LifeCoach: coping with M E

[Sherby]

LifeCoach: coping with M E

Yet another bland piece by The Daily Telegraph Wednesday 29 September 2010

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthadvice/lifecoach/8032394/LifeCoach-coping-with-M-E.html

Our panel of experts answers your questions on everything from living
with M E to sluggish circulation and abdominal pain.

It is very important for sufferers to eat a balanced and varied diet

The aim of pacing is to remain as active as possible

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence advocates,
among other things, cognitive behavioral therapy and graded exercise therapy.

What a load of absolute dribble

Any news about XMRV studies carried out in the US by any chance? Guess not. I wonder why? .

 

[Esther12]

It didn't seem too bad to me. They were being pretty honest about not really knowing what to do. Maybe my standards are too low, but given how little we know about CFs that seems like a decent response from a news-paper advice column.

 

[Sherby]

Sorry Esther12 i don't agree, they mention


The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence advocates,
among other things, cognitive behavioural therapy and graded exercise therapy.

and

The action for ME group (www.afme.org.uk) offers support for patients
and friends and may act as a useful source.

But still no mention of any new XMRV studies. It would give hope to so many who
have not heard about the on-going studies.

I would not mind this type of article if all aspects of this illness was discussed. But its not.
Its still one sided. Thanks for your reply thou.

 

[thegodofpleasure]

I too cannot agree with you Esther12.
The Telegraph's so called "experts" are clearly commenting on an area of knowledge in which they are by no means expert.
The article therefore perpetuates the very unhelpful image of a "mystery" illness, with no clues as to its cause and why sufferers are ill.
Had they used real experts (like Nancy Klimas, Dan Peterson or Judy Mikovits) to make comment in the article, the discussion would certainly have taken on a completely different complexion.

TGOP

 

[Cort]

I don't think you can expect much from any general media source. This is like the Reader's Digest version of CFS - a very quickie look at CFS. There's not much there, for sure but look at what it didn't have, except with that one sentence on that Academies recommendations, almost no psychology! and an emphasis on how much we don't know and links to ME Associations rather than Wessely. So I think as 'bland' and low brow and unimpressive as it is it must present an improvement for the UK.

 

[Sherby]

Sorry Cort, you say that link to the MEA is better than Wessely.
But The ME Association and afme are the direct route to Wessely treatments of CBT and GET.
And i wonder if this is just another example of wesselys way to keep the publics view on ME/CFS as Psychological.

 

[andreamarie]

Could someone tell me what a lifecoach is? I have a friend who has severe emotional problems presently and in addition to everything else she's doing, has a life coach.

 

[Sasha]

Could someone tell me what a lifecoach is? I have a friend who has severe emotional problems presently and in addition to everything else she's doing, has a life coach.

It's supposed to be somebody who helps someone to move forward in life not by telling them the answers to their problems but in "coaching" them to solve them themselves, for example by asking the right questions and getting the client to come up with their own solutions.

I had a couple of free sessions using some newspaper tokens some years ago and found the two different practitioners very... different! One of them wanted me to use affirmations and we ended up having a massive argument down the phone because I said I thought they were a waste of time - I think some people who go into it get trained in a bunch of techniques and end up unable to question what they've been taught or to allow you to challenge their ideas. The other was much more flexible and asked me lots of questions about what I'd done, what had and hadn't worked, threw out a few ideas etc. and was very constructive.

What they all seem to stress is that they're not counsellors or therapists and that if you have depression, for example, they think you ought to get that treated first. If your friend has serious emotional problems I don't think a lifecoach would be qualified to help her; but the coach might be able to help her think through some specific problems (e.g. how to improve her career) if her emotional problems aren't all-consuming.

 

[andreamarie]

My friend is seeing a psychopharm, a therapist, a Chinese herbalist, and acupressurist an eastern nutritionist and a pcp because she's now developed severe anemia. She's never told me about the life coach but she's told another friend. She also hired a housekeeper. I'm trying to be compassionate but I'm sick myself and a bit jealous (of the housekeeper.).

 

[andreamarie]

her emotional problems are all encompassing. i feel badly because she's been a wonderful friend. her late husband had severe fms and died of colon cancer. before you blame the fms on the cancer, he was at risk and he refused to have a colonoscopy because of the fms. a lesson for us all.

 

[Wildcat]

Life coaching (including LP) is the latest ME ‘cure’ fad in the UK. This article is not an improvement, it reinforces association of ME with life coaching and we should not have to be grateful for it in any way. That it presents life coaching as a means of 'coping' with ME merely diverts attention away from the fact that ME sufferers are increasingly denied vital homecare and sickness benefits. And such articles also help soften up the public for accepting the inflated claims of life coaching cures for ME.

Not to mention being free advertising for the overcrowded NLP and life coaching industry.

Our UK media is saturated with stories of ME ‘recovery’ with life coaching and other unlikely ME ‘cures’ such as hiking (in the peak district), miracles (in Malta) and pole dancing (Glasgow). Not sleazy pole dancing though, no no, a proper pole dancing studio that was only open for a few months but did achieve their first ME ‘cure’.


The BBC and other national and local news channels and our national and local printed press have been advertising the NLP coaching course Lightning Process as a ‘cure’ for ME for free through these news and human interest story reports for a number of years. The BBC is subsidised by a compulsory Television Licence fee, must not carry paid for advertisements, and must not be used for free advertising for commercial services and products.

LP trainers are adamant that the NLP Life coaching called LP is not a treatment or cure but a training, but TV program presenters and journalists are not always so careful in their wording and the word ‘cure’ and recovery’ appear regularly in such reports. Lightning Trainers insist that LP is not a cure but a training and that if people with ME apply LP as instructed they will recover from ME. But that is just NLP-speak for cure.

 

[andreamarie]

Fortunately, life coaching for CFS has not been publicised as a treatment in the U.S. I live in an area where alternative therapies abound and I only heard of "life coaches" about a month ago.