Orwellian/Wesselian doublethink in GET/CBT
Someone mentioned a few pages ago that ordering CBT and GET is assuming that the person is doing something wrong, and I cannot agree more with this concept.
It is pretentious to think that a PWC is at fault and guilty of bring so low emotionally, cognitively or deconditioned. These people obviously have never experienced CFS, PEM, OI and all the symptoms that CFS can engender.
Without feeling like a victim, I think that there has been lots of wrong judgements to benefit insurance companies, psychiatrists, governments and disability plans. This is why patients are so reluctant to hear about GET and CBT.
Personally, I would gladly accept SUPPORTIVE and CONFIDENTIAL therapy from a counsellor, and perhaps some advice on strengthening exercises that could help me maintaining my condition while my disease is taken care of by a medical doctor, hopefully an infectious disease doctor. Staci Stevens would be one that I would trust. Occupational therapist sent to me from the disability insurance, not so much.
Content for CAA: I will reiterate before that biological research for cause and treatment should be the #1 priority. Please leave the emotional well-being and physical therapy up to the patient. I suspect that each one of us has the competence to reach out for these needs in due time, in case they can't help themselves. This forum has proven to be full of peer to peer expertise where sharing is encouraged and cherished.
This is how I feel about it, too. I first went to a doctor to find out why I
could not DO what I used to DO. He was already captured by the "it's depression" ideology, so he turned my complaints around backwards and told me that I had gained weight because of doing less and this weight gain was making me tired and made me feel like I could only do less! No amount of facts could re-orient his thinking.
This is exactly what the psychobabble/doublethink group does. It takes the facts and turns them around backwards. (ME/CFS doesn't make you "tired" or "sick". Your belief in this non-existant illness is what makes you "tired" and "sick".)
As Kati said, this attitude stems from the belief, or desire to make one believe, that the PWME is
wrong...in behavior, in thought. For those who have eyes to see, and from those who look for the truth without the politics, there have been 1000's of studies over the last 20 years and more that have shown multiple biological abnormalities that show cause for our symptoms. They've proven patients are not
wrong. These studies have gotten more and more convincing over time, if one is open minded.
The whole GET/CBT promotion is an example of what George Orwell, in 1984, called
doublethink:
Doublethink lies at the very heart of Ingsoc, since the essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty. To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing them and to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies - all this is indispensably necessary.
This is why, for those of us stuck in objectivity and unseduced by doublethink, it so crazy-making to have this kind of doublethink appear in what we hope is a newletter that both understands and supports us.
The fact that we are even debating the merits of GET/CBT infers that it
must have some benefit. I believe this only indicates the success of the Orwellian/Wesselian Party in injecting this virus into the conversation. The antidote, IMO, is not to have any more of this unless and until a cause and a treatment are found. Focussing on "coping" gives implicit agreement that nothing can be done about ME/CFS and I think that is highly inappropriate at this time.
