Meet Adina Radulescu!
Transcription
Anna: Hi, and welcome again to the Estafet, where we interview EARTh members and get them introduced to the community. And today, we are going to Romania. Last time we were in Holland and Bert sent us to Romania to meet Adina. Hi, Adina.
Adina: Hi. Hi, Anna.
Anna: Nice to see you again, and thank you for taking the time to do this.
Anna: My pleasure. I’m very happy to have you finally doing this interview because I’m very curious and we’re just gonna go into the thing right on. And we will just start, if you please, introduce yourself, tell us your name and where you’re from.
Adina: My name is Adina Radulescu. I’m from Romania. As Anna said before, I live in Bucharest, and for many years now I have been psychotherapist. And for ten years I am also a regression therapist. Before that, my first career was in university. Well, I’ve been teaching for many years in university, but I stopped that three years ago, and since then I’m a fully practicing psychotherapist.
Anna: All right. Wow. It’s a very dynamic story. And you live now in Bucharest, as far as I know.
Adina: Yes, yes, for—now, I think it’s like for 30 years, even from my life as a student, I’ve been living in Bucharest.
Anna: Right. And so, your education and your training, have you got it all there in Romania?
Adina: Yes, yes, yes.
Anna: And all trainings. Yes. But sometimes, you know, attending international conferences, international workshops. Yes, but the basic training was in Romania.
Anna: Great. And what exactly the training was? So, psychotherapy?
Adina: Yes, my first training once in foreign languages. So I was an english teacher for many years, and then I went to psychology, and then I had a master degree and a PhD later in anthropology. So psychotherapy came as a second career. I needed that. I think that this profession chose me, as I like to say it. For many days, people were just coming to me. I wasn’t doing this job, but people were just coming to me, telling the stories, opening up, complaining about their life, crying in the streets, and I didn’t know what was going on. And then I realized maybe I should do something about this. So, yes, now they’re not crying on the street anymore. They come into my office and they cried there. And I also charge money for that.
Anna: Very good. That’s supposed to be like that. Right. And so going into this field of psychotherapy, then, how did you, I suppose, later found out about regression therapy?
Adina: Well, it came by itself, because at that time, precisely ten years ago, my life partner, Victor introduced me to regression therapy. We were together as a couple and we joined for the first time, the annual convention, which was then taking place in Ireland. So, it was for the first time that I met this beautiful community, and I completely fell in love with it, because sometimes, you know, you just feel that this is like your family, and I knew all the people, and I just loved it. And then I, years later, I joined the Marion Boon’s training in Romania, and this is how I got my trainings in regression therapy. And later on, I applied, and I also became certified.
Anna:
Right. So that’s how long already you are regression therapist now?
Adina: Well, the first time I met the community was like ten years ago, but practicing, like, for five years, for six years now.
Anna: Wow. So, it’s been a while already, and you’re really doing it professional, and you combine it with psychotherapy. What exactly do you like about regression therapy and the work as a therapist?
Adina: Well, there would be so many things to say, but, you know, I came from a line of scientific research and from an environment where you couldn’t just, you know, improvise or go beyond the, you know, regular things. But there were so many clients that I couldn’t help, and especially clients that had difficulty issues. For instance, I would say that the main important thing that regression therapy helped me a lot was that I could also work with psychiatric clients, but not apply regression therapy to them. No, but what I understood and the knowledge that I took from regression therapy helped me understand better what was 1 going on with these psychiatric clients, because they usually go to psychiatry, they get pills, they are called crazy, and that’s it. And nobody knows what is happening to them. So, after getting to understand more what is beyond this psychopathology, then I could also work with these type of clients. And I sometimes combine EMDR. EMDR, you know, Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing is sometimes indicated with psychiatric clients. But regression, usually I don’t do with people that are with severe pathology. But the background from regression therapy, again, helped me a lot to understand. And because of that, many years ago in Holland, in Baarlo, I had, together with Victor, we had two-day preconvention workshop dealing with the thin line between normality and psychopathology. So, it was again this thin line where the science ends and where the regression therapy comes in between to help. So this was the main help for me that I received from regression therapy.
Anna: Well, then it’s really deep work and also very, I would assume, very difficult sometimes with such clients.
Adina: Yes. Yes, it is. Now I have fewer cases because sometimes, you know, you cannot have too many clients like this. Now, I don’t have too many cases, because it’s really challenging. And in my practice, I do like 20, 30% of my time I do regression therapy, and 70% I do regular psychotherapy. Why? Because usually the way I do things is that even when clients ask for regression therapy, I don’t promise them a session. First of all, I tell them, let’s have an interview for 1 hour to get to know you a little bit, to find out why you need regression therapy. What do you want to get from this? So, try to evaluate a little bit the client, if he’s functioning okay, if his adult self is strong enough to handle regression therapy, and many other criteria, like if the client is dissociated or not, because there are some contra- there are some contraindications when not to do regression. So first I make sure that I check that, and I don’t promise a client a regression therapy right away. Usually when things open up spontaneously in a session, I just work then, but not for a long time. So, I do short interventions. And then when we decide together that the client is somehow ready to have regression therapy, then we plan. Then we plan in two or three days when the issue is opened by itself. This is how I like to work and not to force things. I don’t believe in forcing things or giving in to the pressure of the client to have regression therapy at all costs. So I’m being careful. I’m, you know, trying to let the psyche do its own work and let the issue come to the surface by itself, and then it’s easier for the therapist as well. You know, you don’t have to work hard to choose what method would be okay for which client, because the client hands in the issue, so things just flow after that. That’s why I like to work like this. I feel I’m sometimes too old to work hard.
Anna: Well, you are working hard, because you just answered exactly the question that Bert, who nominated you to be next with this interview, actually asked you, which was the question is, “how do you choose when to do the regression? Either you come from a client or the issue?” and you just exactly did that, exactly how you do and what is your process. So we can tick that off. We’ve answered that question.
And so, when you do regression, actually the actual regression, do you have any favorite story or a favorite session that something extraordinary happened in the session with the client that maybe you can share or you would like to share with us?
Adina:
Well, I would have maybe so many stories that are quite interesting, but I remember one difficult session. You know, sometimes we remember not the perfect sessions but the worst. Or when we had difficulties. So, I just remember when I was at the beginning of practicing, and I remember I had a difficult client. And all the time, whatever step I was taking with her in the session, the first answer was always “I don’t know. I don’t know.” So, she kept doing that for more than half an hour, 1 hour. This is the typical answer of a child. It’s like quite fast. I don’t know. She was defending herself. She wasn’t really ready to work. It was, oh my God, what am I going to do now? But after a while I got used to accepting this “I don’t know.”
And then I kept, “And if you knew then what would happen?” So slowly, slowly she started to work. But it was like that. Yeah.
Anna: How long did it take you? I’m just curious now.
Adina: Well, it was like the beginning, like half an hour. She kept resisting the session. And then after a while, I remember I connected her with her intuition, and then she felt that she could be guided. “And if you used your own intuition, what would you answer?” And then when she got connected, because she didn’t know many things about connecting with her higher self. So, then I used the term intuition. So then things started to slow, to slowly, slowly improved.
Anna: Yes. The doors opened.
Adina: Yes, yes.
Anna: Wow, amazing. So actually, now we are here doing interview for EARTh. And you’ve been a member of EARTh for how long?
Adina: I think it’s around ten years. Around- more or less, 9 0r 10 years now. Yes, if I’m correctly.
Anna: So, it’s been a while. So you are experienced member, so to say, is there anything you think it’s important for EARTh to do as an association?
Adina: Well, I have been noticing how this association evolved during the years, and I’m really impressed because year after year things get better. So, what can I say then? Keep the things growing, keep things flowing, developing, because this association is focused on this. And for the therapist world, I would say that we should maintain a high standard in what we are doing. This is really important. And also, for schools, all the schools of regression therapy, this is also important to maintain a high standard of quality and also for therapists, my colleagues, to continue to learn and to study and to read, research, not just to focus on practice. And that’s all. I mean, practice is important, you know, having clients, having many sessions, but also, it’s also important to study, to research and to apply for workshops, you know, because I have this frustration that I admire so many colleagues in EARTh, but they don’t apply for, you know, they don’t submit to have workshops and I think this would be my invitation. Please there have the courage to come out and to present your work. I didn’t do this before, but for the first time Marion invited me, and you cannot say no to Marion. So, it was like the first step. Sometimes it’s important just to take a first step. And then I think there are so many people who can share and especially, you know, people with experience, but also people who don’t have much experienced students that, you know, they are just joining the association because they are the future of this association. So, these are my messages. And of course, come and join our annual conventions and congresses, of course.
Anna: Exactly. And there is just one coming right up very soon.
Adina: Yes.
Anna: Great. Thank you so much. It’s very important, everything you have pointed out. And so, I’ll just go quickly to sort of a fun question. So, you’ve been doing all these different therapy and you combine several things together. Have you, is there something that you still want to do and you haven’t realized yet in your practice for yourself as a therapist?
Adina: Well, yes, I think there are two things and then they are also like my plans for the future. I have always been invited by many people to have workshops, but for now I am not having any workshops. No, I’m not teaching because maybe I have been teaching in university for so long that for me this is not so important. Maybe, but I intend to start having workshops and maybe combine some of my therapies. And the second part would be to maybe to create my own website because I haven’t been doing this, I’m not so visible. So, I think that these two projects will go together somehow because I think there is something about, something typical about therapists and regression therapists. They are not so visible to people. So I’m trying to push myself a little bit to become more visible and maybe have international clients as well. I would like that. So these are my projects for the future.
Anna: It is amazing, really amazing plans and I wish you really good luck with that and have it come to reality. Thank you so much, Adina, for sharing all that. And now as we coming to the end of our little interview, as usual, at the end we announce who will be next. And you got to choose who will be the next person to be interviewed. And now you can announce them.
Adina: Okay. Well, as I mentioned before, Victor was the one who introduced me to the regression world. So now it’s a way of saying thank you by saying this “Thank you.” I want to invite him to have the next interview. And I think this is, in a way, normal. I feel it like something that comes of itself.
Anna: Right. So now we’re staying in Romania for the next one, you guys. So, we’re still here. Great. Great choice. And as the tradition goes, you get to ask the person who is next, a question. So what would be your question for Victor that he can answer in his interview?
Adina: Well, I would have so many questions for Victor, but maybe he could answer the question. What is his favorite, you know, specialty with regression therapy? What is his special session that he enjoys doing? Maybe he would like to focus on that because he’s an experienced regression therapist and maybe he would like to enlarge on this.
Anna: Right. This is very curious. So I’m curious already. And I hope you guys are also curious. So you’re going to stay tuned and see us or see me together with Victor in the next interview. Adina, thank you so much for your time and for sharing. And I hope to see you and everyone at the next event that is happening in October, which is a world congress, and we are meeting in Holland this time. Thank you, Adina, so very much.
Adina: Thank you, Anna, for your time and enjoy your evening. And, of course, see you in October.
Anna: Yes, see you in October. See you all in October. Bye, guys. See you next time.
