Site:Mickel and Reverse Therapy for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome - 2
To give an idea of how Mickel Therapy and Reverse Therapy work I've described some of my experience below. Remember though this is just an example of what worked for me - if you start treatment your actions are likely to be different, so don't see this as any sort of a model of how to proceed. As much as possible the actions you take should be spontaneous and based on the what you feel you need to do - that way you are responding directly to your body/mind. Also I've not listed the messages given to me by my therapist because they are different and unique to each person.
My treatment experience
Throughout the process the client keeps a journal of their symptoms. In the journal the client records when symptoms increase, what he/she was doing at the time, and - assuming the client has been given his/her first message - what action they took and whether they felt any different afterwards.
Like many my initial reaction to this journal was sceptical. I had been carefully monitoring my symptoms for three years and symptoms seemed mostly arbritrary - the same activity could be fine one day, but exhausting on another. But I went through the process anyway and after two weeks, although most of the symptoms were fairly arbritrary, much to my surprise there were a couple of identifiable patterns. The most pronounced of these was that if I walked past someone in the street I felt the tingling and edginess in my left shoulder increase - not dramatically, but it was definitely there.
So why hadn't I noticed that before...?
To answer the first question - actually I had noticed it before. But if you have M.E./CFS you cannot allow yourself to fully experience all your symptoms all the time, or you would never get through the day. Out of necessity we detatch ourselves from our symptoms to some extent because that's the only way to survive M.E./CFS. To find out what your body is trying to tell you it is necessary to re-connect with your symptoms somehow. You are not expected to regress and suffer, really just observe and accept the symptoms, because they are trying to serve a useful purpose - the body/mind and the Hypothalamus are on your side! So for the first two weeks I did feel a little worse than usual, because I was fully experiencing the symptoms. But that was temporary.
And what does it all mean...?The second question brings up a problem in understanding these therapies. The initial cause of my M.E./CFS was a head injury caused by an assault. My jaw had been broken and fixed with a Titanium plate, so I was back at work within 4 days. Until the last 10-15 years broken jaws were wired up for several weeks - inconvenient and uncomfortable but it would have forced me to rest, which may have prevented the jaw/neck/head muscles tightening up in response as I tried to continue working. (There was no suggestion from the hospital that I should rest incidentally).
The assault was random and unexpected. Someone came to my door on a Sunday afternoon ranting about someone looking in his window. He seemed to think I was involved, punched me three times and left. The third punch broke my jaw and was a big swing from the left side, and because the whole thing was so unexpected and surreal I didn't have time to get my arms up to defend myself. The house I was living in at the time had a superb view of Victorian and Georgian streets, stacked up on the hills of Bristol, so we were overlooked by thousands of windows. My assailant obviously had either a drug or psychiatric problem, so I moved out a few weeks later.
If we were to take an analytical approach we would say 'Ah, so when you pass a stranger in the street you're subconciously worried they're going to hit you from the left hand side'. Maybe, maybe not. Actually it doesn't matter. In fact the assault was in the hallway of the house, not on a street and I have rarely had an increase in symptoms when answering the door. The fact is these details do not matter. What matters is not the analysis of why that symptom occured, but an observation of the symptomatic reaction and what the body/mind wants me to do about it.
So following the advice I was given when I walked past someone and got the reaction, I stopped for a moment and read the card, or just remembered my message - then did something about it! It usually occured to me to swing the arm a few times in acknowledgement of the symptoms, because that is what the arm and shoulder seemed to need. Of course I pretended to be stretching so I didn't look too strange! The more I did of this simple stimulus/response action, the more one of my major symptoms - the tingling and anxious nerves down the shoulders and backs of the arms, diminished and eventually disappeared. One major symptom down, and I was on the way to getting free of M.E./CFS.
Gaining your bodies trust after Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
For most people of course M.E./CFS is post viral. But to the body/mind a threat is a threat - physical injury, a virus, stressful life events etc, they are all the same. After these experiences the body goes into a heightened state of alert but we carry on because we don't know what else to do. The sense of something being wrong gets stored in the body tissue and a concious realisation that the problem has been solved is not likely to release it. For example, during my illness the backs of my legs continued to be stiff and despite years of Yoga practice, any exercise to stretch them just resulted in the legs stiffening up again, and I experienced an increase in tiredness.
After the second session I realised my concious mind knows I have no intentention of returning to the house where I was assaulted, but my body did not! So I did a Yoga stretch pulling on the backs of my legs, then thought to myself "I will never again live in the house where I was assaulted". I waited a few seconds, and lo and behold, the muscles just let go in a way they hadn't done for 3 years! I then promised myself, outloud, to "never again run on empty", as I had when working whilst being exhausted by the head injury. And I got the same result!
The issue is one of trust. As far as the body is concerned I did run on empty. Big time! Sure I didn't know I was getting M.E./CFS, so I had a perfectly good reason! Still the body was not sure that I wouldn't force it to do those things again. By actually addressing those promises to the body, to the stiff muscles, the muscles can stand down from their state of alert. The Hypothalamus becomes aware that the muscles have relaxed and starts to reduce the alert in other ways too - a reduction in head fog for example. The promise I made to myself was a way of re-establishing trust between the body and my intentions.
One caution if you find yourself doing something similar, be sure and keep those promises - even the human body has an Elephantine memory - it stores experiences and emotions. So don't make a promise you can't or won't keep. (Note that those promises were part of the action with a Yoga stretch. These promises were not messages from the therapist).
Action, man
I should state again, the Yoga stretch and the arm swinging are not part of the therapy methods. They are examples of actions I took in reponse to my symptoms. Some of the other things I did included: writing things down; saying words out loud; jumping upwards; starting to drive again; buying a car; looking for jobs; getting up and walking into the City as if to work; growling to myself to acknowledge frustration; brushing the tingling nerves in my jaw with a stiff brush; keeping my shoulders well wrapped with a warm blanket; juggling.
These are listed in no particular order. Some had an effect and some didn't. They are just to give you an idea there is a whole range of actions which may help. If you do RT your therapist will be very reluctant to recommend any particular action, because that could prejudice what you do - it must be appropriate and as much as possible come from you, from your own sense of what your body wants.
The key is taking action. Reading the message, giving it a moment to sink in, then taking some sort of action to indicate to the Hypothalamus that this issue is being dealt with. That is really all that is required. What makes this so difficult to get to grips with is our tendency to involve the analytical mind in all we do, and the difficulty in being aware of our own bodies.
Also my therapist pointed out that there is a difference between a message written down on a piece of paper or spoken out loud, as opposed to just being remembered. The externalising of this message means the body/mind is more likely to pay attention than it would to the stream of conciousness which makes up our everyday thoughts. That does not mean that thinking your message will not work, but it is more likely to be effective if, to the body/mind, it appears to come from an external source, i.e. is read or heard. One further point, these messages are not affirmations - affirmations are conciously repeated over and over until the subconcious accepts them. Mickel Therapy and Reverse Therapy are about more than just concious and subconcious, they are also about the body memory that is stored in the physical tissue of the human body.
On the next page I look at why I believe these new therapies work....
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