Former Client Testimonials

R.T. - Lecturer, Male, Age 43

I came into HEP still living in my mother's house, in many ways a very emotionally stunted, sexually repressed, scared, lonely, isolated, raging mommas boy, feeling essentially hopeless about my life. I was afflicted by a deep sense of guilt, despair, endless rage, and a sexual addiction that saw me frequenting prostitutes and dominatrixes on virtually a weekly basis. Finally, in this state I had a huge rage and anger at God and my own Roman Catholic background that left me unable to pray or even enter a Catholic Church for a period of three years.

However, through the powerful techniques of the HEP therapy, headed by Jim McNamara, I was skillfully led out of my frightfully small world into a rich life of relationship, deep connection, exciting exploration of my psyche, and a depth of spirituality I never dreamed of.

Through HEP and individual sessions with skilled, caring, compassionate, and deeply challenging therapists I began to move into my life. HEP also employed the techniques of primal therapy and encounter groups which opened me up to the riches of my inner life by allowing me to explore the dark underworld of my psyche. HEP also guided me by its knowledge of the wisdom of the ancient mythologies of the world's cultures that acted as maps whereby many of my psychological complexes could be explained and understood.

Throughout this process HEP introduced me to the richness of the spiritual world through its use of the depth techniques of transpersonal psychology and the mystical traditions of the world's religions. Through this process I was able to understand the teachings of my own Roman Catholic tradition in a new, deep and personal way through the themes of suffering, death and resurrection. Henceforth, I was able to return to my own tradition with a renewed sense of its value, depth, richness and appreciation. I even returned to the sacramental life of the Church and could relate to all the archetypal themes of Christianity as rites of passage that could be personal to me. Prior to this, the richness of Roman Catholicism had for me remained romanticized, naïve, and largely disembodied. Which brings me to the whole question of embodiment with which I struggled throughout my youth.

Prior to my entry into HEP my relationship to my body was very challenging. I was largely upwardly split attempting through a false disembodied religiosity to transcend my body, in effect essentially wishing that I was not here in this life, in my life.

Having been a good athlete all my life I tended to relate to my body as a machine rather than a part of my essential self. Hence, my body was very cut off from most of my emotions. Thus I suffered from a rigidity in my skeletal/muscular system that caused much physical pain and discomfort. HEP helped to break down much of my body armour largely through primal where I learned to let my emotions flow. Thus, anger, grief, sadness, joy began to awaken out of the inertness of my deadened body, alleviating much of my physical pain along with years of tightly held emotions.

I feel all the triggers, all the walls, all the blocks that I normally have with people have just melted away and I felt an openness and easy flow of love with everyone. I also felt my impact on people. My life is filled with joy even amidst the sorrows and hardships of life. I see my life now as such a rich gift and authenticity is really the only way to live. I feel very deeply these days and that attests to my aliveness. The work done in group around my smallness paradoxically has brought me into my bigness. My bigness is enabling me to really be on at work and I am really feeling I am mastering my profession.

Finally, the biggest transformation was in the area of my sexuality. As mentioned earlier I suffered from a compulsive addictive sexual expression that completely overwhelmed my life by its all consuming nature. In fact my acting out was growing and constantly seeking new ways to express itself that were particularly dangerous mostly to my own well being, not to mention the huge costs in both time and money on these sexual adventures and thrill seeking. In one year I spent around $10,000 on my addition. In total I have spent around $75,000. I no longer do this! Through HEP I was able to bring these disparate parts of myself into relationship for the first time in my life. I emerged from an objectifying, pornographic relationship to women to having my first in depth tumultuous intimate relationship with a woman. This experience which emerged out of an encounter group truly transformed me. I learned how to fight with women and the feminine and that I could survive the fiery reality of genuine intimate relationship without falling apart. I learned that I could love and be loved, I learned about heart-opening and heart softening, and the necessity of forgiveness of self and other along with its mystical, transpersonal, existential aspects. I accepted being hurt as part of relationship. Finally, I also was able to fully integrate my light and dark aspects, what Jung called the shadow. Having had a lifetime build up of shadow material much of this got discharged in healthy, safe, and contained expression through primal work, in individual, primal and encounter group sessions. Following which these primal tendencies began to loosen their hold upon me and I was no longer acting them out in self-destructive ways on the street or in my life. I developed a respect for my own internal authority that enabled me to trust and deal with external authority in a responsible, adult manner that was relational and kept my own dignity and integrity intact.

Thus, it is with the greatest confidence, respect, and gratitude that I would recommend the HEP process to anyone serious about doing the work necessary to having the life they want. HEP provided a genuine opportunity to explore the deep patterns of one's life. The support and help that is provided is second to none. Jim McNamara and Caroline Mardon provide a supportive, empathetic, safe container in which to do real soul work that fosters personal evolution in a way that I think one would have trouble finding anywhere else. It is with this strong endorsement that I would encourage any serious seekers to fully immerse themselves in this deeply healing work.

P.J. - Arts Administrator, Female, Age 44

I often use terms in my every day life like "stand in who you are", "on some primal level", "it's just a feeling", "just say yes". I think often about my responsibility to the planet and all humanity. I believe deeply in the adage that the purpose of life is just to live it, to be truly alive and to dive, head first, into the unknown despite the fear, despite the doubt, despite the fact that I never really understand "the why" of most of it.

My time working within the HEP model with Jim McNamara and Caroline Mardon, was the richest, most terrifying and dynamic time of my life. To call it "therapy" would be hugely misleading. It was, but it was also an intense time of self exploration that I never imagined possible yet always knew existed. It was a process of complete vulnerability and excruciating self realization. It was both unique and personal to my own journey and very much about the whole of human kind, struggling together, searching and resting in the knowledge of the inevitability of that search.

Cliché as it sounds, this work changed my life, or informed my life in a way that I cannot imagine where I would be now if it had not been for Jim and Caroline and their deep understanding of human need, behaviour and desire. I was someone who had little belief in myself or what I needed and wanted. I was someone who placed my love in all the wrong places because I had a huge fear of the impact of that love, both on myself and others. I was someone who knew deeply a connection to something much greater than ourselves but who was terrified of how large life could be and of the responsibility that that knowledge carried.

I am now someone who can honestly say that my life is full of love - for a man who sees me truthfully and fully and embraces who I am, but also in my work which reflects my principles and vision constantly, and in my child, who at one time was just a difficult promise that I made to myself and was sure I could never keep. My work in HEP made possible the relationship and marriage that has since brought me Emma. She is a reflection of the hope and undeniable joy of my humanness Saying "yes" and believing in this planet, in this time, diving into the excruciating and unbounded joy of parenthood, and having an acceptance of the things that we cannot change.

I am one of the lucky ones. I had a moment of wisdom that guided me towards Jim and Caroline and they then welcomed me into myself. Their constant love, understanding, patience and knowledge made it possible for me to know what is my part, my responsibility, my gifts, my contribution, my weakness, my life, as it is, not as I once thought it should be.

I am constantly reflecting on that time and constantly learning new things. I owe Jim and Caroline more gratitude than I can ever express.

D.M. - Teacher, Male, Age 54

It's been a number of years now since I finished my work with Jim and Caroline. Looking back, I think the most striking difference between "before" and "after" is that I'm living with a grace, an easiness that I didn't have before. I remember living in a more or less continual state of fear. I always used to think that my fear had an object: I put it on the events or people that presented themselves to me. Strangely, though, as soon as one fearful experience was over, another was there to take its place.

Through my work with Jim and Caroline I came to realize that almost all of this fear, or angst, is just part of my psychic makeup -- it doesn't necessarily attach to any object, it just is. A large part of the work - through specific techniques such as the guided visualization group, as well as the primal and encounter group - is to learn to take responsibility for seemingly uncontrollable feelings, to breathe through them rather than try to avoid them. So rather than give the fear all my focus, I learned to experience it more like background noise. The fear doesn't cease to exist, but it loses so much of its controlling power that it becomes functionally irrelevant. This experience is nicely summed up in one of my favourite phrases of Jim's: "Forgive yourself for who you are and get on with your life."

I hope I'm not giving the impression that this is something that came easily. Far from it: my work with Jim and Caroline -- which stretched over some time -- was the hardest work I have ever done. It is the Great Work of the alchemical tradition, the work of transmuting my shit into gold. This was never an academic exercise; rather, it was grueling, challenging, often thankless work, work that often seemed that it would not only never end, but never pay off..

My work with Jim and Caroline was work in which I was called upon to hurl myself into the abyss, to risk everything -- my marriage, my career -- to surrender, to make continual leaps of faith, to walk on the wild side, to find joy in my sorrows, to place everything on the alter and burn it, and on top of that to abandon hope that by so doing I could make a kind of deal with God that I'd get to the payoff that way.

And now I also find I am able to look at my life as a character in a story that I see from the author's point of view. I see the richness in that life and I notice how, without a great labour of will, things tend to happen in a way that brings fulfillment and happiness: my marriage is strong, my children bring me joy, my career is flourishing. It didn't come about by magic, but it sure feels miraculous.

J.A. - IT Consultant, Male, Age 52.

Before HEP I was very "upwardly split" spiritually, always wanting to be somewhere better than this planet with all of its trials. I was also very driven, rigid and self-denying in how I intended to get there, attempting to be pleasing to God in order to win the love I so desperately needed but doubted I would ever receive. If I had been honest I would have had to admit that I envisioned God and a personal father/mother at the core of my being as unforgiving and myself as unworthy. I was not compassionate with myself or others. Jim and Caroline helped me change this.

I was slowly able to reveal myself to these people and be loved and accepted as I was. Jim has a great ability to see the beauty and the transcendent in the mundane material elements that comprise our daily lives. My former rejection of the imperfections of life on this planet allowed no room for this beauty and compassion to enter. Since HEP I have a tangible felt sense of the transcendent quality of moments in my life. There is no longer just ugliness but there is beauty there also, the light and dark together and inseparable.

Because of HEP I am no longer afraid, anxious and depressed all the time. I don't hold back and try to remain invisible. I can breathe and am capable of acts of bold and creative spontaneity. I am emotionally expressive and proud of it. I will not be pushed or bullied. No longer the fatherless/motherless child I look forward to getting up each morning. I have a sense of self, a loving wife, a compassion for self and other, a huge desire, a self-interested aggression in the service of that desire, and I feel full and able to give back. And for this I am truly grateful.

G.B. - Salesman, Male, Age 55

I highly recommend Jim McNamara, Caroline Mardon and the HEP process. Both Caroline and Jim are healers of the highest calling and understand on the most profound level how to help someone heal their broken heart and restore its lifeforce.

I came to them therapy wise and body foolish. God's gift to me was my body. They helped me reclaim my gift which was stolen from me when I was a child.

With their help I was able to face old 'demons' inside who stole my energies causing depression and lack of awareness. I won the battles with myself to enable more lifeforce to feed my life.

With their support I was able to bring consciousness to the deepest levels of my being. This was an experience that was ecstatic in its feeling of living pleasure; spiritual in its acknowledgement of god's grace inside of me; and cosmic in experiencing the connectedness of us all.

HEP helped me to see that grace can be in everything I do and my life is a wave of continual expression emanating from the deepest channel in myself. Through their help I found myself again; in a process of continual iteration and co-creation with my god.

They helped me realize that life's problems don't go away-but I can increase my skills to handle them and increase my ability to take on bigger challenges.

They helped me gain confidence in my abilities and I found a new willingness to engage the lives of others and create a bigger life for myself.

For their help I will be always grateful.

L.M. - Writer, Female, Age 56

I began seeing Caroline in February, 2004. I had suffered from constant, life-long depression and anxiety. During the previous 27 years, I had seen numerous psychiatrists, psychologists and psychotherapists and had taken almost every anti-depressant that had ever been produced, along with a vast number of other medications that were supposed to make me feel better. None of the above worked. I wasn't getting better. In fact, I was getting worse every year. In the five years prior to seeing Caroline, I had taken an unintended overdose of pills and had ended up in the hospital having my stomach pumped. I was in residential rehab for 5 weeks for prescription medication addiction. I, voluntarily, went into a psych ward in a hospital because I was suicidal and, then, spent 3 weeks in their out-patient psych program. In November, 2002, I tried to kill myself and came as close to succeeding as you can, without actually dying. The hospital warned my family that it was very likely that I would die but, if I didn't, I would have severe brain damage.

I'm in my mid-fifties and, when someone suggested that I should see Caroline, I really did not want to. She would be the 7th therapist (not counting the ones in rehab and the hospitals) I had seen in 27 years and I did not want to start over again with yet another one and end up with the same results - getting worse instead of better. It wasn't as if I hadn't been trying to find assistance for all those years. I'd been working very hard to do just that and, if you have depression (in my case, major clinical depression) and profound anxiety you know how difficult it is to keep searching for an answer. It's a process that takes time and effort and energy and those aren't the first words that come to mind when you feel as if you're in a deep pit that you'll never get out of. I also had agoraphobia and I was a cutter. I had had Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Fibromyalgia for ten years from 1989 to 1999 and, although I was over it, I still had (and, once in a while, still have) flare-ups of it. I had totally given up hope that I would ever find anyone or anything that could help me. I WAS WRONG.

When I first met with Caroline, I had lost all sense of who I was, felt that I was worthless, felt as if I were nothing and, really, simply wanted to die to get away from the constant emotional pain. I am an intelligent, witty (although that might not be apparent in this testimonial) and rational person. I was just lost. There was barely a sliver of a person left.

Caroline has saved my life - both figuratively and literally - in the past 15 months. Her compassion, vast knowledge, wisdom and innate understanding of the depths of my despair have made an immense difference in my life. I'm not going to say that it has been easy because it hasn't been. It has been a struggle. I still have depression and anxiety and, sometimes, I am suicidal but I'm getting stronger all the time and they are losing their grip on me. Only a fool would expect to be completely cured in 15 months, after decades of turmoil and pain, and I am not a fool. However, this is the first time I have seen a light at the end of the tunnel.

Caroline's methods are not the same as those of a typical therapist, which is why she has been able to help me where the others failed. For the first time, I feel as if I have a therapist who really cares about ME and who really wants me to get better and will do her utmost to help me and support me and be there when I need her. Caroline cares. That sounds like a cliché but, in this case, it is absolutely true. Caroline is the first therapist I've ever been to whom I have never called and said that I was feeling too sick (cold, flu, other made-up illnesses) that day to see her. I've been to every session and I look forward to going to them because I know that she will help me, even on the days when I'm so low that I don't want to get out of bed.

I highly recommend Caroline. Anyone who needs help and support in his or her life, especially if you have given up all hope of finding it, would be very wise to call her and make an appointment. She has helped me tremendously.

R.L. - Film Executive, Male, Age 46

In the past I have had a sense of difficulty in approaching many things. I often seemed to look at the most simple of life's tasks as impossibly challenging. I felt as though I was living under an unbearable pressure. My life was full of fear. Although I knew I was trying as best I could, I was convinced that there were some things that were simply too difficult, beyond my ability to figure out. I was certain that I was at fault in all this and was filled with guilt and shame. I knew that there was a richness to life that I would never be able to attain because of the mess I'd made of my own existence. All this was something that I kept to myself. My own private hell.

Over the course of my therapy I've come to realize that I've been misunderstanding this difficulty I have in approaching life's challenges. I've come to understand that, as I imagine a task, I infuse it with an inner anxiety and fear. These are feelings with which I have lived since my early childhood. The task then transforms into some ungodly monster intertwined with the various demons of fear, guilt and shame that haunt my inner world. Once faced with that mess, it's no wonder that all I can do is worry. In the face of that devil I'm almost catatonic.

For me, the process of therapy has been one of developing a trusting relationship within a safe environment. I think this level of trust was essential in finding the strength to begin to look directly at that inner monster. Over time that relationship became real, as did my sense that I was in a truly safe and compassionate environment. It became possible for me to begin to entertain perspectives on the world that were surprisingly more humane than those under which I'd been suffering. With my acceptance of alternate perspectives came a willingness to explore the darker reaches of my own emotional energy.

As all this progressed I started to become aware that my body was very much a player in this game which I had once believed to be solely the purview of the brain. I was able to incorporate this new body awareness into my therapy. Through stretching into neglected parts of my body I managed to tap into huge reserves of emotional energy which had been hiding in my frame. This eventually resulted in a primal release; a discharge of emotional energy that directly taps into the core energy of the monster. It was a frightening, confusing and yet exciting place to find myself. As I got more comfortable with this new form of therapy I found it was possible to actually summon this emotional energy and directly blast it out of my system. It's noisy and messy but it feels great.

In getting into my primal energy and learning how to focus and direct primal release, I'm finding that this mire of anxiety and guilt is noticeably lessening. I've become painfully aware of the degree to which my energetic expression has been suppressed all my life. I feel I'm really living in my body for the first time and I'm excited to begin exploring the world with a newfound strength and compassion. As this mindset takes shape for me, I'm beginning to see some of life's tasks which had once filled me with anxiety as practically effortless. So much of that hell which once seemed so real is now just background noise. I look at the monster and I'm totally kicking its ass.