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Comment by tomhoward | Hacker News Reader

I've had CFS for several years, have tried all kinds of medical and natural remedies, and am finally having good success in overcoming it.

From this experience, here are my thoughts:

- I do believe its primary cause is psychological, but it's symptoms are real, physical and profound.

- I do believe it should be taken very seriously by mainstream medicine.

- I believe it can be cured, but not by focusing exclusively on physical symptoms, or through any treatments currently offered by conventional mental health professionals.

The best progress I've made in overcoming the condition is through a non-medical treatment to identify and correct subconscious traumas and self-sabotaging beliefs. The closest thing in mainstream medicine is CBT, but what I'm doing seems far more effective.

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I too have CFS/FM (and have had for over 20 years) and have a middle-ground theory that there are both physical and psychological components to the symptoms.

On the physical side, there is an obvious inflammatory immune response going on. I'm allergic to just about everything. I have IBS, I have GERD.

On the psychological side, this inflammation causes a constant sense of panic. The symptoms of the anxiety cause muscle tenseness and lead to further inflammation. The adrenaline causes me to be tired after low levels of exertion.

I've learned to manage the anxiety through mindfulness and CBT (some days are better than others) but the chronic inflammation is still there.

So, while I agree with you that there is a psychological component and that treating it helps CFS sufferers to cope, I think it's a chicken-and-egg argument at this point about which started which. I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that it's all psychological just based on having some improvement to quality-of-life by working on your mental health.

Not that it's not worthwhile -- it definitely is -- it just probably isn't the whole 'answer".

Yeah I totally agree that the physical symptoms are important, and feed back into the emotional reaction to create a virtuous cycle that's very very hard to break.

And I don't believe the physical symptoms should go untreated; throughout my illness I've put a lot of work into alleviating physical symptoms, and continue to do so.

Indeed, I'm well aware the whole concept of "primary cause" in such a complex system as the human organism is very fuzzy.

But my experience is this: for the first few years of being ill, I focused purely on physical symptoms and undertook physical treatments; I experienced some level of improvement, but it was never profound or sustained.

Since finding a treatment that focuses on underlying emotional issues, and persisting with it over a couple of years, the improvement has been profound and sustained.

And having developed a deep understanding of the way emotional traumas can lead to physical symptoms, it now makes complete sense to me that the trauma came first, and physical stuff happened as a consequence, so to completely reverse the illness, the original trauma needs to be completely healed.

From talking to others with similar illnesses, a significant level of early life trauma seems to be a consistent factor.

Can you elaborate on your personal protocol?

The practice I use is a technique developed in the chiropractic profession called Neuro Emotional Technique, commonly referred to as NET.

I'm well aware that chiro attracts much contempt in forums like this one, and indeed I'm not in any way a devotee of chiro generally (anymore).

But I was made aware of NET when I was trying chiro as a possible treatment for my condition, and found that whilst conventional chiro didn't help much, NET helped a lot.

I've since learned how to do it myself without the help of a practitioner, so I can do it daily without having to spend the time or money visiting a clinic.

I've also found my progress has accelerated since I started doing a particular kind of yoga called Kundalini. I now try and do that daily too.

NET is just one of many techniques for improving the subconscious mind; others include more traditional practices like meditation, hypnosis, prayer, as well as more recently-developed ones like neuro-linguistic programming and emotional freedom technique ('tapping').

But I've tried all these over many years, and NET has been by far the most effective.

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