Hip
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@CFSRecoveryGroupLondon
One ME/CFS patient on this forum did get major improvements from Reverse Therapy — see her thread here and blog here. She writes quite well, and seems to have some insight into how Reverse Therapy works.
These major improvements were obtained after only 8 one hour Skype sessions with the therapist.
From what I can gather, Reverse Therapy is a more tailored psychological therapy, where the therapist tries to uncover any habitual stress responses that an individual has learnt, with the idea that these stress responses will place the person under a lot of pressure that they may not even be aware off. So Reverse Therapy tries to identify and then change these learnt habits of stressing under certain situations, in order to bring peace and calmness to the mind. Reverse Therapy is also focused on rectifying any disconnect that you may have with your emotions (especially where you have learnt to ignore your emotions because of social requirements, etc).
This actually requires quite a bit of intelligence and empathy from the therapist, because every person will be different in terms of where these learnt stress responses lie, and the therapist must first try to uncover and identify them before they can be unlearnt. So it is not a one-size-fits-all therapy, but an individualized treatment.
That is perhaps something you could look at if you are interested in psychological therapies. To me, Reverse Therapy seems quite sane and sober, in contrast to something like the Lightning Process, which proceeds more like a cult religion of positive belief.
The reason that any form of psychological therapy gets a very negative reception on these forums only really relates to the appallingly bad politics that have surrounded ME/CFS in the last few decades (although thankfully things are improving now, in the last few years).
These bad politics essentially revolve around dodgy disability insurance companies in the US and UK trying to make a biological physical disease like myalgic encephalomyelitis look as if it is an "all in the mind" psychologically-caused condition, which it is not. The reason insurance companies did this was simply to avoid having to pay disability benefits to millions of ME patients — insurance rules usually stipulate that they will not provide long term disability payouts for psychologically-caused conditions.
As a result of these unscrupulous disability insurance companies making a physical disease like ME look as if it is "all in the mind," much of the medical profession has ignored ME patients to large degree, and biomedical research on ME had to a large extent fallen by the wayside. So these bad politics originating with the disability insurance companies shenanigans had tragic consequences for ME, consequences that still affect us today.
I am sure you must know something about these bad politics, if you have had ME/CFS for 14 years.
If it had not been for these bad politics, I am sure nobody would mind or get hot under the collar about ME/CFS patients trying out or promoting psychological therapies. Had ME/CFS been clearly categorized as a physical disease, psychological therapies would have be seen as a perhaps quirky and unusual approach, that occasionally pays dividends. But there would have been no negative views expressed about psychological therapies, if the medical profession had continued to view ME/CFS as a physical organic disease (which it was categorized as originally), and if these bad politics had not entered the arena and perverted the course of science.
But because of these bad politics, anyone who engages in psychological therapies inadvertently acts to reinforce the erroneous view that ME/CFS is "all in the mind," and all the tragic consequences that this incorrect view has led to.
And that is the sole reason why you are experiencing this negative response to your idea of a support group for psychological therapies.
Usually you will find people on this forum very helpful towards other patients. But it's just that ME/CFS patients throughout the world have long been involved in a political struggle to get ME/CFS taken seriously as a physical organic disease, and to try to eradicate from medical thinking the bogus idea that ME/CFS is "all in the mind".
However, if in some rare instances, psychological therapies do help certain ME/CFS patients, then that's fine. Those patients though would be advised to be a bit careful in how they present their success stories, so that it does not play into the hands of those insurance companies who want to make ME/CFS look as if it is "all in the mind."
One ME/CFS patient on this forum did get major improvements from Reverse Therapy — see her thread here and blog here. She writes quite well, and seems to have some insight into how Reverse Therapy works.
These major improvements were obtained after only 8 one hour Skype sessions with the therapist.
From what I can gather, Reverse Therapy is a more tailored psychological therapy, where the therapist tries to uncover any habitual stress responses that an individual has learnt, with the idea that these stress responses will place the person under a lot of pressure that they may not even be aware off. So Reverse Therapy tries to identify and then change these learnt habits of stressing under certain situations, in order to bring peace and calmness to the mind. Reverse Therapy is also focused on rectifying any disconnect that you may have with your emotions (especially where you have learnt to ignore your emotions because of social requirements, etc).
This actually requires quite a bit of intelligence and empathy from the therapist, because every person will be different in terms of where these learnt stress responses lie, and the therapist must first try to uncover and identify them before they can be unlearnt. So it is not a one-size-fits-all therapy, but an individualized treatment.
That is perhaps something you could look at if you are interested in psychological therapies. To me, Reverse Therapy seems quite sane and sober, in contrast to something like the Lightning Process, which proceeds more like a cult religion of positive belief.
The reason that any form of psychological therapy gets a very negative reception on these forums only really relates to the appallingly bad politics that have surrounded ME/CFS in the last few decades (although thankfully things are improving now, in the last few years).
These bad politics essentially revolve around dodgy disability insurance companies in the US and UK trying to make a biological physical disease like myalgic encephalomyelitis look as if it is an "all in the mind" psychologically-caused condition, which it is not. The reason insurance companies did this was simply to avoid having to pay disability benefits to millions of ME patients — insurance rules usually stipulate that they will not provide long term disability payouts for psychologically-caused conditions.
As a result of these unscrupulous disability insurance companies making a physical disease like ME look as if it is "all in the mind," much of the medical profession has ignored ME patients to large degree, and biomedical research on ME had to a large extent fallen by the wayside. So these bad politics originating with the disability insurance companies shenanigans had tragic consequences for ME, consequences that still affect us today.
I am sure you must know something about these bad politics, if you have had ME/CFS for 14 years.
If it had not been for these bad politics, I am sure nobody would mind or get hot under the collar about ME/CFS patients trying out or promoting psychological therapies. Had ME/CFS been clearly categorized as a physical disease, psychological therapies would have be seen as a perhaps quirky and unusual approach, that occasionally pays dividends. But there would have been no negative views expressed about psychological therapies, if the medical profession had continued to view ME/CFS as a physical organic disease (which it was categorized as originally), and if these bad politics had not entered the arena and perverted the course of science.
But because of these bad politics, anyone who engages in psychological therapies inadvertently acts to reinforce the erroneous view that ME/CFS is "all in the mind," and all the tragic consequences that this incorrect view has led to.
And that is the sole reason why you are experiencing this negative response to your idea of a support group for psychological therapies.
Usually you will find people on this forum very helpful towards other patients. But it's just that ME/CFS patients throughout the world have long been involved in a political struggle to get ME/CFS taken seriously as a physical organic disease, and to try to eradicate from medical thinking the bogus idea that ME/CFS is "all in the mind".
However, if in some rare instances, psychological therapies do help certain ME/CFS patients, then that's fine. Those patients though would be advised to be a bit careful in how they present their success stories, so that it does not play into the hands of those insurance companies who want to make ME/CFS look as if it is "all in the mind."
