Fantastic article on ME and the Lightning Process

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http://www.oneagleswings.me.uk/news.html

First, the fully-qualified practitioner artfully gaslighted us (a group of four patients) with what I now know is pseudoscience quackery about M.E.; it was done in such a subtle, convincing and skilful way (even experienced scientists have been taken in by it). Using science to explain, he told us how we didn't have an illness but that we were ˜doing" an illness; it was our thoughts, behaviours, and fears about post-exertional symptoms that were causing us to stop ourselves from living normally and causing us to believe that we had symptoms and to believe that we were ill.

He then put mechanisms into place in my brain, via neuro-linguistic programming, that made my own brain automatically gaslight me constantly and stop any thoughts of symptoms dead in their tracks. He added repetitive gestures/movements/phrases that I had to continually apply to my thoughts and body in order to reinforce the programming. This is brainwashing.

It's hard to describe being brainwashed. The next six months in 2007 after the LP are still a hazy blur to me. Not only did the neuro-linguistic programming in my brain not allow me to ever mention any symptoms to anyone, I was not even allowed to think that I had any symptoms. I wasn't allowed to be ill anymore. I pushed and pushed myself, even when in the most excruciating pain, even when I was in heart failure or experiencing seizures or passing out, because they didn't exist. My illness didn't exist [even though I was extremely ill, I honestly believed that I wasn't ill anymore, that I was cured]. It sounds ridiculously idiotic but that's what brainwashing can do. My body was becoming more and more damaged from the enforced gradual Graded Exercise Therapy that the programming in my brain was imposing on myself. It was completely out of my control; I felt glazed over and not with it.

As per what I'd been conditioned and instructed to do during the LP training, I told everyone that I was no longer ill and that I was recovering.....​

 

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LP straight up presents itself (albeit subtlely) as a method to free yourself from a cult community (under which the implication is anyone who believes in ME/CFS/you is in a cult) and that you can fix your life by joining a new cult (aka LP).

 

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LP straight up presents itself (albeit subtlely) as a method to free yourself from a cult community (under which the implication is anyone who believes in ME/CFS/you is in a cult) and that you can fix your life by joining a new cult (aka LP).

I really like that angle. I don't think I have heard it said like that before. It does treat ME like a cult. It really disturbs me that this can happen to any of us so easily. It happened to me.