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Another hypnotist claims he can cure ME??? (Steven Blake)

Boule de feu

Senior Member
Messages
1,118
Location
Ottawa, Canada
... Well this is what he claims on his blog.

He is using hypnosis. It is his own technique.

Scam or truth ?

google: explained well dot com chronic fatigue the answer
 

Calathea

Senior Member
Messages
1,261
Scam, and a common one at that. Frankly, there should be laws against people making unsupported claims like this, especially as they are preying on desperate people and doing them great harm.
 

alex3619

Senior Member
Messages
13,810
Location
Logan, Queensland, Australia
I have tried NLP, meditation, hypnosis, autohypnosis, positive thinking, affirmations: zip, zero, zilch results.

This does not mean its a scam necessarily. He could just be severely ill-informed. How many out there think that CFS and ME are just fatigue, or even just post-viral fatigue? How many are wrongly diagnosed? If you cure a misdiagnosed patient, is that a scam? Or just a mistake?

Bye, Alex
 

taniaaust1

Senior Member
Messages
13,054
Location
Sth Australia
Probably not a scam.. he's not saying he's cured hundreds but is talking basically about 2 people with ME/CFS who he fixed... It sounds realistic.. one only thou had the issue for 2 years (so is in the time frame where many do spontanously recover).


By his post he thinks ME and CFS of the Wessely kind are the same thing, he believes ME and CFS have same underlaying cause (your brain has programmed you into staying sick).. Probably is helping some CFS patients who dont have ME, there is also the possibly he could be helping the anxiety of some ME patients which in turn may cause less stress on system so possibly less crashes and OVER TIME, they may well improve.

Hypnosis can be great for anxiety so for "that part of ME" it may well be worth a try..

Rates of ME is only one in 200 people where for CFS it is said to be six times higher... so quite possibly he is helping a large group of patients.

* If one does try hypnosis for anything.. my own experience of hypnosis therapy, is I actually didnt think it was working at all (I didnt even feel like I was going out), till suddenly I had very noticable effects of it after the 4th or 5th session...fortunately I had been warned that I would need 6 sessions.

(I wasnt having hypnosis for ME but having it for a traumatic experience ...my daughter had died for a time and I had a severe fear around that, anxiety and some depression).

umm this has got me thinking.. maybe it would be useful for my insomnia? (quite frustrated with my latest sleep drug trial).

Beware of people online saying they can cure.. how many truely do?... I'd think it would be better to find a medical hypnotherapist or find one which people you know can recommend if you want to try hyponotherapy.

from his site
"During my training I was able to literally turn off the back pain that had blighted my life for over 25 years".

Hypnotherapy.. there is no doubt it can fix or help some peoples pain. People have even had major surgery without anethestics using hypnotherapy. So that claim probably isnt wrong.
 

Snow Leopard

Hibernating
Messages
5,902
Location
South Australia
This does not mean its a scam necessarily. He could just be severely ill-informed. How many out there think that CFS and ME are just fatigue, or even just post-viral fatigue? How many are wrongly diagnosed? If you cure a misdiagnosed patient, is that a scam? Or just a mistake?

I have little doubt that the guy believes he is doing the right thing. But some people are more susceptible to confirmation bias than others. It doesn't necessarily have to have anything to do with misdiagnosed patients.

I mean we've all had periods (usually earlier on) where we've convinced ourselves that we are getting better and are going to be healthy soon right? In those cases, the improvement would be attributed to the 'treatment'.

The problem is that fooling ourselves into thinking we are getting better is not the same thing as actual recovery.
 

taniaaust1

Senior Member
Messages
13,054
Location
Sth Australia
I mean we've all had periods (usually earlier on) where we've convinced ourselves that we are getting better and are going to be healthy soon right? In those cases, the improvement would be attributed to the 'treatment'.

The problem is that fooling ourselves into thinking we are getting better is not the same thing as actual recovery.

Also actually dangerous to some (depending of cause on how one is reprogrammed).. how many of us have gone and actually convinced ourselves we are recovering and then gone out and done too much and crashed bad or made ourselves worst.

I do think hypnotherapy due to that could actually be a bad thing for some due to that. Dangerous to be convinced that. Unfortuantetely that guy is niave and dont seem to be aware of this possibility in some as he obviously does believe the issue is just in ones subconcious thoughts.
 

Boule de feu

Senior Member
Messages
1,118
Location
Ottawa, Canada
He says that his technique is not CBT but he does have the same opinion about why someone has ME (perpetuating false beliefs).

I have tried to "reverse" my thoughts and decided one day I had enough of being sick. I would ignore my symptoms and never complain or talk about my illness ever again. It did not last long!

He said that it took him six months to perfect his technique. Why say that?
 

garcia

Aristocrat Extraordinaire
Messages
976
Location
UK
Can we change the title of this thread? It's very misleading.
 

Calathea

Senior Member
Messages
1,261
I think we've being very naive to assume that anyone making these claims is in full ignorance of the situation. He's not a child, and this isn't something which just occurred to him and which he hasn't had a chance to check up on yet. He's making unrealistic claims (a cure in one session), and he's guilt-tripping potential clients over the cost. He's also employing exactly the same theory as other practitioners of similar "therapies", namely the idea that the unconscious thinks it is long-term ill and has programmed the body to respond in that way. I think he knows perfectly well what he's doing.
 

Boule de feu

Senior Member
Messages
1,118
Location
Ottawa, Canada
Can we change the title of this thread? It's very misleading.

I've tried to change it (1 or 2 minutes after I posted it) but could not get to the title edit section. This is why my first post shows a different title. I added that "he claims" that he can do it.
Too bad it doesn't show in the title. sorry!
 

Boule de feu

Senior Member
Messages
1,118
Location
Ottawa, Canada
I think we've being very naive to assume that anyone making these claims is in full ignorance of the situation. He's not a child, and this isn't something which just occurred to him and which he hasn't had a chance to check up on yet. He's making unrealistic claims (a cure in one session), and he's guilt-tripping potential clients over the cost. He's also employing exactly the same theory as other practitioners of similar "therapies", namely the idea that the unconscious thinks it is long-term ill and has programmed the body to respond in that way. I think he knows perfectly well what he's doing.

He does say that he read a lot about the condition, so he must know.
 

Enid

Senior Member
Messages
3,309
Location
UK
Oh dear another quickie cure solving everything despite the wealth of scientific findings/pathologies which need to be addressed/treated.
 

PhoenixDown

Senior Member
Messages
456
Location
UK
I agree with Calathea, this guys knows he's being dishonest with the probability (unless he's deluded himself), just like Gupta and the "Amygdala Retraining" product. It's a numbers game where a subset (a small one I believe) of the CFS patient group will respond to this kind of therapy and the practitioners don't have to answer to anyone in regards those who they failed to heal or made worse.

"Even when someone can prove they are cured sceptics say that they couldnt have had M.E. in the first place!"
He's done his research.
I can assure you our time together will be very beneficial & whilst I cannot guarantee any particular result
and he's legally covered himself here.
 

SilverbladeTE

Senior Member
Messages
3,043
Location
Somewhere near Glasgow, Scotland
When ME is finally defined/identified, he should be sued for fraud as then there will be no doubt that all such is QUACKERY

sincere or not, it's bullshit, the very fact he has only helped 2 out of who knows how many, is proof his system's a croc of poo
Frikkin Medieval voodo witchdoctor bullcrap :/
 

Calathea

Senior Member
Messages
1,261
I think he's claiming that he can cure it with NLP, although the method appears to be exactly the same as that proposed by the Lightning Process and a few other dubious so-called therapies out there. The horrible thing is that so many people with ME are so desperate to get better than they will try anything, even this brainwashing. Add that to years of being told by society that you're not really ill, and far too many patients are willing to accept being told that they have convinced themselves that they're ill, when in reality they've spent far more time trying to convince themselves that they're well and overexerting themselves into massive deterioration.

Silverblade, ME has been defined for decades, and we do in fact have laws about making unfounded medical claims in this country.

It's a numbers game where a subset (a small one I believe) of the CFS patient group will respond to this kind of therapy and the practitioners don't have to answer to anyone in regards those who they failed to heal or made worse.

In my experience, this subset almost never shows a true recovery long-term. Look at the websites promoting such "methods": they are all based on testimonials rather than research, and the testimonials are always from patients who say that they are improved 2-3 months later.

I once followed the blog of a young woman who claimed that she had been cured of ME by one of these methods. Her blog began very early on, during the treatment (which, typically, was the sort of treatment where you are forced to sign a form saying that you won't discuss certain aspects of it, itself a huge warning sign). It was clearly the brainwashing variety, where she'd been firmly told that she had trained herself to "do ME" rather than to "have ME", and that she just needed to work through the symptoms by doing something energetic. She got by on emergency energy reserves and adrenalin for a short time, then she started deteriorating. It was painful to witness. She'd been trained to overexert herself as a response to her body's signs that she needed rest, and so she kept doing so, and getting worse, and blaming herself for getting worse. Her blog eventually disappeared (the possible reasons why are not nice) but by the time it did, she was already very ill. Her LJ name was iceylime if anyone has been able to find other traces of her, I didn't really look.

I have noticed a trend for these types of faux treatments. I think they're cashing in on three features of ME in particular:

1) It's poorly understood, medical theories vary widely, and it's next to impossible to prove anything when it comes to causes or treatments. This gives charlatans free reign to invent any crazy theory they want, for instance the hypothalamitis notion (which was nothing whatsoever to do with real hypothalamitis).

2) Because of this lack of knowledge, ME patients are used to poor support and social stigma. This makes them unusually easy to manipulate via shaming techniques.

3) The core feature of ME is Post-Exertional Malaise (PEM), i.e. a delayed response to exertion. People with ME can sometimes delay PEM further through sheer willpower (living on adrenalin etc.), and may be able to fool themselves into thinking that they are better, or at least stable, for a short period of time (maximum seems to be 2-3 months, and that's in exceptional cases). The problem is that this sort of brainwashing-induced seeming-remission always masks deterioration caused by the overexertion that is part of the method, and once the high has worn off, the ME patient crashes very badly indeed. This can range from simple deterioration (e.g. active to housebound) to death, and I believe there was a recent child suicide related to this. Anyway, this feature means that by focusing on the short-term seeming improvement, you can claim that you are causing a real improvement. Then you simply deflect attention away from the long-term deterioration, either by selective testimonials or by a gagging contract.
 

PhoenixDown

Senior Member
Messages
456
Location
UK
When ME is finally defined/identified, he should be sued for fraud as then there will be no doubt that all such is QUACKERY
The law doesn't work like that, you can't retrospectively sue him if the definition of "CFS/ME" changed (assuming he updated/changed/withdrew his claims once the new research came through). In the mean time though he should know that behavioural/thought-change-therapy outcomes aren't nearly as good as he's claiming, and that he ought to be stating that he clearly has no way of objectively testing whether or not his therapy is appropriate for anyone with the waste basket label CFS/ME.
 

alex3619

Senior Member
Messages
13,810
Location
Logan, Queensland, Australia
3) The core feature of ME is Post-Exertional Malaise (PEM), i.e. a delayed response to exertion. People with ME can sometimes delay PEM further through sheer willpower (living on adrenalin etc.), and may be able to fool themselves into thinking that they are better, or at least stable, for a short period of time (maximum seems to be 2-3 months, and that's in exceptional cases). The problem is that this sort of brainwashing-induced seeming-remission always masks deterioration caused by the overexertion that is part of the method, and once the high has worn off, the ME patient crashes very badly indeed. This can range from simple deterioration (e.g. active to housebound) to death, and I believe there was a recent child suicide related to this. Anyway, this feature means that by focusing on the short-term seeming improvement, you can claim that you are causing a real improvement. Then you simply deflect attention away from the long-term deterioration, either by selective testimonials or by a gagging contract.

This is my experience with Graded Exercise Therapy, though there was no (external) brain washing evolved. On one occasion it took several months to really set in, a few years earier it happened in just two weeks. The amount of time we can push through varies. When I was verging on severe, pushing through was less than an hour before severe exhaustion. I could still push through after that, kind of, but I was operating like I was moving through a sea of jello ... so ... very ... slow ... to .... do .... anything - and it took weeks to begin to recover even partially. So I can relate that if someone were convinced to exercise (I had convinced myself, I was pro-exercise back then) then they could do very great harm to themselves, both physically and psychologically.

Bye, Alex