I think the key here is patient selection. Clearly CFS is a waste basket diagnosis, and most people like myself are diagnosed largely by process of elimination.
However I cannot for the life of me see, how a psychological treatment can cure some of the physical symptoms of CFS/ME like POTS or other dysautonomia.
Clearly these methods have helped some people, and I'm happy that they have. But until there are some concrete diagnostic tests being used to assess fatigue and other symptoms a lot of this is guesswork really, and in all likelyhood people probably have different things wrong with them.
I think I read it on Dr Myhill's site, where she says some people have undoubtedly been helped by psychological techniques, others made worse. Question is why? She believes that if a person does have physical things wrong, then psychological techniques wont cure, but if a person has recovered phsycially, but their brain hasnt realised this yet. Then psychological methods may work. I'm inclined to agree with this, or at least it makes some sense to me.
For me I'm not even sure my diagnosis of CFS is correct anyway. My symptoms just dont seem to fit correctly, I've got completely debiliating fatigue, and am largely stuck to the couch/bed all day. I clearly have some form of dysautonomia, as standing up is what I cannot tolerate, and feeling like I'm in heart failure if I do. On the flip side, I dont get Post Exercise Malaise, just immediate malaise after standing, which goes after about 30mins of sitting down. I also have no muscle pain at all, and I dont have any cognitive/memory problems and can concentrate on a computer for like 12hrs a day.
I wonder if anyone who scored lowly on a test like the ATP mitochondrial tests, has been cured by psychological techniques. Be very interesting if they have.
I was reading another forum where someone said they had reverse therapy and it helped. Thing is their symptoms sounded nothing like mine, and theirs only came on when they started to worry about stuff. My symptoms only come on if I stand up, and if I'm laying flat I feel relatively ok.
Just my 2 cents.