"101 Misconceptions About M.E." (February 17 blog post)

[Dolphin]

"101 Misconceptions About M.E." (February 17 blog post)
http://spoonseeker.com/2016/02/17/101-misconceptions-about-m-e/

 

[Mrs Sowester]

• There must be some secret, sinister reason why people with ME tend to stay at home and use the internet a lot
• Probably the same reason they don’t buy many shoes

Made me laugh

 

[Jeckylberry]

I like the one where you'll be pleased to know your bloods are normal. I can relate. Damn you, bloods!

 

[barbc56]

• There must be some secret, sinister reason why people with ME tend to stay at home and use the internet a lot
• Probably the same reason they don’t buy many shoes

Made me laugh

I never bought many shoes even before my illness but now I'm basically down to slippers and tennis shoes. I often wear just wear socks around the house. I prefer to think of myself as a minimalist!

@Dolphin Thanks for another good thread!

 

[Scarecrow]

I like the one where you'll be pleased to know your bloods are normal. I can relate. Damn you, bloods!

Or as my GP notes go:

"I reassured the patient that all blood tests were normal. The patient was reassured."

 

[barbc56]

Not to get off topic but I have a copy of a cscan that says:

"The uterus appears to be missing".

Rather wishy-washy isn't it?

I read a funny article about these type of bloopers so need to find it. Real or not, they were hysterical!

I'll have to find an appropriate place to put it as I'm not sure it's threadworthy.

 

[Jeckylberry]

Or as my GP notes go:

"I reassured the patient that all blood tests were normal. The patient was reassured."

So reassuring! I'm sure you came out of there with a whole new attitude!

They think we fret over our bloods being abnormal, bless their little white coated hearts. It makes them feel reassured if we can give them normal bloods.

 

[worldbackwards]

Enjoyed that. Some personal favourites:

Calling trials on children cute names like ‘Smile’ and ‘Magenta’ makes them less inherently evil

Why are you attacking us? We’re the very people who are trying to help you

Sir Simon Wessely has to live in an iron bunker at the bottom of Loch Ness

There’s just not enough psychologists studying the lifestyle of people with ME

And with so many different diagnostic criteria already in use, it can’t do any harm to invent another one from time to time for no apparent reason, can’t it?

 

[Invisible Woman]

One of my personal favourites over the years has been "CFS is just something that happens to women of a certain age. You'll get over it."

 

[hellytheelephant]

How about: ' So you haven't really learnt how to manage your energy.'

 

[moosie]

I laughed my head off reading this! I so needed to laugh. Started reading it calmly - 'yes', 'yes', 'yes', - by the time I got to no. "79. So that's all right then" I was literally crying with laughter. It's so well written. I get very fed up about all this crap and to have it pointed out how stupid it really is did me the power of good. Everything is just as awful as it was before I read it but somehow my heart is a little lighter. Thank you again spoonseeker

 

[justy]

A really great blog post, have shared on FB - seems a good way to raise awareness.

 

[Comet]

6. People with ME don’t want a psychiatric diagnosis because of the stigma
7. Because we don’t have enough stigma already from having ME

The infallible logic of pseudoscience will surely make us think it has cured this disease.

 

[A.B.]

When many complain about PACE, the criticism can be ignored because it's coming from an organized campaign.
When few criticize PACE, the criticism can be ignored because it's only a small vocal minority.

 

[Old Bones]

Three other misconceptions about ME came from a "Yoga Guru" (also a medical doctor) visiting a local studio. He advised that ME doesn't occur in India. He further stated that ME is an illness that is caused by:

• living in an affluent society -- told to me after asking how many vehicles our household had (two -- both old "rust buckets"), and after noticing my hands were "soft", meaning I didn't do much manual labour
• sexual abuse by parents in childhood (no explanation given)
• being weak due to having been born in the wrong month of the year (in my case winter, when sun exposure was reduced)

I had attended a few restorative yoga classes, and one of the studio owners suggested I pay for a private consultation with this "joker". They treated him like a god. The whole consultation was recorded on video, which we still have. It took quite some time before we were able to laugh about it. The video shows me being coached (by his assistant) through the personal yoga program he devised for me, while he watched from a distance -- a series of contortions no body should be expected to perform. When I started to shake uncontrollably partway through, he asked if I was on drugs. I later showed my program to the yoga studio owner, and she stated it was the most strenuous she had ever seen, suitable only for an extremely-experienced yoga practitioner. That further reinforced his inaccurate opinion about ME. I spent five days on the couch recovering from this abuse, and I never returned to the yoga studio. In fact, when they phoned some time later to entice me back, I gave them a "piece of my mind" about their guru. I wasn't polite!

 

[Jeckylberry]

@Old Bones : what is he saying? If you follow his logic, if ME is caused by sexual abuse and car fumes, and no one at all has ME in India, then that means they don't have those things in India.. Interesting since the online news channels have been reporting on it. You wouldn't think they'd bother if no one gets it.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...a-biological-illness/articleshow/46418076.cms

These quacks won't get challenged in their shonky ideas if they deal mainly with healthy people! He got all enthusiastic about curing you but brought no intuition, observation or even respect to the interaction. Not enough healing practitioners of any persuasion are open and teachable. Too many masters for something they don't know enough about. Ignorance and enthusiasm is a dangerous combination.

It's just another example of the conceit of the well.

 

[Old Bones]

These quacks won't get challenged in their shonky ideas if they deal mainly with healthy people! He got all enthusiastic about curing you but brought no intuition, observation or even respect to the interaction. Not enough healing practitioners of any persuasion are open and teachable. Too many masters for something they don't know enough about. Ignorance and enthusiasm is a dangerous combination.

@Jeckylberry Thanks for the article link. I agree with your last sentence, and have experienced these characteristics in many (probably) well-intentioned alternative/complementary medical practitioners. However, an even more dangerous combination is ignorance and arrogance -- an accurate description for the yoga "guru" mentioned in my earlier post.

 

[Jeckylberry]

Yes, true, arrogance is being ignorant only you don't know it then act under that conceit. Enthusiastically!

 

[barbc56]

@Jeckylberry Thanks for the article link. I agree with your last sentence, and have experienced these characteristics in many (probably) well-intentioned alternative/complementary medical practitioners. However, an even more dangerous combination is ignorance and arrogance -- an accurate description for the yoga "guru" mentioned in my earlier post.

Possibly the Dunning Kruger effect also called the arrogance of ignorance, plays into this.

I agree that this is prolific with many alternative practioners but there is a continuum and the medical profession doesn't get a pass on this. First year medical students might fall under this effect.

When I started my studies at the university in psychology, after a few courses, I thought I had most of the answers when it came to human behavior. Pretty obnoxious. By the time I graduated, actually by the end of the year, I realized that human behavior is complex, unpredictable and there is no one answer for everything. Just as most of life. I didn't study therapy but know several who have and they say the same thing. There are more unanswered questions than answered questions.

This is supposed to be a common occurance, whatever the area of study as well as other fields when first starting.

QUOTE]The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias whereby relatively unskilled people suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability to be much higher than it really is. Dunning and Kruger attributed this bias to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their own ineptitude and evaluate their own ability accurately. Their research also suggestscorollaries: highly skilled individuals may underestimate their relative competence, erroneously assuming that tasks which are easy for them are also easy for others.[/QUOTE]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect

ETA Some, I won't point fingers here, are just plain arrogant as well as wearing blinders

ETA I have this thread confused with another one. Hint: First year medical student. There are so many threads, I can't keep them straight. But it's positive as there have been so many developmens in such a short period of time and the information is appreciated!

 

[Jeckylberry]

Figures there's a name for it!