The first half of the article was wonderfully excellent.
Too bad they didn't stop there.
I know it was written for a psychology journal so I suppose I should expect psychology to enter into it. But it would have been better without the section 'treating the symptoms'.
As always, I feel obliged to point out, this quote for example: (CBT) "
Therapy helped me understand that I was not becoming depressed but becoming ill," she says.
Isn't that lovely. Except she would not have thought that she was becoming depressed in the first place if it were not for Dr's disbelief in a biological cause and a mandate to refer us all to CBT for treatment. There would have been appropriate information available and if she sought out a Dr they would have been able to inform her that if it was CFS then it was biological. There would be no reason to seek CBT to rectify this mistake. The mistake she sought to rectify was a result of dysfunctional thinking of CBT adherents.
This is what I would say to the wannabe helpful CBT purveyors.
CBT. Why is this such a heavily promoted treatment protocol particularly given how much damage it has caused. Give us a break.
Enough with the CBT and how good/helpful it is when properly handled. Everybody has a dysfunctional thought or two rolling around. Why focus on ME as a home for misguided thinking patterns.
There is nothing specific about CBT that makes it specially suited to this illness and plenty about it that has done horrible abusive harm. Let it go already. Find some other illness to (more appropriately and delicately) use the wonder treatment that is CBT.
For those of us fortunate enough to have friends and/or family we can talk to then they can help with any problems we have with coping. If not them then a priest, pastor, imam, rabbi, guru. If not them then there is PR here with a large community of people who understand and offer encouragement,
and descriptions of what helped them.
CBT can't even be classified as a form of communication. It is a 'talking at you', authoritarian, we don't need to know a thing about you, scripted, inflexible, not amenable to subtlety or nuance approach. When it helps remember that a stopped watch is right twice a day. Not to mention, all of the examples I've ever read about CBT being helpful are related to dealing with loss.
So I'd call that grief counselling.
There must be one heck of an investment in this (CBT) for it to be so important to keep the idea of CBT as this amazing resource alive despite it's rather large limitations in the overall treatment of the many symptoms of ME. Why keep badgering us with it despite that it's acknowledged that we have some major antipathy. Because you know so much better than we do that it is good for us?
Holy Hubris Batman.