When I recently spoke about Mental Freedom, the person I was talking with assumed that it is for people with mental health concerns. While I know people with mental health diagnoses could benefit from Mental Freedom, that is not who I created the program for.

When I created Mental Freedom, I was considering highly competent individuals in professions where people look to them for answers. With that kind of responsibility, people often don’t want to admit that anything bothers them. They have a vested interest in always keeping it together, and for the most part, they do. However, most people walk around with something on their minds, something that keeps them awake at night, that they don’t want other people to know about.

Because they are able to mostly compartmentalize and function well, they keep this painful thing in its place and suffer quietly, not knowing what to do about it. Some might try to talk with a counselor or friends and family. Counselors can provide empathy, allowing you to vent, but many complain that nothing really changes. Family and friends may commiserate with you, but again, nothing really changes.

These are the people I intended to help with Mental Freedom. You can learn Mental Freedom online; you don’t have to go into an office. You can do it individually in one-on-one sessions or in a small group setting with no more than eight to a group. And there’s never any pressure to share things you don’t want to talk about.

Mental Freedom is more like a class than therapy, but make no mistake, it’s very therapeutic. In six sessions, you will learn everything you need to handle whatever is happening in your life that is causing you distress.

This is who I conceived Mental Freedom to be for, and it does work well with this target market. However, it has also been shown to work well for people in drug and alcohol treatment centers and people reentering society after serving time in prison. This program has had an impact in a variety of settings with diverse individuals. In one instance, it was taught in two groups at a dental practice in India—one group of dentists and the other comprising their office staff and dental assistants. Both groups made excellent progress, as evidenced by their pre- and post-scores on Ryff’s Psychological Wellbeing Scales and the Ways of Coping Assessment. As a side benefit, both groups reported getting along better with each other at work.

I have come to believe that Mental Freedom can help almost anyone live a more satisfying life. The goals of the program are to help people learn to take responsibility for the things that are theirs to own while letting go of their need to be responsible for things that are other people’s to claim. Mental Freedom helps people to unconditionally trust everyone to do the best they can with the information available to meet their own needs, rather than trusting them to be who you want them to be. People learn to change disempowering language to empowering language in addition to rewriting the painful stories they maintain in their minds. Finally, they learn how to manage painful emotions, including physical problems that are without a medical cause, while transforming those painful signals into something neutral or even pleasurable.

People travel a journey from being imprisoned psychologically and emotionally to breaking out of that prison and living a life with joy and satisfaction.

The people I don’t think will benefit from Mental Freedom are people with low cognitive ability who are benefitting from staying in victim mode. While it’s excruciatingly painful, it tends to carry subconscious benefits such as attention, external support and freedom from responsibility.

Mental Freedom is not just for those with Mental Health diagnoses. It is for the everyday person who is struggling in silence and can’t quite figure out how to fix it. Mental Freedom will help!