I'd like to know who first came up with this program; Gupta, Hopper, Neuffer, etc, they all claim to have had this incredible, unique insight that led them to the development of their respective neuro retraining regimens. And apparently they all use the "stop, stop, stop" thing. Seriously, who was first?
Gupta's article was published in 2001. That's the earliest reference I can find. Amir Norris may have been the first with the treatment model though, I know he has been in this business awhile.
The main idea is not difficult if you have some background in cognitive psych and/or neuroscience. I have a tiny background in that area (one related grad course, plus reading studies). I believe they could have each come up with the basic idea, but perhaps borrowed treatment ideas from each other. I came up with pretty much the same idea at one point in my attempt to treat my general anxiety disorder (GAD), and my theory was independent of these theories. The difference was, I could not make it work. The concept is not unique at all, the general ideas are mainstream in anxiety and PTSD models.
Here's my take... in theory how these therapies work for conditions like PTSD and anxiety disorders like GAD (I'm not suggesting this maps to ME/CFS, just describing how the model in theory works). Basically, the limbic system (including amygala and hippocampus) takes all kinds of inputs from other systems in the body, recognizes threats or other emotional stimula, then generates and controls an appropriate stress response. There is some regulation of the limbic system from other brain areas. The amygdala in particular can be down-regulated by the ventromedial pre-frontal cortex (the vmPFC). The vmPFC is a higher reasoning area in the front of the brain that recognizes 'context' of situations and decides whether a situation is logically threatening or not. The vmPFC can learn, and also can be down-regulated by repeated stress and trauma. If a person has too much stress or too many traumas for their level of sensory sensitivity, the vmPFC can basically turn itself off. Which leaves the amygdala with very little regulation, it just runs when it is stimulated. In theory this allows for more rapid response to threat, and it should be temporary. Think of a soldier who is getting shot at, and is traumatized. The theory is that at some point, survival advantage requires the soldier to stop getting traumatized and just react instinctively. Think of it as a rapid-fire feature of the brain's threat/stress response. This works well as long as the vmPFC turns on and starts inhibiting the amygdala again after the war. The problem we have is that not everyone's vmPFC can recover from this situation. For some reason, some people's vmPFC never gets the 'all clear' signal to restart, it thinks the war is permanent. Thus we get a percent of soldiers who'se vmPFC stays down-regulated and their amygdala stays on high alert, wartime footing, so they develop PTSD. See this study for some fairly current evidence of how this works:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4145052/
I'm brain fogged today so hope this is clear. Basically, the vmPFC can act as an inhibitor of the amygdala. And this is why, in theory, healthy people can have a stressor, and recover quickly and move on, because their vmPFC regulates how stressed they can become by deciding whether to down-regulate the amygdala. The theory for anxiety and PTSD is that the vmPFC becomes permanently shut off, like in the soldier developing PTSD example above. The logical treatment would be to try to re-activate the vmPFC, so it can start inhibiting the amygala normally again. This is where you get the meditations, neuro-inguistic suggestions ('stop, stop, stop'), or just thinking a lot of happy thoughts. These types of interventions have actually been shown to sometimes stimulate the vmPFC (for example, see this study on meditation increasing vmPFC activity:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4040088/). Recent research, that may not be part of the Gupta/Hopper et al therapies, suggests that charitable acts, and service to other people, also strongly stimulate the vmPFC, which lowers the amygdala activity. I have wondered if that is part of the improvement in symptoms from having a baby some women with ME/CFS experience, the continual nurturing of a baby could be reactivating the vmPFC, thus lowering amygdala activity. Probably there are many therapies that could be used to stimulate the vmPFC in order to down-regulate the amygdala, the question is whether the 'shut down' ongoing in PTSD, GAD and perhaps in some simple cases, some symptoms of CFS, can be reversed with these therapies over time. Some people believe it can be but usually for only a percentage of the patients who try it.
Here is another good list, these are great suggestions in my opinion for helping activate the vmPFC and slow the amydala down, and don't require any special programs, just things that might help and could be worth trying if you can stay within your energy safety zone. Again, this is probably well aligned with anxiety disorders and PTSD, not so sure about ME/CFS, but for some of us, maybe:
https://heartmindonline.org/resources/10-exercises-for-your-prefrontal-cortex
Limbic dysfunction for ME/CFS is an interesting theory in my opinion, supported by Jared Younger's research, but I am not convinced that the current therapies (Gupta, DNRS, etc) are appropriate for ME/CFS in many cases. And there is no way to know if this will work. I do know people with MCS and mold illness who have been helped by these therapies, particularly Hopper's ...
In my case, I ended up having to use antianxiolytics, have not yet found a way to 'retrain' my vmPFC well enough to stop GAD. But I am keeping an open mind and try to stay current on the topic. Maybe this will be part of a multi-modal model for ME/CFS. I'm glad to hear Dr Nathan references this in that type of context, need to get that book...