An interview with Author and Creator of The Essentials Method, Anita Bentata

  1. Tell us about your journey! What led you to this point?  

I started this journey escaping with my two young children from severe domestic violence. I went into therapy to make sure it never happened again and later changed careers to become a therapist specialising in trauma, stress and abuse.  

I am a psychotherapist, author, thought leader and online facilitator. I am the recipient of multi-international awards and national recognition for my program with women.  

 
 

I qualified through a basic university qualification and then went on to study an additional four years to learn about trauma, abuse, developmental and adult trauma, acute and chronic trauma, and defence systems.  

I found the field lacking and was appalled that no counselling, social work, psychiatric or psychology qualification adequately trains practitioners in trauma, abuse and how to work with the brain.  

We wouldn’t take our car to a mechanic if they didn’t have adequate training about the workings of our car. People are in trauma, being re-traumatised, or in therapy for far longer than needed.  

 
 

The journey to resolve trauma led me to question a lot about therapy, love, relationships, sense of self, society and family. Through my work, I started creating my own theories and methods. After 26 years in the field,  

I developed my Essentials Method to resolve trauma or stress in the fastest and easiest possible way. This approach draws on neuroscience, western and eastern science and psychology. In 2020 the Victorian Multicultural  

Commission funded me to run my online group program based on the Essentials Method. I had the opportunity to test my approach with 80+ women. The women received amazing results. Women learnt how to work with their brains and create new neural pathways. The women resolved trauma, sleep issues, health issues, work issues, parenting became easier, relationships improved and women began leaving abuse – without the program even discussing abuse.  

 
 I believe there is vital information that is not common knowledge that everyone should learn about love and relationships, and their brain in stress when growing up.  

 
 I am passionate about reaching all women with my solutions focussed approach to resolve and prevent abuse and trauma.  

 
 

 
 

  1. What has been your biggest achievement?  

My biggest achievement has been thinking and questioning assumptions in society and from that creating The Essentials Method and having this approach transform hundreds of women’s lives. I love that what I developed can 

enable women and children lives easier in a way that wasn’t possible for me and my children earlier in our lives. 

 
 

  1. What’s the biggest result you help your clients to achieve?  

Resolve trauma and feel free no matter what is going on around them or in their past. So they own their power to create, intimate instead of being passive or a reactor or repeater. So they have skills for life and won’t ever feel stuck or 

need therapy, no matter what is going on in their life.   

 
 

  1. What would be your biggest piece of advice for readers who want to achieve the same?  

Learn how to work with your brain and what creates new neural pathways, It is not logic or insight. Learn how to tap into your right brain. Be willing to experiment with realities beyond what you perceive, so you recognise how you sometimes 

mislabel and this has the possibility to lead you into repeating old beliefs and patterns instead of creating fresh, new opportunities and experiences. Learn the Foundation of Soothing Self Talk™ so you change your neural pathways. Given the Cleveland Clinic found we have 70,000 thoughts in a day and 95% of these thoughts are repeat thoughts and 80% of these are negative, how we label and think is the greatest skill we can leverage. It doesn’t need to take much time in your day but there are particular ways of labelling and thinking that repeat the Old Map and particular ways that activate the New Map.  

 
 

  1. What are the biggest mistakes you see people make and how can they be avoided?  

Self-talk is the most misunderstood and underutilised skill that has the most leverage on any given day. I am not talking about willpower or positive thinking, as both these responses don’t incorporate the whole self and therefore lead to a pattern of swinging and polarities, becoming overwhelmed, confused, angry or feelings of helplessness. This is because people don’t use their whole brains. Left brain skills are highly over-used at the cost of right-brain intelligence. Left brain interpretations are incomplete and inaccurate, when not engaged and informed by the right brain. Learn about how the brain really works. Not in scientific terms, but in real life relatable terms, so you can, in the moment, change neural pathway patterns as you adjust how you interpret and respond to your daily response instead of being in repetition and habit.  

 
How you label your experience is very powerful. In my practice over decades, I have seen a pattern of people mislabeling, which leads people back into what I name, the Old Map – the well worn neural pathway momentum of old interpretations and habitual responses. 

Luana Ribeira

Luana Ribeira is a best selling author, international speaker and host of business Innovators Radio.