Some reports from those with ME who have tried the quackery:
http://www.sayer.abel.co.uk/MESNORFOLK/LP.html
I did believe the LP could work for me at the time I did it but I am now very angry about the mistreatment I received and the resulting harm it did to my already impaired health. I have now just about got over the resulting relapse but it was another wasted one and a half years and I do not know what long-term damage it has done to my system. Doing the Lightning Process was an extremely expensive mistake for me, both financially and health-wise. The Lightning Process is dangerous and exploitative, targeting ill and desperate people who will naturally believe and do anything in order to try to get better. I am ashamed of my own gullibility but I was effectively brainwashed by Phil Parker and his Lightning Process.
Yes, by that evening I was doing the Lightning Process to counteract my thoughts about the Lightning Process itself.
The next day I still felt no different. I went and had my one-to-one session and when I told her that, she said I was being negative (of course) and that I must keep doing the process at home and it would work. But on the course I was told that the reason it was called 'lightning process' was that because it worked liked lightning (they even produced diagram with a graphic of some lightning in case we didn't get it. I got the concept, it just wasn't happening.) From all the literature I was sent prior to parting with borrowed money to go on the course, were testimonials saying how fast it had worked. Nobody said it didn't work on the course but that it did later. Also, I realised when you fill in the form you have to say whether you question things. This is because they don't want anyone on the course who does. They need to control everything. You are not allowed to talk about how you are because that is being negative. In the session anything I even hinted to this effect was countered with the comment that I was being negative. So we moved on to what else she could do for me. I said one of my biggest problems was being exhausted but unable to sleep. So we did a visualisation that involved a pressure point on my hand and she said whenever I couldn't sleep I could just rub that point.
"There you are, you are cured," she said - so happily that I could see in her mind, where no negative thoughts ever creep, I was. She was clearly thrilled with herself. I wanted to believe her and tried it for the next few nights, of course to no avail.
The Lightning Process is supposed to be NLP and osteopathy. I could see no osteopathy: the only movement on the course I attended was the 'stop' movement and the pressure point on my hand I mentioned above. The woman who ran the process had been cured herself so maybe they have got something. I didn't disbelieve her. She had a large house with a spare flat that she no longer needed to rent out due to how much she was making from peddling the Lightning Process to desperate people like me.
To give her her due, she did drive me to and from the station and after the course offered to work with me for free on the phone. So I accepted that but found out that working with me involved her telling me to keep working the process because it worked and arguing with my objections by saying I hadn't given it time and that I was being negative.
She kept saying, "Keep doing it 'cos it works," and had nothing to say when I said I had kept 'doing it'. She said I had given up so soon. I was told it had a 93 % success rate. On my course of four it seemed to work for one person and had an impact on another, but for two of us it failed completely.
Phil Parker, who invented this process, charges £1000 for his three-day courses and has over 20 people per course. He should put some of that money into doing a proper clinical trial. It must be easy to wire people up to see if they get a squirt of adrenaline when they have negative thoughts. Maybe that does happen for some people, but not all. Some people do get cured, but not me.
I wished they had asked on the application form if I was plagued with negative thoughts and whether I had worked with affirmations before. I could have told them No and Yes. Then they would have known their process was nothing new for me.
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I think people should know just what LP is.
I am almost ashamed to say that I tried LP last year. After ten years of this dreadful illness I think my reasoning has become unreliable as I am so desperate to get better and get my life back to normal.
The great publicity given to LP as a cure for M.E. is hard to ignore and as you read the 'recovery' stories the thought of good health overcomes any misgivings you might have about this mysterious 'cure'. The fact that there is NO diagnostic test for neurological M.E. leaves one with the question of exactly who does have M.E. rather than chronic fatigue or depression. This miracle cure claims to cure a disease of which medical research has not yet found the cause (impossible).
The course consisted of three days from 10am until 2pm with a half-hour break for tea and biscuits (no lunch). The cost was £880.00 - plus two nights in a nearby hotel (as the coach advises to stay away from home and look on this as a life-changing holiday).
There were four people on the course, so that's £3520.00 for the coach for just over ten hours work. Not bad wages! The coach was very friendly, caring and convincing he could teach us how to recover. He told us he had recovered from M.E. after seven years and been in a wheelchair at one stage. Another lady who was learning to become a coach was taking notes and observing everything. She too told us she had had M.E. but was now recovered by the process.
We were not allowed to discuss the process with other sufferers but just to do it and recover. We were told to cut off all contact with other M.E. sufferers and when asked about LP to say we were cured. We were told to ignore symptoms and keep saying we were cured regardless. I know this sounds crazy but the coach was excellent at his job of VERY high-pitched sales and the people he was selling to were very desperate to get better. The product he was selling us was positive thinking; nothing more, nothing less.
The Lightning Process is:
Believe the Lightning Process will cure you.
Tell everyone you are cured.
Stand on paper circles with some key words written on them.
Learn to say a rhyme when you feel symptoms, no matter where you are, and as many times as it takes to make the symptoms just go away!
Speak in positive words and think with positive thoughts only.
Shout "Stop!" at every symptom.
You are responsible and choose to have M.E. - you must choose a life you love.
If the process is not working, you are not doing it right.
That's it, believe it or not. Sounds stupid, I know, but these are highly-trained life coaches and after handing over £880.00 we all tried really hard to give it our best shot. Not one of the four sufferers recovered and from talking to them I realised they were extremely sick, desperate people who, like myself, would do anything to get better.
It's sad that we have to revert to every charlatan who looks you straight in the eye and says they can cure you. Cure you of what? So we are back to the same scenario.
Until there is a diagnostic test for neurological M.E. no one can cure us. You cannot treat a disease until you know the cause.
Many people self diagnose M.E. Many doctors diagnose M.E. but the average GP has no training in the illness. Many people suffer from depression and would probably benefit from LP but I can assure you no one can cure neurological M.E. yet.
I hope my story helps others save their £880.00. Just send it to "ME Research UK", as with enough funds they will find the cause - and indeed cure - for neurological M.E.
I recently attended an ME Support Group, along with 8 other poor souls, and was "Processed by Lightning".
Have you ever invited an Everest Double Glazing Salesman or an Amdega Conservatory "Consultant" into your home and after 10 minutes regretted that mad impulse? I have, and with the Lightning Process, it was a case of déjà vu.
A "40 minute talk" by Emma, our Lightning Process Consultant, turned into a two hour "Death by Power-Point" seminar. I learnt all about how Emma, when younger, had phobias, post-traumatic stress; anxiety, depression and then got a "virus" on an exotic island (as one does). The "virus settled" but she did not get better until she met Phil Parker and after Day One of the Lightning Process, she was better. Ah, bless.
We learnt all about the strenuous training the "Consultants" undertake. Emma explained that it takes 12 months. Someone asked if that was full time. Oh, well "no, it wasn't". You just attend at weekends -10 weekends - one each month-then you have an exam! So it takes 20 days at The European College of Holistic Medicine, Crouch End to be trained - not 12 months!
The Power Point Presentation goes on-and-on-and-on - (copyright "Phil Parker Lightning Process. TM"). We are told the "Myths of ME" - "that people with ME have relapses". I pointed out that it was not a myth. Well it is, according to the Lightning Process.
The Presentation states that it is perfectly possible to successfully and rapidly recover from ME. "What diagnostic criteria do you use?" I asked. "Oh," said Emma," that's a very detailed question we can't go into now but ME, Post Viral Fatigue, Chronic Fatigue and Fybromyalgia are all similar conditions". We were told that people who had been ill for 3 months up to 40 years have been cured; that there are now 120 Consultants in this country and that dear Phil has been in the USA spreading the gospel. I guess they will love him there, and in Crouch End of course.
And the way the Lightning Process works? Illnesses can be cured by changing your thoughts. By turning all those negative thoughts into positive ones, you break the "Adrenaline Loop" and build up the immune system which makes you all better. Sounds simple, or simplistic? Examine the detail. Is there conclusive evidence that your immune system is underactive and requires building up? Is there conclusive evidence that positive thinking can cure physiological disease? If the reason you are not recovering from ME is a continuous high level of adrenaline, do practitioners measure this before you start the course and after you finished it? The answer to all three of those questions is "No". Conclusive evidence in the diagnosis and causation of ME is not yet here.
If you do the course and do not get better, remember it is not the fault of the Lightning Process, it is you. You're just not applying the training that you received and need to work harder! Do you get your money back? Ah, well no - you just have to keep on trying.
Emma, our Consultant, does not, of course, do this training for the money. Oh, heavens no! She told us she does not need the money. So I asked her if she would be willing to offer free training courses? "I'm afraid not," she said. "If we offered it for free, anyone, just anyone, could come along who had not invested their whole self into wanting to learn the Process and to doing the retraining of themselves." You see, by investing your £700 you have invested "your whole self" and if you do not pay the fee then you are not really serious about getting better. Still, you can pay by instalments and you will be pleased to know that all classes of society attend.
Will the Lightning Process help you? Well that's where we come to the devil and the detail. The Lightning Process makes no mention of sub-groups, that's detail. Yet most doctors treat the terms "ME" and "CFS" as incorporating a huge range of symptoms and causes. You may be tired from a persistent viral infection; tired through stress, anxiety or depression; recovered from the original virus that first laid you low but needing help finding your way back into the "well-world". You may feel "not too bad" one day and "totally exhausted" the next. Where do you fit in? I don't have an answer. Even you may or may not know. But if you are to be cured by the Lightning Process or the other neuro-linguistic processes around, it is essential that you do your homework. Ask questions, query statements, treat anecdotal evidence and personal testimonials with great caution. It's the devil and the details again.
If you do decide that the cause of your ME-type exhaustion lies outside the psychological sphere, what then? Can the Lightning Process cure ME as originally described by Melvin Ramsay? Having heard how it is supposed to work, I do not believe it can.
I came away from that seminar feeling ill at ease. Let no one be unaware of the way that the Lightning Process is sold. It is a slick Power-Point sales pitch, backed up by pseudo-medical half-truths, delivered to vulnerable people who are desperate to be well. Where were the caveats to its claims? I heard none but with the "Devil in the Detail" there were not likely to be.
(Please note that the name of the Consultant given above has been changed to protect her identity)[/QUOTE]
I did the course in 2007; it lasted three days, two in a group with four others and one 1-2-1 session with a trainer. The first day was four hours of intensive concentration with only a short break. We were taught the main coaching technique and asked to do something outside our normal comfort zone after the class, something we'd love to do but hadn't because of illness.
I love walking (or used to!) so I chose to walk home from the course venue, which was at least twice as far as I'd normally be able to walk. I knew this would be a challenge, but my trainer was encouraging - she thought it perfectly reasonable. But by that evening I was shocked to find I was much iller than I'd been for ages - all the old burning, inflammatory symptoms returned with a vengeance. This was despite using the LP technique as instructed, repeatedly all the way home on the walk, and afterwards.
I had thought that I might relapse after doing LP and was determined to avoid that happening to me. But I never thought that I would get iller before I even finished the course! My 'faith' in the process was not at all enhanced as a result. However the worsened symptoms had more or less gone by the next day so, with my sister's persuasion, I decided to carry on with the course, despite having serious doubts at this point. Without my sister's encouragement (she was just eager for me to find something that helped), I'm sure I would have given up.
But I hung in there and I feel I got some benefits from LP. I did like the emphasis on having 'a life you love' and still remind myself of that. I made a very good decision because of that focus and felt my quality of life improved as a result. But that said, despite using LP consistently for some months I never reached what they call 'automatic' (when they say you no longer need the techniques because you can do what you want when you want). And long-term I experienced no physical improvement to speak of.
One of the most disabling of my symptoms, and the one I was most keen to be rid of, is the urgent need I have to crash out during the day, usually in the afternoons. Going without this rest/sleep almost invariably results in me feeling very ill. LP did nothing whatsoever for this symptom, and had no effect on my poor cognitive processing (another key facet of my illness).
'Belief' seems an important part of LP, and I've since discovered that hypnotic techniques are used in the training, so I wonder if those who recover are more responsive to this. I also doubt whether if those who do recover (and there's no doubt in my mind that some do, as I know a few of them) have exactly the same illness as those who don't.
LP is horrendously expensive and the price has at least doubled since I did the course two years ago. But if it really works, then of course most of us would leap at it. What we need to know is why it helps some people and not others, and how to tell if someone is amongst the constituency which will benefit, or not. I expect eventually sub-types work will show who it works for and why. Unfortunately at present the LP people will only spout that those who do not recover are not doing the process correctly, which is offensive and absurd given that it seems to 'work' for some straight away, before they had much chance to practise the technique. I've also heard it suggested that it makes a difference which trainer you have, with some more experienced than others. My trainer was [ - ], so certainly in my case, poor training can't be at fault.
