Written by Kerrie Alexander
A ground-breaking three-week therapy is transforming the lives of people who have lingering effects of distressing life events through to extreme trauma.
Dean and Tania Comerford are two well-known and respected therapists who have been offering The Richards Trauma Process (TRTP) as part of their Nourish Mind Soul Body practice in Hervey Bay for the past 18 months.
The two have seen about 100 clients transform into happy, healthy and free humans who lost the weight of their trauma-related symptoms of anxiety, depression, fears and phobias, PTSD, shame and grief.
However, this isn’t a therapy they introduced simply to make money.
It saved Dean’s life!
Prior to living in Hervey Bay, Dean was a dedicated leader of a community organisation and a loving husband to Tania and a father of two.
So, it was devastating to all who knew him that in 2020, in the height of the Covid pandemic, Dean suffered a mental health breakdown.
It was clear that he needed urgent help after Tania found him on the couch, sitting in the foetal position because his employer had called him in for a meeting about his wellbeing.
He simply couldn’t get off the couch or leave the house.
“Covid just did an absolute number on my head,” Dean said.
“But it wasn’t Covid’s fault, I was frozen by childhood related trauma.
“14 days to flatten to curve I would have been fine. I would have gritted through. Five weeks into the crisis that just kept getting deeper and deeper and there was nothing in me that could comfort and console myself.
“I realise now that that is something we learn from our parents in childhood.
“When we skin our knee or a pet dies, our parents comfort us and they teach us how to comfort ourselves. My parents didn’t. So, you end up in crisis.
“So, I look back now and see when 9/11 happened and when Gympie, where we were living flooded, I would go into crisis mode but they were for short periods of time so I could come out the other end.
“Nothing came back to normal with Covid and I literally crashed.”
His Brisbane-based counsellor had only just trained in TRTP and decided that Dean urgently needed the elegantly simple, yet comprehensive, step-by-step process.
Tania said the results were profound.
“Dean would speak to 1000s of people and nothing really stopped him and then he became this man that couldn’t even leave the house,” Tania said.
“That is how we were introduced to TRTP and it’s only three sessions over three weeks, and I literally watched Dean change before my eyes.
“We were married for 32 years at that point and he just became this completely different man who was calm and content.
“It didn’t just take him out of that hole that he had fallen into with covid, it actually gave me the husband that I always knew was within him.
“I would literally go around the house saying, ‘who are you’?”
It wasn’t long before Tania and Dean were both trained in the process and changing lives daily.
“Because I had seen Dean totally change in those three weeks, I just said whatever you have just done, I need to do that for my clients,” Tania said.
“As a qualified counsellor I had been trained that when you’re working with clients with trauma you can be working with them for years and years and its slow work.
“On the other hand, I just watched my husband change in three weeks and I really liked this version of him, and he liked this version of himself.
“Ethically, how could I know that there is a process that could heal people of their trauma in three weeksand not offer it to my clients; that didn’t sit well with me. I had to train in this.”
The move was made to the stunning Villa Cavour Bed & Breakfast in Point Vernon where the two now offer accommodation as well as the counselling service.
There are six TRTP practitioners in Hervey Bay who are now fully trained in the practice.
So, how does it work?
TRTP makes use of imagination to deal with trauma where it is stored in the subconscious and in the body.
It initially deals with the underlying, unconscious core beliefs which keep a person stuck in negative patterns of thought, emotion and behaviour.
TRTP then takes the emotional charge from the past, moving the client to a place of empowerment in relation to the trauma.
The client is shifted from fight/flight/freeze and moved to an empowered, self-regulated state.
The sympathetic nervous system is calmed. The memory of the trauma is placed firmly in the past.
The client quickly moves from their state of fight, flight, freeze – ‘I’m not safe!’ To, ‘It’s over. I’m safe now…’ Calm returns, on all levels. Symptoms cease.
“Suicidal people have said to me if this doesn’t work, I can’t live anymore it’s too hard,” Tania said.
“Seeing them go from that to three weeks later having so much joy and energy for life it’s just miraculous to see.
“What we richly imagine, our mind and body believe to be true.
“We replace negative subconscious core belief with the truth; that they matter, that they are valuable and that they deserve success.
“Using imagination, we take our clients on this beautiful journey.”
Tania said there are of course people who feel it’s too good to be true and that’s the hardest hurdle to jump.
“We’ve trained ourselves to be sceptical and if it sounds too good to be true it usually is.
“We say to people, we can lead a horse to water but we can’t make it drink, because we want people to be really committed. We do our appointments with all our heart and soul but they have to really want it.”
Tania is now also documenting their journey in her first book titled ‘I got a new husband in three weeks’.
“This is a book about what life was like before and after Dean had TRTP,” Tania said.
“You don’t know what you are carrying until it’s gone.
“People don’t get that you can actually have this whole new life and feel good.
“It’s our lived experience and that’s why we are passionate about it.
“It’s a really sucky business model though,” added Dean.
“In normal counselling you help people for months or years, but because our clients get well, every month we need to find new clients,” he said with a laugh.
The two have seen people find the strength to leave abusive relationships, quit a bad job and even end toxic marriages.
“That’s what we do and it’s flipping exciting!” Tania said.
“I wake up every day and say ‘I am going to change people’s lives today.
“There is nothing more rewarding.”
Tania and Dean are taking on clients from all over the world with the sessions done either online or face-to-face in their private Nourish office.
To find out more, call Tania on 0492 911 109, email admin@nrsh.me, visit http://www.nrsh.me or reach out on the Nourish Mind Soul Body Facebook page.