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For years now ME/CFS patients, patients with chronic fatigue syndrome, have been subjected by MDs and insurance companies as well as well-meaning family and friends with demands that they undergo an excercise program, GET, and a therapy program, CBT, that poorly constructed studies claimed would help them.

Finally, it is now announced that when when prior studies was properly reviewed CBT and GET either had NO benfits for ME/CFS patients or actually HURT THEM. This was most likely because GET exercise inflames the immune system in these patients and CBT is simple common-sense talk therapy! I completed CBT at considerable time and expense to my employer who was self-insured for my ME/CFS long-term disability. I was unable to attempt GET due to my ME/CFS.

In the UK thousands of ME/CFS patients were dumped from disability roles for failing to comply with or complete these "exercise" programs that were hurting them because one ruthless senior psychiatrist in the UK government wouldn't admit he was wrong!

After my injury, I was sent to a psych for pulsatile Tinnitus (a wholly non psychological symptom), insomnia up to 44 hours at a time (VERY common after head injury and not psychological) and pain and headaches.

Didn’t do a DROP of help.

Some of the symptoms got a little better over the years.

I live with the rest. It is what it is.

I think 100 years from now they will call our psychological treatment system barbaric. It’ more a vast lack of knowledge about the brain and pompous doctors and pharmaceutical companie that like to sell garbage.

why is medicine and science so backward thinking? It seems it’s just a business making a buck and truly many times not focused on individual care for each person and their unique life and circumstances. (Like years ago when lobotomies were thought to be helpful) It’s scary how unthought out some of our modern medical approaches still are.

My own mom is late 70’s and currently diagnosed with Polymyalgia rheumatica and a liver tumor and jaundice, yet they are prescribing 8 weeks of PT 3 times a week! insane, she can barley get to the bathroom and back in her hospital room and has been on/off running a fever for more than a week let alone consider PT right now, and they have yet to remove her tumor, so why push PT? And this all at a supposed great Hospital.

My lowly education and 20+ yrs of helping people with similar issues as this article talks of tells me they need to loosen joints and stuck fascia and muscles, to put it simply they need to help their body relax and open up the restricted areas, reduce inflammation (thru nutrition, hydration, decreasing physical tension and mental stresser sorts of things) and then slowly address exercise (making the muscles work more than routine daily stuff) to strengthen or build more muscle, increase circulation and endorphins etc. promoting healing.

Also as a Christian I realize all body and thought issues have a spiritual root - which only God can truly help us to change or let go of, but thank God for folks who can also speak encouragement or walk a step or two with us along the way!

“effectiveness of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)”

I’ve been saying this for years. CBT is only an escape mechanism that allows an individual to escape their emotional wounds and hide in their logic. Same is true of EMDR.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy does not work as the wound is emotional and cognitive therapy works utilizing logic.

Emotional wounds are not logical and cannot be healed logically. These wounds are emotional and can only be healed emotionally.

I’ve done research on therapy techniques for over 25 years, especially PTSD. Skip Rizzo had outstanding success utilizing virtual reality and then psychotherapy.

The reason he had so much success while Walter Reed did not have much success with virtual reality is that Walter Reed was using virtual reality to bring the emotion to the surface and then they tried desensitization by repeated exposure while Rizzo used psychotheraputic techniques to reprogram the emotional memory and remove the stored negative emotion.

Why does this work? Because while emotional memories cannot be healed logically, the emotional subconsciousness cannot differentiate between imagination and reality.

Thus in a simple two step process that involves owning the emotion (which is what virtual reality does) and then imagining a different outcome, I’ve had PTSD that had been disabling vets since Vietnam (for over 35 years) totally removed instantly and permanently.

I have the unusual ability of physically feeling and being able to read the stored memories of others just by being near the person. Memories are not stored in the physical body, but are anchored in the physical body. I can reach out with my hand and touch the stored memory and knock a person off their feet, even though I am many feet from the person, do not touch them in any way, and their eyes are closed. I use this ability to test whether psycho-therapeutic or pharmaceutical techniques are merely defense mechanisms blocking the retrieval of a memory or are actually resolving the issue.

PS this is also why a recent article on using visualization to heal spinal cord injuries in paraplegics showed so much success.