social icons graphic

Why Don’t You Use Testimonials

Why Don’t You Use Testimonials

This is a question that I get asked many times by other practitioners and  the public alike. The reason is simple, in my professional opinion these are unethical and are open to abuse. When a person comes to me for hypnotherapy or psychotherapy I provide them the best service that I can based on my experience and qualifications. For this service, I am appropriately compensated monetarily. Therefore, there should be no need for a client to provide me with anything else.

Testimonials are considered unethical by the main talking therapy professional bodies such as the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy and with cause. Testimonials are so easily faked. Indeed, it is impossible to know whether the testimonials that you read were written by anyone other than the therapist in question. Additionally, there are confidentiality issues as well as the client being attached to the therapist through their endorsement for many years in some cases after the therapy had been concluded. This is not a healthy dynamic. Finally, I heard of a practitioner who has before and after pictures of his weight control clients, I cannot even count the ways that this breaches good practice and is potentially exploitative to the client in question.

It is important to note that, even if the testimonial is legitimate, that is in no way a guarantee that the service provided to the person giving the testimonial will be the right one for you. Organisations have said that customer reviews like those that appear on Google Business or FreeIndex are ok as these can have bad reviews as well as good ones and these are totally under the control of the person writing them

If you don’t see testimonials don’t assume that this means no one has anything good to say about the practitioner, but rather ask the practitioner why they don’t have them. If they don’t due to ethical considerations, then perhaps they are worthy of consideration to be consulted.

Recent Posts

Archives

Categories

Tags