for health care services. How seemingly convenient it is for them that allopathic medicine and talk therapy are widely covered for normal, lifestyle-related problems. As I explained, those approaches usually amount to putting a band-aid on the real issue. When a system is dependent on lousy approach, it drives up health care costs, which further increase insurance premiums, strengthening this vicious cycle. It’s made even worse by the fact that allopathic physicians are often the gatekeepers that determine IF a patient can see a specialist, including a dietitian, and who that practitioner will be. That reinforces an expensive and biased system. It’s clearly very broken.
What about any bright spots? Do you think there are any elements that we get right in today’s world that we wouldn’t want to reverse unintentionally?
Of course, it’s not all bad. My gripe with the system is not that it’s imperfect, but that it falls far short of its potential. There are some bright spots though. I’ve read that the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has increased its mental health staff by 50% during the past few years. That’s sorely needed and long overdue, as veterans have a high incidence of PTSD and related issues. If only the VA offered more effective services as a complement to its conventional ones, more veterans would get the help they really need. More broadly, while mental health stigma is still a big problem, especially in macho subcultures like the military and first responders, our society is a lot more accepting than it was several decades ago. I think the greatest area of improvement has been the availability of health-related information since the Internet. While there’s plenty of misinformation online, consumers do finally have access to non-conventional health and wellness knowledge and services. Dominant market participants like conventional providers will try and fail to suppress competition, because the democratization of information is unstoppable. Our health care system will likely be very different in a decade, as the collapse of the existing model accelerates due to AI.
In your opinion, what are the 5 most impactful things that could help heal the broken mental health system? These could be on any level including training, workforce, policy, culture, equity etc.
Well, I’ve already spoken at length about five aspects of the system that I believe are broken. In my opinion, the five most impactful things that could fix the system would be to take the opposite approach. Several of these also relate to my client work and why it’s so effective for common, everyday emotional and behavioral issues.
The first improvement would be to reverse the backward paradigm of symptom treatment that has dominated the current system for too long. Common issues like trauma, mood swings, anxiety, and addiction, have several causes, the most important being one’s habitual thinking or belief system. Also very important is diet or nutrition, since that contributes greatly to inflammation and hormonal instability, both of which affect the mind. How we think and feel influences what we consume, and what we consume influences how we think and feel. These are by far the most common causes of most health issues, so treating them directly and taking preventative measures would yield the greatest improvements. One of my personal missions is to help people understand that whatever goes into the mind and body are the greatest determinants of health and illness. The mental health system tends to reframe natural, everyday issues like grief, worry, and emotional compulsions as diseases and disorders, largely in service to drug companies. I’m not referring to rare and severe conditions like schizophrenia or traumatic brain injury, but common conditions that can be simple to correct if addressed properly. If more consumers and health care providers were to recognize this truth, rather than pathologizing these common human conditions, we could make some major progress. I envision a day when visiting a hypnotist and a naturopath becomes the first response to a health issue, and ideally as a preventative measure like seeing a dentist a few times per year. I realize that focusing on the underlying cause of common conditions would be less profitable for physicians, therapists, and drug companies, but our collective health status would improve even as costs decline.
When people seek my help, their chief complaint is almost always a symptom of an underlying cause that they may not be aware of. I acknowledge their symptoms but focus my attention on resolving the root issue that causes them. This usually involves neutralizing the emotional charge from distressing memories, changing problem-causing beliefs to ones that empower them, and reconditioning their nervous system to become calm first. Doing this usually changes their emotional and behavioral responses rather quickly, and it’s typically long-lasting. Using the mental garden analogy, my method pulls the entire weed out by the roots. If the system at large were to adopt this sensible paradigm, it would make a huge difference.
The second improvement would be for mental health professionals to emphasize working directly with the subconscious mind. But their two attachments to the status quo must be overcome. First, conventional talk therapists have invested a lot of time and tuition in methods that rely on conversation and rational awareness, leading to a strong bias of training. They would have to change their treatment philosophy and learn many new skills, so I don’t see that happening. As I mentioned before, conscious-level therapy is inefficient at best and ineffective at worst, at least after a brief, initial period that could be helpful. Second, many people who have been in talk therapy for months or longer develop a codependent relationship with their therapist. Assuming the relationship is even slightly therapeutic, the client may form an emotional dependency on the therapist, who may have a financial dependency on the client. If therapy were primarily subconscious in nature, many problems would be resolved in a short amount of time. Unfortunately, targeting the root cause in the subconscious mind would be less profitable for most practitioners. After all, quicker results translate into shorter client relationships, which would require therapists to constantly find new clients. That can create a conflict of interest for even the most ethical therapists. There’s no conflict of interest for me, because many of my clients refer their friends and family members to me, so it’s quite profitable. Best of all, using subconscious modalities like hypnosis and NLP generally resolve my clients’ issues fairly easily and quickly, which is great for them and rewarding for me.
The third improvement in the system would be a shift in mindset from identifying with the problem state to taking full responsibility for it. Instead of saying, “I’m just an anxious person,” one would realize that he or she simply learned to respond habitually in an anxious manner. Rather than saying, “I’m a smoker,” one would realize that they learned to depend emotionally on cigarettes to feel better. It’s a subtle and profound distinction. The key is that most emotional and behavioral problems are learned, which means they can be unlearned. They shouldn’t define anyone, and each person is responsible, at least subconsciously, for maintaining their problem and then overcoming it if they choose to. Even people who experienced a traumatic event are responsible, at a subconscious level, for replaying the memories or developing fear-producing beliefs that regenerate the trauma response. But it’s not their fault, and that’s a key point. I’ve found that many people disclaim responsibility for their issues because they can’t handle the guilt or don’t want to accept blame. Instead, they may feel like a victim and blame someone else, or they may blame a supposed disease process with the help of their doctor or therapist. That’s just as misguided as a religious person blaming the devil. Blaming doesn’t accomplish anything. Unfortunately, life isn’t fair. The reality is that we are each responsible for ourselves. People who allow themselves to adopt a victim mentality become disempowered, which makes it harder to overcome their problems. It would be ideal if people would take responsibility for their thoughts, feelings, and actions without blaming anyone, including themselves. Doing so would allow lasting change to take place more easily, especially if they focus on the root cause with subconscious methods like hypnosis or NLP. Before I accept someone as a new client, I need to make sure they can agree that their apparent problem is due to their own perceptions of, and responses to, what happened in their life, and not to the experience itself. If they agree, then I can probably help them, and they’ll come to realize that how they feel or act does not define them. If they consciously insist on blaming someone or something outside of them, then I’m not the right person to work with.
The fourth improvement is directly related to the point I just made. If people can take responsibility for their issues, then they develop an inherent sense of empowerment. This is the difference between an external locus of control where one is at the mercy of outside forces, and an internal locus on control, where one has great influence over his or her life. If one feels disempowered or damaged, they may feel shame or embarrassed about seeking help. If one realizes that it’s only natural for us humans to develop problems as we move through life, then there’s no room for shame. On the contrary, all that’s needed is some self-awareness and a little courage to face these issues and overcome them. Usually, the hardest period for my clients is during the years before we meet, which often involved lengthy talk therapy, failed rounds of medications, or wasted time, money, and effort. Once they are inspired to address their issues with me, I can give them the self-awareness to understand how and why they continue to create their problem and how we can solve it. Then, most of the work takes place at the subconscious level, which is transformative from the inside out. Along the way, and certainly afterward, my clients tend to feel proud of themselves for taking action, instead of feeling ashamed. It’s important to note that most people have self-generated problems, but it’s the people who stand up and face them that I admire the most. If more mental health professionals would adopt the mindset of their clients being personally accountable, without involving guilt or blame, and celebrate their commitment to solve their issues, I think more people would seek care.
The fifth improvement would be to change the economic incentives of our system to reward providers for improving patient outcomes, so those providers would pursue the most effective model and methods. These professionals could either learn complementary approaches, or more likely refer patients to experts in these methods. In addition, if health insurance embraced interventions that saved time and money over the long-term, consumers would more readily access natural, preventative care. This approach would more quickly resolve issues when they come up and reduce the likelihood of problems developing over time. For instance, someone who seeks my help shortly after experiencing a traumatic experience minimizes their period of suffering and the odds of developing long-term consequences like panic attacks, addiction, or depression. I realize that all of this won’t happen magically, but it’s something to strive for if we want to have a system that actually serves the health care consumer and not just the provider.
If all of the items on your list were magically implemented tomorrow, what change might we see in the world? What are the signs (big and small) that would show us that the system is being healed?
I’m repeating the same themes here. We would see conventional, symptom-oriented, conscious-level practitioners acquire more effective skills that improve outcomes, although this is unlikely. It’s much more likely that these mainstream health care providers would come to value effective alternatives enough to refer out their patients as a routine matter. I’ve grateful to have received regular referrals from a range of health care practitioners and therapists since I’ve been in practice, but that’s just scratching the surface. For years, more and more people have sought lifestyle-related wellness services from nutritionists, naturopaths, and hypnotists, and so they haven’t needed medical doctors and conventional therapists as much. So the tide is already turning at a grassroots level, but it’s in spite of our system, not because of it. As I said before, established entities in any field usually try to squash competitive alternatives, limit choice, and defend their dominant position. In this case, it explicitly harms their patients. We’ve seen medical doctors lobbying against non-allopathic, complementary practitioners like chiropractors and herbalists. We’ve seen psychologists lobbying against hypnotists. Honestly, I’m not at all optimistic that the system will be healed. Instead, it must be replaced from the ground up. For normal, everyday issues, consumers will increasingly discover and prefer better options than conventional medicine and psychotherapy, and this will force the mainstream to adapt or go extinct. I’d imagine that it could otherwise take decades to do so, but I think technology will accelerate this shift, as I mentioned before.
How do you see technology shaping the future of mental health care and its accessibility?
An area that looks very promising is transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), which has been around for a few decades but is just now starting to gain traction. It’s an FDA-approved, non-invasive technology that has been shown to be safer and more effective than medication for a wide variety of conditions, including depression, OCD, and addiction. The good news is that health insurers are realizing it’s in their financial self-interest to cover TMS services. Over the past couple of years, I’ve enjoyed researching trends in artificial intelligence and how it may affect society, especially in health care. For instance, the rapid rise and evolution of large language models like ChatGPT will significantly shape health care, including mental health. Over the next decade or so, AI is going to improve health care services, lower costs, and may ultimately replace the majority of non-surgical medical doctors, psychiatrists, psychotherapists, and dietitians. But that’s an entire discussion on its own, and I’ve spoken about it elsewhere, so let’s save it for another interview.
What is a project you or others are working on today that gives you hope? How can our readers learn more about this work?
I’m working with my wife, Gina Goodwin, also a board certified hypnotist, on a program specifically designed to help first responders recover from trauma. PTSD and other forms of emotional trauma are a major problem for law enforcement officers, firefighters, and paramedics. At best, it affects relationships and job performance. At worst, it can lead to anxiety, addiction, illness, job loss, and even suicide. Our nation’s first responders put their physical and mental wellbeing on the line with their daily work. There is a tremendous need to effectively address their trauma, so they don’t have to live with it. That need is simply not being addressed well by the current system for all the reasons I outlined early in our conversation. I know from firsthand experience that intrusive thoughts, flashbacks, and other side effects of trauma can be easily cleared in most cases. This is one of our main focuses at Goodwin Hypnosis, as dealing directly with trauma at the subconscious level is the fastest way to uproot those mental weeds. Once the traumatic memories have been neutralized, it’s much easier to address their emotional effects, such as anxiety, and then unhealthy coping behaviors are no longer necessary. Fortunately, the effective methods that Gina and I use don’t require our clients to share any details about the traumatic event or spend more than a few minutes talking about their feelings. The process is fast, fairly painless, and has lasting results in more than 90% of cases, even remotely via Zoom. We’re very inspired by our work, and we look forward to continue to improve the lives of countless first responders in this way. We also hope that we will inspire the first responder community to broadly embrace these methods for everyone’s benefit. Your readers can visit our website at www.GoodwinHypnosis.com or subscribe to our YouTube channel at http://YouTube.GoodwinHypnosis.com for upcoming announcements.
In light of the growing mental health crisis among young people, what innovative approaches or interventions have proven most successful for children and adolescents?
While I don’t work with minors, I do understand how childhood experiences contribute to problems in adulthood. After all, many of my clients’ issues took root when they were young. For example, even an upsetting experience that seems minor to adults can be overwhelming to a child. Unresolved trauma of any kind is very common and is often responsible for many common issues, ranging from anxiety and depression to obesity and addiction. So much of my work focuses on rapid trauma resolution, because it has the greatest positive impact on someone’s life in the shortest amount of time. It’s critical to understand that the primary cause of trauma is not a past event but the memories, perceptions, and beliefs surrounding the event. We can’t change what happened during childhood or adolescence, but we can change our perceptions of it, often easily. Again, not through logical thinking and analysis but through subconscious processes like hypnosis and memory reconsolidation. Updating the information within the subconscious mind can replace resentment, regret, grief, guilt, shame, and trauma responses with acceptance, love, and even gratitude. Doing that also tends to reduce or eliminate fears and anxiety and improve self-worth and self-control. You can imagine how that kind of shift can transform someone’s life in so many ways. I see it with my clients regularly, and I would hope that someday, our entire mental health care system would adopt that model. I don’t expect that to happen, but I can dream. So what would prove successful for minors? At the very least, we could teach teenagers how the mind really works and the principles that lead to resilience as adults. Also, we can encourage reality-based thinking and critical thinking, which is quite uncommon and actually the subject of a book I’m writing. Beyond that, we can teach them basic self-hypnosis techniques, as that would be much more effective than teaching them only mindfulness meditation or deep breathing.
Are there any books, podcasts, or other resources that you’d recommend?
I recommend Jim O’Shaughnessy’s Infinite Loops podcast. He is an extremely smart and curious man who is an excellent conversationalist, and his podcast guests share topics ranging from technology and business to philosophy and social issues. In fact, I’ve been on his podcast twice, and we’ve had some very lively discussions. I also recommend Max Tegmark’s book, Life 3.0, which explores many possible future scenarios of humans living with AI.
We are very blessed that some very prominent names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them. 🙂
I’m currently looking to speak on even more podcasts, so I’d love to connect with any media host whose audience would appreciate unconventional, reality-based perspectives regarding human behavior, psychology, and personal development. But if I had to pick one person, I’d say Joe Rogan, as it seems we’re on the same page about several things.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
They can visit our website at www.GoodwinHypnosis.com to learn about our different services and how we can help them. Also, we have a growing library of free educational videos on our YouTube channel at http://YouTube.GoodwinHypnosis.com
Thank you for your time and thoughtful answers. I know many people will gain so much from hearing this.
It’s been my pleasure, Stephanie. Thank you.
About The Interviewer: Stephanie Greer, PhD is the Co-founder and CEO of Akin Mental Health — a company dedicated to guiding families on their journey supporting a loved one with mental health challenges like bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and severe depression. Stephanie is passionate about this topic from her own personal experience growing up with a mother who struggled with bipolar 1 disorder and found a path forward to overcome the obstacles and live well. Stephanie’s professional experience includes a doctorate in neuroscience as well as design research roles at Hopelab and Apple. Stephanie brings this personal passion together with her world-class science and technology background to support families across the US in their personal journeys supporting loved ones with mental illness. To learn more about Akin Mental Health and join our community, visit us at akinmh.com.
Healing A Broken Mental Health System: Todd Goodwin Of Goodwin Hypnosis On 5 Things That Can Be… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.