An interview with me was published on The View From Here page in The Director magazine this month.
If you'd like to find out whether I said anything interesting you can read that interview by getting on the link below.
The picture of me on the right is one of the interview photos.
1. Stop looking for 'cures'. The more you look for cures which fail the
more focused you will be on your illness. The solution for Chronic
Fatigue syndrome is right here on the Reverse Therapy website and it
contains all the information you will ever need on how to be well.
2. Stop pacing. There is no evidence that pacing works. The reason it seems to work is because people are changing activities, not reducing them. Bodymind likes change so it turns down the symptoms when more variety is introduced. That's especially true if what you were doing before was a chore.
3. Stop talking about symptoms. The more you talk about the symptoms the more trapped you will get in the illness loop. Bodymind wants you to talk about getting well, not staying ill!
4. Stop using M.E. Chat Forums and M.E. Support Groups. All you will ever meet are other people who are focused on illness. What's more, some users are so trapped in suffering that they create negative energy which gets passed on to you. If you have made friends in a forum or a group then meet them elsewhere.
5. Stop withdrawing from people close to you. Your Body doesn't create symptoms because it wants you to give up your life. It uses them to signal that its time to create a better way of life. And that includes spending more time with your friends and those you love.
6. Stop listening to medical doctors. With some exceptions (such as the wonderful medics we have on the Reverse Therapy team!) most medical doctors do not understand M.E. Either they don't believe it exists or - if they do treat it as a real illness - they don't know what to do about it. Either way you will just get frustrated.
7. Stop thinking 'I will never get well' and, instead, focus on what you need to do to in order to become just that. If you don't know what to do then try doing anything that raises endorphins if you notice symptoms on the increase.
8. Stop waiting for the symptoms to go. Many of our clients have fallen into the trap of thinking 'once these horrible symptoms go I can get my life back'. In fact the reverse is true: once you go back to an emotionally rewarding life, Bodymind can switch off the symptoms.
9. Stop living in the past, dwelling on all the times you have been miserable, ill and depressed. Instead, learn to live in the moment, being directed by what your personal Bodymind wants you to do right now.
10. Stop worrying about the future. The future is simply something people imagine. You can learn to imagine a future in which you are healthy and living the life you want. But better still, you can be guided by your symptoms and start creating your future in this very moment.
Anxiety is sometimes called 'the modern disease' (or at least when I was a twenty-something poet I liked to think so). In fact this is not true. Chronic anxiety, according to a consensus of studies, only affects about 16% of the population.
The reason many of us think Anxiety is more common than it is, is that we get it mixed up with Fear. But Anxiety is not an emotion - it is a symptomatic state. Fear is an emotion.
Bodymind creates a fear response when we are confronted with an immediate danger that requires action on our part. It is a strong, visceral, emotion and we are being aroused to do something about the problem in that moment - find out more about it, talk to others, get help, do something about the situation. As we swing into action the emotion dissolves.
Anxiety is created by Headmind and relates to situations that have either not happened yet, or future situations we are worrying about. Anxiety comes up when we avoid taking action, dwelling instead on the 'disaster movies' Headmind cooks up for us. The symptomatic state that ensues - chest constriction, gut changes, sweating, rapid heart-beat, panic - is a warning that we are spending too much time in our Heads, thinking about the problem rather than getting involved. In fact, as research often shows, worries rarely come true.
Anxiety worsens with avoidance. The more Headmind worries about what will happen to us the more 'obvious' it seems to stay away from situations. Unfortunately, the more we stay away, the worse the anxiety gets, as Headmind has more unknown problems to feed on.
This difference can be clearly seen in shyness. Shy people are not fearful, they are anxious. They get trapped in the heads worrying about what people will think of them, of having nothing to say and drying up, of being rejected, etc. The remedy is to get some coaching and learn how to slowly make social situations easier. But avoiding society will only make the problem worse.
Sometimes fear and anxiety go together (now it gets really subtle!). So - we can be scared when we receive a tax bill and when that happens we are being motivated to talk to people who can help us find a solution. And we can also get anxious - a sure sign that we are avoiding action and hallucinating calamity. So when your tax bill arrives at the end of this month be sure to have your bank manager's phone number handy.
Many people with M.E. will know that they are continually being pushed towards Cognitive Behavior Therapy as the treatment. You may even have been told: ‘nothing else works’ or ‘this is the only thing that has any scientific evidence going for it’.
Er…well, the problem is that there is no real scientific evidence that CBT works for anything. There have been about three worthwhile studies on CBT for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome published in the UK and only one of those produced any evidence at all that CBT could be effective in reducing symptoms. Yet even that one study compared CBT with relaxation techniques which (as anyone with CFS will tell you) are practically useless. I wonder how CBT will look when it finally goes head to head with a really effective contender like Reverse Therapy?
Cognitive Therapy, as I never tire of reminding people, was developed to treat Depression. Since M.E. is not depression why should anyone assume that it will work for that condition? Cognitive Therapy works on changing peoples’ thoughts, beliefs and expectations. But since Chronic Fatigue symptoms are not created in the head there is no reason to believe the belief that changing beliefs will make any difference.
In fact, about twenty years ago it was realized that changing thoughts doesn’t make much difference to Depression either. Or Anxiety. Or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Or anything else. That was why Cognitive Therapy was merged with Behavior Therapy - because it began to dawn on one or two minds that getting someone to change their thoughts about their problems isn’t going to make any difference until they do something about them. The truth of the matter is that it is probably the ‘B’ part of the process that is effective for a few people, not the ‘C’ part.
Unfortunately for the moguls that run the National Health Service there is no evidence that CBT is effective for anything else either. In one recent study in Scotland over 1000 patients who had received CBT years before were followed up. Of the 489 who could be bothered to talk about the therapy (were the rest too ill to come to the phone?) over half of them were still unwell and 30% of them still had severe symptoms. That means – in plain terms – that less than 10% of the original number were reporting any benefit at all. If you were a taxi-driver and only managed to get 1 out of 10 passengers to their destination you’d soon be out of business. Yet the current Government wants to spend £600 million pushing CBT on the rest of us. With the absurd claim that it has all been scientifically proven.
So why is Cognitive-Behavior Therapy the number one most used therapy in the UK and the United States? Well, folks, the main reason is that it is promoted by the Psychology industry, which is now well-embedded in the universities, the health services, in business, government and the press. And because it fits in with what the powers-that-be think people should be like: rational, reasonable, normal workers who can control their thoughts, act sensibly and not get over-emotional. In that sense what someone who goes in for CBT is really getting is an indoctrination in mainstream psychology. Don’t forget, nearly all the research that has so far been carried out on CBT has been organized by – you’ve guessed it – other psychologists. This is one reason why most of the research is unbelievably biased.
Here are a few reasons why Cognitive-Behavior Therapy won’t work for M.E.
No evidence exists that CBT can eliminate symptoms, only that it can reduce them.
CBT has a high initial drop out rate. Over 20% of people with M.E. do not go back after their first session.
M.E. symptoms are not created by thoughts so changing thoughts won’t make any difference.
Sufferers who have headaches, fatigue, muscle pain, IBS, sleeping problems, etc feel insulted by the suggestion that they can get better through positive thinking. Another reason they are unlikely to go back.
Forms. CBT makes people fill out endless forms, questionnaires and journals. Doing which not only creates frustration but triggers brain fog too
Since symptoms are created in the brain, glands and nervous system only an approach – like Reverse Therapy – that recognizes and works with Bodymind has any chance of reversing the condition.
This in turn means recognizing that the symptoms are created because the organism – the body – is in crisis. And that we have to address the organic cause, rather than the negative beliefs that people have developed after becoming ill.
When CBT does help in reducing symptoms it is not because CBT is effective but because it is accidentally – and without realizing what is happening – encouraging the client to try new activities that reduce Bodymind’s need to create symptoms as a warning call. But Reverse Therapy does that anyway.
