The Wellness Institute

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My name is Shay.

I work as a clinical social worker and I do

telehealth therapy with adults.

I tend to work with people who have trauma that they want to address and trying to heal from that, people who have addictions, and I love to work with middle-aged women who are going through perimenopause.

I'm Jane Marie, and this is The Dream.

Today we're talking to one of you, one of our listeners.

Shay called our tip line 323-248-1488 after attending an online course a few months ago that really rubbed her the wrong way.

Just like super sketchy.

So sketchy, in fact, that I didn't even finish listening to the message before calling Shay and asking for an interview.

As a therapist, Shay needed to take this class to earn continuing education credits.

In the state of Ohio, for the social work board, which is the CSW-MFT Board, or Counselor Social Work, Marriage and Family Therapist Board of Ohio,

you have to have 30 ceus every two years those are what we have to have in order to continue to have our license and

this training that i went to offered more than that actually um and that's a big deal because one you know that the board has signed off and said hey this is a legitimate training you're going to learn something from it and you're going to get this credit that then you can say hey i've done this thing i've ticked these boxes that is different than certification That's continuing Ed.

That's what you need to maintain your license for the state.

Every state is different.

Certification is, hey, we're selling a certification.

And if you take this course and do these things, we're going to give you this pretty little thing that says you're certified by us in this.

Right.

Anybody can sell a certification.

It's just a thing that you get that might make you feel more legitimate or might you might think it makes your clients think you're more legitimate.

So certification versus continuing education, two different things.

Certification means you've taken some classes.

Continuing Ed means you've taken the correct class that the licensing board believes helps you further your education and you get to keep your license, basically.

Absolutely.

Okay.

So

go on.

So you

are looking for 30 CEUs a year.

Yeah, and I wasn't even hunting for the CEUs at this point.

I mean, I've been working in mental health since 2003.

I think I graduated in 2010, licensed since 2012.

And initially, when I started, just to go back for a second, when I started in mental health, I didn't want to be a therapist.

That wasn't my goal.

I was a social worker.

I liked helping people in the community.

I loved that work.

And that's why I went back and got my master's degree in social work.

At this stage of my life, I am a therapist and I love it.

And I'm glad I got here.

This is what I need in this stage of my life.

And I feel really competent and good where I am.

But that's not where I started.

So I've done CEUs for

15 years.

I don't worry about getting them.

That's easy.

I want to get continuing into something that's interesting, that I can build my skill set.

So

I recently took a one hour, one of those sort of lunch and learn courses with somebody who works at.

the same place I work and he does hypnotherapy.

He also does EMDR and he seems like a really smart, put together, grounded person.

And he just gave a quick one hour, this is what hypnotherapy is.

This is how I use it.

And that really made me interested.

So we get $1,200-ish dollars a year to pay for CEUs.

So I thought, well, let me see what I can find in hypnotherapy.

Who gives you the $1,200?

Work.

So we could use that if we wanted to go somewhere and spend it on mostly hotel and

travel and then go to a $100 conference in another state.

But I was like, this would be really cool to use in a junction, like with my EMDR to help people with trauma.

So I found this training and it's through the Wellness Institute and it was affordable.

It was almost the exact same price as the money I get for the year.

And it's online.

So I didn't have to go anywhere.

So that would also make that doable.

So I looked into it.

And it seemed legitimate.

What is the Wellness Institute?

I don't know.

It's an institute online.

I mean, when you go to their website, it looks very legitimate.

They've got a whole bunch of names up there that they're connected with and associated with.

It looks very legitimate.

I googled it, making sure this is legitimate.

I don't normally take courses that are online through things I've never heard of before.

And

everything seemed fine.

I couldn't find anything saying, like I'm Googling, like, is Wellness Institute a scam?

Nothing comes up.

Well, plus the licensing board said it's fine, right?

Not only the licensing board, so the Ohio Licensing Board and the ASWB, which is the National Social Work Board, they're the ones that actually do all the testing.

Every state but California uses them for your testing to say, yes, this person took the test and they have the competency to be a social worker.

And then along with what other else your state tells you you have to do.

This way that it works in Ohio is that if the ASWB approves it, Ohio automatically approves it, no questions asked.

Wow.

But not only were they approved by the ASWB, they were also approved by Ohio separately.

So it double legit.

So you didn't feel like you had to like go down a crazy internet rabbit hole in the beginning to find out if they were legitimate.

Yes.

And I talked to a colleague who had done this exact training and they recommended it.

So you had personal recommendation, institutional recommendation.

Yeah.

So tell me what the training was going to be.

What was it supposed to look like?

So the training was supposed to be a six day, quote unquote, intensive, which I don't usually hear that word, but six days of training on this skill.

So that by the time you're done after the six days, you have practiced it.

It was supposed to be experiential, which means we practice on each other.

That's how EMDR training was.

That didn't seem concerning to me.

Six days makes sense.

You need a lot of time to learn a new skill and practice it.

So that also made sense to me.

So I just thought, okay, great.

This is like going to be really like intense in terms of we're really going to just spend this time focused on this thing and come out of it feeling like we have enough skill to be able to get started.

Right.

And was it full days?

Well, yeah.

So when I signed up for it, I don't remember it telling a schedule.

It just said six days.

And I thought, as any other training I've ever done in my entire career, those would be eight-hour days.

And then two days before the training started, I believe it was two days, we got an email with the itinerary.

But it said

7.45 a.m.

to 7.45 p.m., I believe, was the first day.

What?

Yes, 12-hour training days.

So I thought immediately, my first thought when I got that email was, this is not okay.

This is culty.

Something's wrong.

Because no training ever is that many hours a day, ever.

Just ask anyone in any kind of licensing.

That's just not how this goes.

And so I'm looking at this going, okay, six 12 hour days.

My thought was they must be.

unhealthy.

Like this organization must be unhealthy because anyone in the mental health field knows how important self-care is.

Right.

And you can't do self-care if you have six 12-hour days in a row.

And to be completely fair, some of the days might have been as low as 10 hours, but nothing under that.

This feels like quite a commitment.

10 hours a day minimum for six days.

That is a lot of time.

It is a lot of time.

So I'm.

And how many credits were you supposed to be getting for that amount?

So I thought 30, but it turns out that's 60, but that's unheard of.

It's just unheard of.

I've never.

Well, it's unnecessary if you only need 30 a year.

right it's just weird so the total hours scheduled on the itinerary were 60.25 hours

the total hours that we were in class to my very best estimate not including the breaks was 46.75 hours

okay and which is more reasonable but not what they promised yeah When I first saw the itinerary, I thought red flag, that was my first real red flag.

This does not seem right.

At minimum, this is bad self-care.

But what does that say about the people running this training?

Right.

So

I sort of prepare myself for this might not be what I thought it was going to be.

And I go in and immediately the first day, I'm just, this is not okay.

Tell me how that went.

So you log on to like the Zoom call or whatever.

The first day was educational in terms of it was traditional like lecture.

This person, her name's Judy.

She's introducing us to what we're going to do, what to expect, and starts to kind of go through the curriculum and explaining what heart-centered hypnotherapy is, which

there was some explanation of heart-centered hypnotherapy being different than hypnotherapy that they went over.

I

didn't see any meaningful difference.

But I think that's like their trademark or brand, it must be, I think, because that's it seemed to be this is special and different because it's heart-centered hypnotherapy, not just hypnotherapy.

Okay.

So the thing about Judy, though, is she's not licensed in any way of anything.

She's a life coach.

I see where this is going.

Yeah.

So here's a woman, lovely woman, very kind woman, who is a life coach, who is teaching licensed individuals.

Most people were clinically licensed in some sort of therapy.

And most of them already knew, ironically, EMDR.

So they are not only licensed, but they're already competent in some trauma modality.

And a lot of people, it was interesting, same reason as me, they thought they could use this in conjunction with

EMDR or the work they already do.

And hypnotherapy, just like, just to make clear to the audience, we're not shit talking that modality.

Like, I've been hypnotized a couple of times and I think it's helped.

like for when I was a cigarette smoker or fear of flying, I've done it for that.

Exactly.

It's totally legitimate therapy.

Absolutely.

But it doesn't sound like you were getting that sort of totally legitimate training.

Right.

The training was about how to do it their way.

But as it went on, it became about following a specific person.

So they've got this lady named Diane Zimberhoff.

And first I assumed that that was going to be who was the teacher.

But when she wasn't the teacher, that's another reason that I was immediately red red-flagged by the itinerary.

It on the itinerary, it said it had a picture of Diane

in a little oval, and it says LMFT, which is her licensing, and then it says

founder of the institution.

And so I'm thinking, oh, this is a little weird too, but okay, whatever.

So, what's weird about that?

What was weird to me about it was it felt very like,

here's a person that we need to immediately recognize as

our leader, our leader.

So this person named Judy is the teacher, and Judy is going through this curriculum that's all written by Diane.

100% written by Diane.

That was a little bit weird to me that all of the curriculum was written by Diane.

So six days worth of curriculum.

And it covered DID.

which is what used to be known as multiple personality disorder.

Oh, it covered treating addiction,

sexual abuse, doing hypnotherapy in children,

personality disorders, oh, eating disorders, all this stuff.

All from one person's mind.

All from one person's mind and all taught by a non-licensed life coach.

whose background is in astrology.

And I'm not shitting on astrology.

I'm just saying it doesn't have anything to do with teaching clinical therapy.

Right.

That's That's the problem.

And this cost your organization $1,200?

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Okay, so you get in there and you're in the first day.

Is there like anything that happens in the instruction where you're also like, wait, this is bullshit?

Yeah, and the first day kind of goes, okay, it's mostly lecture.

There are red flags but nothing is

super insane the first day then which implies that it's gonna get there

that yeah you know and there were things i was taking notes as we went because i thought boy this is just so weird so i took notes to try to immediately make sure that I didn't gaslight myself into starting to fall for anything funky.

Like I was just immediately vigilant to this is not right.

Something smells off here.

So then the second day we do the experiential, this is where it gets,

I think, messed up.

So they wanted us to do hypnotherapy, which I'm really glad that you've done hypnotherapy because, and I have relatives who've done it for smoking too and had lots of success with it.

So I think it's really cool.

And I want to be able to help people like that.

They wanted us to do at least, this is required in our hypnotherapy that we did with each other, that we practice, two age regressions.

No.

Two.

And they really, really, really encouraged us strongly to hit something while we were in our hypnosis.

So you would start like laying down with,

you had to bring all these things in with you.

some ice or some heat for sensory for grounding you had to you could bring in a face mask if you wanted um wait you mean you needed to be age regressed?

Me, Shay, yes.

And the person

administering this to someone who's a volunteer, it's you.

You're the subject.

I'm the subject.

And I had to also administer it to one of the other class members.

Can you talk to me a little bit about what the dangers could be there?

I feel like I have a lot of understanding just because I'm used to watch like, you know, a lot of talk shows.

where this would and I grew up during like the satanic panic and like everyone's you know parents were molesting them, all, you know, all of this stuff that happened through these sorts of, you know, iffy practices.

And Judy at one point referenced, she didn't say satanic panic, she referenced as an example that somebody might come to us who has been abused in a satanic ritual and we might need to treat that.

She talked about it as if it was a legit problem

that

happens not all the time, but like that happens.

My next guess was you and worshiping the devil, participated in human sacrifice rituals and cannibalism.

She says her family has been involved in rituals for generations.

She is currently in extensive therapy, suffers from multiple personality disorder, meaning she's blocked out many of the terrifying and painful memories of her childhood.

Meet Rachel, who is also in disguise to protect her identity.

So when you were brought up in this kind of evilness, did you just think it was normal?

I've blocked out a lot of the memories I had because of of my multiple personality disorder.

But yes, I mean, it's like if you go off with something, you think it's normal.

There would be rituals in which babies would be sacrificed and you would have to.

What are the dangers of age regression and hypnotherapy?

The dangers of age regression hypnotherapy are that you could create and implant false memories.

Right.

And then you think something happened to you that didn't.

And now you've got a new narrative about who you are and what happened in your life that could really disrupt how you see yourself and how you see your relationships and there's been plenty of evidence of that happening correct yes and i couldn't quit like famous cases yes i

teal swan is all i could think about

and

again if you know the history of teal swan which i think you do

Now, if this is your first time hearing of Teal Swan, boy, are you in for a ride.

As I said in a previous episode, regression therapy has been the cornerstone of healing from past trauma for thousands of years because it works.

I myself created one such process that enables people to regress back to resolve trauma which is unhealed within the physical, emotional, and mental embodiment.

There's plenty of Teal's motivational talks available on YouTube, but I recommend checking out the documentary about her on Hulu called The Deep End, which follows Teal and her spiritual teachings and is just pure chaos involving past life regression and a complicated polyamory thread.

Anyway, go check that out.

So Che clocks this right away in the training.

Like, this is cuckoo banana stuff right off the top.

So not only these age regressions, which we had to just

sort of come up with in our hypnotherapy, but as the as the client, right, and I'm in the role of the client, we also were encouraged then to take out our feelings by taking some object.

We could bring a spatula, or I guess you could take like a styrofoam pool noodle, something like that, and hit like a pillow or a couch or the floor with while you're hypnotized or just for fun?

While you're hypnotized.

No.

I know.

You should be fairly relaxed.

Yeah.

And not paralyzed, but

you know, the world kind of melts away and you're focused on what you're there to address.

It's not like a magic show where they hypnotize people to go be silly on stage.

But that's how she was treating it.

Well, they gave us a list of things that were tells to the clinician that somebody was actively in hypnosis.

And they said you only had to have one of those tells, one of those signs for the person to be hypnotized and one of the signs was they looked relaxed you they were essentially saying if the person looks relaxed they're hypnotized you're good to go

okay

i i don't know how else to say it it was just bizarre when you were getting your age regression hypnosis

how did you perform that i mean did you were you

acting i was acting

Okay, I mean, good.

I'm glad.

I'm going to tell you the signs of hypnosis that they gave us very quickly.

There are nine of them.

One, relaxation, two, breathing, three, change of body temperature, four, power of suggestion, five, rapid eye movement, REM.

Six, hypnotic sigh.

The person may take a deep, involuntary sigh.

Emotional response is seven.

Eight is sensual experience.

And nine is eye lacmentation, which means their eyes may look red and puffy after awaking from a trance state.

Back up one.

Sensual something?

Sensual experience.

Many people actually experience being sensory, but sensual.

Sensual.

Being somewhere else.

They may, quote, see the scenery, quote, feel the sunshine, quote, smell the fresh air, or quote, hear the waves of the ocean.

Can't that word be replaced with sensory?

I'm sorry.

Yeah.

What?

Of course.

Okay.

Yeah.

But sensual has a connotation.

Anyways, I know.

This wasn't written by a therapist.

No.

Well, I mean, it was.

It was written by Diane Zimmerhoff.

But I can't find any proof that Diane was ever a licensed therapist.

Okay.

So I looked Diane up everywhere.

They told us that she had lived every state because every state has an open licensing lookup website.

And I couldn't find her listed anywhere.

And it would show an inactive license or an expired license if you were licensed in the past.

I could find nothing.

So either she was never licensed and they were lying about her being an LMFT, or maybe for some fluke, it was so

so long in the past like maybe it was in the 70s that it's not showing up on the website

or maybe it was in a state that I didn't know that she ever was in or maybe she doesn't exist oh she's on YouTube oh okay okay never mind

so They had us go through this process where we each took turns being the client and the clinician.

And then they had an intern in the quote unquote room, the online room with us.

We were in breakout sessions on Zoom.

And the intern, they made it very clear was unpaid and they were giving their time and we should all be very, you know, thankful to them for doing that.

And they were there to help us and guide us and,

you know, through our process.

Is this intern participation normal?

I don't think so.

Okay.

So

talk me through like what you were doing in this session where you were acting.

Yeah.

So you have a script that you're reading and it's it's a standard script you're not supposed to stray from it at all you read this script to the person and so the person's reading the script to me now i have the script so i know what the script says i've um

read the script before we do this because I'm going to have to do it next to them.

And so I'm laying down with my eyes closed and they're reading the script and it's trying to hypnotize me.

You know, you're getting sleepy and sleepy and all that good stuff.

And so then I just, you know, you're in your mind sorting through what can I give them as an an age regression because you have to, it's a requirement, right?

So, you know, I'm thinking, what do I do?

What do I do?

And I remember what I came up with the first time.

We did it twice.

The second time they had us do it, it was supposed to be a mind-body experience.

So we had to bring in something related to our body and how we felt.

And at the time, I had whooping cough.

And I, yeah, I had whooping cough.

And so my side, my ribs hurt really bad.

So I said that was going to be the thing I would use.

And they wanted me to go back and do an age regression connected to that.

You can see how ridiculous this sounds.

Let's go back to the first time you had whooping cough.

Not even the first time.

And again, some of this stuff is legitimate.

You use versions of this in EMDR, for example, but it's like they take something legitimate and they're bastardizing it to be something weird.

So they wanted to go back to feeling that feeling in my ribs.

So, okay, great.

One time I fell out of a tree and knocked the air out of my lungs.

Okay, cool.

So, and where were you?

Well, I was at the park with my brothers.

Okay,

what do you need to say?

You know, what feelings do you need to get out about that?

Nothing.

I shouldn't have been in the tree.

Yeah, you know, and what do you need to say to your brothers?

And I got kind of annoyed and I said nothing.

They were really helpful and supportive of me and took care of me while I got my breath back, right?

And then you have to do it again.

Well, what's another?

So you're just stretching for these like experiences

to try to fulfill this requirement.

And no way, shape, or form was I hypnotized.

I don't understand.

And so what I was left with this frustration, now I have no idea what hypnotherapy is.

And you have to do the same thing to someone else.

Yeah.

And the second time that I did it, the person that I had to do it with, and we didn't choose partners or anything.

They were given to us.

She had already volunteered to be the person to do it with Judy, the instructor, just the first time as a demonstration to the class.

And then we had done our first one the night before.

So this is her third time.

So she's tired.

And again, no surprise, they're having us do this part at the very end of the night, last thing of the day.

And Judy said that it was because we would be more open.

If you were tired?

Yes.

We are.

They knew what they were doing.

If you go back to the bite model, all of it was in there.

So this girl, to her great credit, she says, my problem is that I don't really want to do this and I feel resistant.

And so I'm forcing this woman to

engage in hypnotherapy when she actively says she doesn't want to, which would be a no-no in any clinical setting, right?

1000%.

Like you're not going to try to hypnotize someone who's resisting.

Right.

And using that as the reason to hypnotize them.

I mean, it's ridiculous.

You know, acting like this is perfectly normal.

I feel like I'm like looking through Alice in Wonderland, looking through the looking glass.

I'm getting a feeling that these people are like playing,

like they're having fun with their toys.

I don't know what they were doing.

And

so we had to watch these videos

of this being demonstrated.

One of the videos, I'm going to tell you why this is so bizarre.

One of the videos was shown to us.

It was from 1993.

Okay.

They told us this, 1993, and it was a woman named Rose.

Hypnotherapy was being done on her by Diane.

All the videos were Diane videos.

And this person named Rose was saying that she had an abortion.

And she was feeling a lot of feelings about that.

And Diane told her to tell the fetus, sorry for killing it, quote, unquote.

Can you tell him you're sorry for killing him?

And first of all, not only is that incredibly inappropriate for a thousand reasons, no trigger warning.

And statistically, there had to be at least a few women in this class who have had pregnancy loss.

Right.

Right?

No one said, hey, we're going to traumatize you guys by telling a lady to apologize to her dead fetus

in case anybody needs to take care of themselves, right?

Right.

And the practitioner, which was Diane, said,

It ended up taking a life, your own child's life.

Oh my God.

Yeah.

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Well, so this goes awry pretty quickly, it sounds like.

Yeah.

I know you felt cultives in the beginning, but how does your understanding of this evolve?

My understanding of this is this is not healthy.

It is dysfunctional.

And I now just have to get through it.

I have to spend my energy regulating myself to get through this.

And I start, as the time went on, I just started taking notes

because so many fucked up things were happening.

When was this?

The beginning of May

oh this year.

So this autumn.

This all happened like this.

Yeah.

Very fresh.

Yeah.

Very fresh.

Yeah.

Now,

okay, the Wellness Institute offers a trim life diet program.

And here's why I'm concerned is one, it's the antithesis to best practices of eating disorders, which they claim to treat.

And

the facilitator focused on weight loss throughout the training.

At one point, she used an example of self-discipline, of the fact that she might want to eat a handful of nuts and decide that that's too many and she doesn't really need those and just eat one nut.

What?

Talk about an eating disorder.

Yeah.

Well, also, why are you talking about this in here?

Go have your nut.

She thinks that's a healthy example of self-discipline.

But you're in a hypnotherapy class.

Yeah, I know.

Why do you need to hear about her weird self-discipline or anything?

Like, you're not in a self-discipline class.

I don't know.

So at the end, this day six was mostly spent trying to sell us on going into the internship.

And part of that was also that we could buy into the Trim Life program at a discount because we've completed the six-day course.

MLM?

I think so.

Okay.

And one of their pieces of literature that they gave us in the beginning actually has a picture of a pyramid on the front.

It's labeled PTI and mentor brochure.

And it says the Wellness Institute course catalog.

And it has a five-layer pyramid, literally a pyramid, not a triangle, a pyramid.

And the bottom layer is six-day certification course.

So that's what we did.

And layer two is the internship, year one, new skills, more confidence.

A year?

Yeah.

Oh, absolutely not with these people.

Oh, hold on.

Layer three is the internship year two, proficiency in hypnotherapy.

So three years in, you can be proficient, or I guess two years plus a six-day certification course, you can finally be proficient.

Layer four is PTI leadership psychodrama skills.

And layer five is mentors, and that says teachers.

Okay.

How much does all of this cost you?

Oh, well.

To do the internship for a discount, which is going to be expiring on May 16th.

And this email was on May 12th.

Four days.

You have four days to decide.

Four days to decide.

$500 deposit and then $250 per month for 17 months.

And now all of a sudden, even though we only had till May 6th to decide, now they can do a no interest payment plan.

So you're signing like a contract.

I suppose.

So then they're upselling you into this kind of...

pyramid scheme.

When do you get to start selling things?

I think we were supposed to sell the trim life.

Okay.

If we bought into it.

I'm not sure.

They were very opaque about it.

And I obviously was also not listening.

I love you.

They tried repeatedly to sell us Diane's books.

Materials.

Repeatedly, yes.

And, you know, when you take a CEU, one of the things you have to say, I have provided CEUs.

And you have to state that this is free of bias in commercial products and I'm not trying to sell you anything.

So huge red flag there.

Yeah.

Again, let's go back.

This is a clinical training for therapists to do therapy and we had to spend time on chakras and colors and meanings of colors.

And

oh, oh, here's another thing.

We were taught that people could cause themselves illness, such as cancer.

Did you talk to anybody else in the class about this?

Yeah.

Anyone on your side?

Yeah, some people were.

Nobody seemed to be totally 100%

where I was with it.

They were still looking for ways to feel like they got something out of it.

But

I mentioned Colti to at least one person who said, yeah, same vibes.

I think so too.

But they all seemed more willing to try to find good, to try to find some way to make it meaningful.

Yeah, especially when you're doing it 12 hours a day.

Right.

It's honoring sunk costs, right?

Like the money's already spent.

You've already signed up.

Yeah.

You already spent 12 hours before you found out it was really freaky.

Well, yeah, what are you going to do at that point?

And I...

I might as well keep going and then accuse my father of molesting me.

Yeah.

That's the take home.

That's the door prize.

Absolutely.

Still like.

Destroying your family and your childhood.

Well, thank you for being someone who is so alert and aware and taking notes this whole time.

Yeah.

Okay.

Keep in touch.

Bye.

All right, thanks.

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