I have a slightly different take (after listening to the whole thing). I don't think they are frauds, exactly. And they seem genuinely empathetic. It's very plausible to me that their therapy might help certain people who are overwhelmed, depressed, repressed, exhausted, confused, etc. Their error, of course, is in conflating such conditions with ME/CFS/FM etc.
The reason I listened to the whole thing is because they stressed early on that physical disease can manifest from the mishandling of our emotions -- a provocative, but not revolutionary, idea. They even conjectured that ME can progress to MS. I wanted to hear more about their theory of the mechanics behind this process. Perhaps they'd have some new insights? Unfortunately, this is precisely the area in which they are most superficial. This is where they're out too far over their skis, probably operating on mere hunches. They are much more comfortable defaulting to simpler themes such as the connection between emotions and fatigue.
The challenge for us here, who are taken aback by their conclusions, is that there are yet no reliable delineations between many different manifestations of similar conditions and symptoms. Perhaps even some members of Phoenix Rising would find themselves "cured" with Mickel Therapy. Others are bedridden with bodies at war with lingering and chronic retroviral or neurological or cellular or transmitter malfunctions. Some will disagree, but I'll bet there are as many unique combinations of disease etiologies here as there are members. Which is why the whole damn thing is so hard to figure out. (AIDS, by contrast, is caused by a specific, named retrovirus, HIV.)
For instance, while I don't believe stress causes this family of diseases, I do believe, for some, it can be part of the soup that triggered their illness. This is very different from implying (as the Mickel folk do) that the cure is to learn to handle stress differently. Even if I was totally to blame for blowing out my Camaro's engine by racing it without oil, it can't simply be fixed by filling it back up with oil and driving slower. Whatever insights some of these people may sometimes have, they seem to gloss over the fact that many of us are trying to function with severely impaired physical processes. (But then we're probably the one's who Mickel believes will take years and years of therapy to cure.)
The root of their system seems to be that we have two types of emotions: primary (instant, spontaneous, passing) and secondary (the verbal stories we chronically tell ourselves about the primary emotions). The primary emotions are crucial to us, and they should help guide our actions. The secondary emotions are where we risk making ourselves sick. But what if we were to live for an entire year under a constant onslaught of survival-based primary emotions, as say in wartime? Recently, finally, PTSD has been recognized as physiological. But not everyone who goes to war gets PTSD. Not everyone exposed to viruses gets ME. Doesn't it seem like each person's recipe of factors leading to their physical debilitation was unique? So, then, wouldn't it follow that there may be many unique paths back to health? Certainly we know enough about the mind-body connection that we should be able to recognize the role our emotions can play in our path to better health.
Still, these Mickels would be well advised to stop talking so glibly about ME, FM, MS, prostate cancer (!), etc, as if they all will eventually evaporate as we gradually improve the way we process our emotions.