ME: Healing The Past

There comes a time when we feel ready to look at, and heal the past.

I've been musing over this recently. A few weeks ago, during ME awareness week, Dr Hilary Jones talked about the Lightning Process on the 'Lorraine' TV show. They featured a lady called Ginetta before and after she did the Lightning Process.

What interested me was the backlash from some ME groups and sufferers speaking out vociferously against this item. Such strength of feeling being expressed against the Lightning Process and Dr Jones! The fact that someone had improved their health and well-being was pretty much ignored.

The second casue for reflection was attending a reseach seminar where Prof Peter White talked about the results of the PACE trial. This RCT (randomised controlled trial) looked at 4 interventions for ME: SMC (standard medical care),Pacing, CBT (cognitive behaviour therapy) and GET (graded exercise therapy). The two that showed most benefit were CBT and GET; Pacing and SMC seemed to have little positive effect.  It seems that extending the boundaries of capability is a more effective way of improving the life of someone with ME than remaining within the boundaries. Crucially, the statistics showed that neither CBT or GET made people worse; this was specifically targetted becasue it had been one of the concerns of the ME community.

As well as explaining the research results, Prof White showed us extracts of responses from the medical community to the piece of research; these reflected that the research community held this research in high regard as a piece of research. He then showed us extracts from responses from the ME community via some, though not all, of the major self-help groups. They expressed anger and horror at both the methodology and results of the trial. Requests were made to The Lancet to remove the piece of research; they were declined..

I used to be one of the ME community, so I understand where these responses are coming from; they have fought for years to have their illness recognised, to receive benefits, to gain carers etc. It has been a battle. However, there appears, in the process, to have developed a huge mistrust between those who try to help them and the ME community itself. That mistrust has developed into, in some cases, bitter anger.

Is it now time to heal the past? What would need to happen for us to do that? Do we, as people who work with ME sufferers, need to listen even more carefully to them? Are they able to listen to us? What needs to happen for them to be able to rejoice in the fact that CBT and GET (and I would add Lightning Process - which has at least anecdotal evidence of people recovering) enable people to get better?

 As a practitioner who works with people with ME, and as someone who once had that illness, I want to find a way of healing the past, and moving into a brighter future for us all. Is it now time to heal the past?

Using NLP to deal with a cold....and work!

I was interested to read Justin Collinge's post in the latest Kaizen newsletter. This was a departure from Justin's usual contributions, in that he chose to write it in poetry. He has very kindly agreed to let me post it here. Another example of how we can use these fascinating NLP tools to enable us to live positive, fruitful lives. Here is Justin on colds......

"We know we're not at the mercy of how we feel and can choose our state. Just how much choice do we have? Below is a recount of a recent training event where I was faced with the chance to test this:

The night before

I’d gone to bed sore

My throat on fire and my nose red raw.

The cold had been stalking me

And now, like a grinning gargoyle,

I welcome them back to day three

With great expectations,

hope and elations,

and a few reservations

they sat and they waited

for me to share my wisdom.

But my strength soaked away

like rain on dry ground

I found

I was shaking.

With my head full of cloud

there was no mistaking

I should be in bed

not in front of this crowd.

Then I recalled

that I could change my state.

Though my energy was stalled

I could create

the strength I needed,

and could choose how to feel

it wasn’t just ‘fate’.

Physiology – my shoulders back, and I breathe deep,

Put a smile on my face which I keep

as I step onto the floor.

Focus – not on my tale of woe,

I transfer my attention where I need it to go

On the eager faces and their readiness to throw

themselves in and learn even more.

Language – As I started, I choose not to bore

with tales of sickness

and nasal ickiness

But spoke of health and happiness -

And suddenly it wasn’t a chore.

The day went well,

and the evaluations were as good as any I’d ever got

My ailing health I simply forgot

and the show went on.

It was about half way home I remembered again

how I wasn’t well and my aching brain,

and nose, and throat - and now chest as well

needed looking after.

I no longer needed to excel

so I struggled home and took to my bed

Aware somewhere inside it was,

at least partly,

all in my head!"

Lovely blend of managing our state .... and common sense. We have a choice. Hope the last bit included a hot toddy....

If you'd like to find out more about Justin and the Kaizen team you can find them at www.kaizen-training.com 

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ME Awareness week: a message of hope.

The fact that ME is in the news this week has focused my attention once more on what an unpleasant and miserable illness this is.

When I was ill, there were hardly any stories of people who had recovered from it, and the general consensus was that if you were going to get better, it would happen within the first two years. I remember hitting the 5 year mark and descending briefly into despair. I hadn't heard of anyone who had recovered after such a long period of time. My lovely consultant refused to let me wallow in such sad stories, and told me that he knew of people who had recovered after even longer. A glimmer of hope.

What is different now is that there are so many people whose stories of ME recovery are out there. I am now one of many. The good news that I really want to shout from the rooftops to all those who have been diagnosed with ME or CFS, or those who live with or care for them, is that it is possible improve, to get better and to recover. I did the Lightning Process and recovered by learning how to change my body's responses, and was so amazed by what I learned that I decided to train to be a practitioner, so I could use my own experience to help others. I have been doing this for the past 3 years, and have seen many people improve their lives. It takes work and committment, for sure, and is not without its challenges...but it is do-able. Other people recover using different approaches. But the important thing to note is that improvement and recovery are now real possiblities. What a difference from when I was ill.

Telling Stories....

Last night I was chatting with someone who hadn't known me when I was ill, and they were asking questions, expressing surprise at the answers. Yes, we had a stairlift, and all the other paraphenalia that disability tends to bring. Yes, I had carers. It seemed so strange. Here was I, vibrantly healthy, talking about a past that seemed to belong to someone else. And yet it was all true. I told 'my story' and yet it didn't feel like' my story'; I was quite disocciated from it. I wasn't that person any more. 


Fast forward to this morning, when I woke up telling myself a very convincing story about how much I had to do this week, how busy it was going to be, how difficult etc etc. And did I believe it? Yes! Fortunately, I caught myself mid-story and stopped. Was the a useful story to be spinning on Monday morning? No! Was there another story I could tell which was equally 'true', but more useful? Yes! 


So....the story I'm telling myself this morning is that, in a recession,  I am so lucky/blessed that I have a full appointment diary this week, that I am priveleged that people trust me enough to tell me their stories, and brave enough to want to ask for help to change their 'stuff'. How lucky am I that clients want to share with me their changes. How different does it feel to tell that story? It has changed my outlook for the week, my feelings of gratitude, and therefore my feelings of happines, and my body is relaxed and my mind positive.


Story telling....powerful stuff!

Creating Ourselves

I've recently been reading Cordelia Fine's excellent book, 'Delusions of Gender'. She mentions some research carried out by Adam Galinsky and colleagues, where participants are shown pictures of people including a cheerleader, professor, elderly man and an African American man. Participants were then asked to actually BE that person and write their diary for an entire day.

After they had done this, participants were asked to rate some of their own qualities. Perhaps not too surprisingly, those who had imagined they were the cheerleader rated themselves as more gorgeous, sexy and attractive than the control group; those who imagined themselves to be professors felt smarter; the elderly man felt  weaker and more dependent; and the African American man imaginers felt more agressive and athletic.

By imagining themselves to be someone else, the participants had altered their concept of themselves. The study goes on to demonstrate that this change in self-concept is translated into changes in behaviour.

This seems to me to be a powerful demonstration of the way we can create, not only gender, but also many other aspects of ourselves. And for those of us who have worked with NLP strategies ourselves, and with others, we know from first-hand expeerience that it is literally possible to create the sort of person you want to be.

So the questions for us all are: 'Do we want to keep being unconsciously created by forces that appear to sweep us along? Or do we want to consciously create the sort of person we want to become?' The first is much easier; the second far more challenging......yet what price being able to become the sort of people we have always wanted to be?

Now....who shall I imagine being today?!