Anecdotes about psychosomatic treatments that allegedly cure patients

We regularly hear these stories, and I think at least some are fabricated by people who benefit from sales of the treatment, but a good portion are probably not fabricated. Some are probably just an overly optimistic interpretation of naturally occurring recovery or remission due to passing of time or fluctuations in the illness.

I've also suspected for a long time that some stories are a form of extreme self-deception, not an intentional lie, but an inability to face reality that is coped with by inventing a overly optimistic narrative of recovery or of being on a path of improvement. It's just how some people deal with extreme stress and hopelessness. The story is then shared to elicit positive reactions from others and further boost one's mood. The sad part is that this self-deception is actively encouraged and exploited by some therapists and brain training gurus and similar figures, who have also lost touch with reality in some way, and are confusing this reality denial with genuine improvement of the illness.

I think this is why proponents of these therapies cannot produce any reliable evidence that these treatments have powerful effects, even if they can point to testimonials willing to talk about extraordinarily powerful treatment effects.

 

Agreed. In my own sphere I've seen maybe three people who think CBT or GET helped them, all post-viral. Two had health issues only for a shorter period, so probably they just had the self-limiting post-viral version. One is a long-term patient, who swears by CBT and strongly believes that gradually building herself up to get back to normal life is the way to go and this is what worked for her. However, the thing is she is not cured. She is very proud of her achievement but to be honest she still has a pretty limited life, even though she is not severe anymore. But to be honest, I also had improvement, a pretty major one at some point in my disease (before my big relapse) and I did abolutely nothing to accomplish that, it just happened. Fluctuations happen. I have yet to see someone in the groups that I'm a member of who says they have been fully cured by GET or CBT or brain retraining or whatever and is not someone with short-term symptoms.

 

You've a more open minded view than I. I suspect some of being out and out grifters, and would be surprised if they believed their own hype.

As for the patients, not everyone will know that remissions or gradual natural improvements are possible. If they took supplements and it coincided with feeling a lot better, they're likely to assume cause and effect; they naturally want to tell others, and this was exploited very effectively by people selling supplements from the late 90s onwards.

Patients started getting a bit wiser and looking to research to see if there was justification for some of the claims, and lo and behold, the research started appearing. Presumably manufacturers realised that, for these patients, paying for what looked to a blindfold man on a galloping horse like a scientific study is better value than buying advertising space.

I'm a hideous old cynic, aren't I.

 

I’d say our culture, I’m in the UK but this applies to all the colonial nations, based upon strict hierarchies, resource hoarding, environmental damage, labour exploitation, have and had a system in place to make sure that people displaced, dispossessed and ruthlessly exploited, don’t complain too loudly and don’t have too much opportunity for forming solidarity.

So going back hundreds of years there has been a system in place to divide and conquer and to silence. It used to be more obviously enforced through direct violence from above.

But there’s a lot of distraction now. The direct violence is only used for people still fighting for their land and lives. For most of the population subdued by centuries, social messaging can keep people in line.

So here in the UK we have an NHS but it’s set up to provide the bare minimum, not even that at this point.

So people have just carried on relying on whatever they can get their hands on to treat themselves or to alleviate the hopelessness of suffering without treatment.

Then if people find their home remedies or mental exercises don’t work for their particular ailments, they might start telling people about this. People being told don’t enjoy hearing about this unpleasant reality, especially knowing this is glimpse of something that could possibly befall them and they’d rather not consider this possibility.

But if a person decides to keep complaining despite social distaste from their peers some pressure from above will need to be applied, to shut them down. To avoid the danger that a person complains and someone else overhears, and expectations grow among the population that meaningful healthcare is something reasonable to expect access to.

People have always had a natural fear of illness. People have always used superstitions and charms and rituals along side chemical and physical remedies in order to heal themselves and their communities. But as people are displaced they lose access to the land that heals and their ancestors knowledge base. They are exposed to new diseases.

So this is a good target a vulnerable point at which to leverage fear for control. To twist this raw material into a desired form.

The ruling class gets to control the narrative on health and healing as they do anything else. This area is key when considering feudalism and capitalism takes land from the people and makes them pay with their health and labour to get back the material means for survival, shelter fuel and food and water.

As long as there are enough healthy or healthy enough to work labourers that’s going as intended. Sometimes there is a branch of the establishment that is more concerned about maintaining the overall health of the population. Or the people gain leverage in one place or another and push back on the exploitation improving public health and healthcare. But access to good and comprehensive healthcare isn’t available to most of humanity.

There are hard limits enforced even for members of societies who’ve plundered the world’s resources and become wealthy nations at everyone else’s expense. A country’s wealth will usually healthcare at population level if there is some kind of universal healthcare system. But there are still limits. You need personal wealth for full access.

One way privatised systems profit is letting people die of preventable illnesses. One way public systems restrict spending is letting people die of preventable illness. Less often than profit driven systems, but still it’s capitalism that drives the limits to spending.

So now there’s an unmet need lots of sick people, social unrest must be avoided. Keep pushing the personal responsibility angle. Keep shovelling on the victim blame. Make being ill angry and non self blaming socially unacceptable. Then the sick person has to decide between giving and appearance of “motivation” and “positivity and “self reliance” and “problem solving ability” (be winner not a whiner!), get at least a little better (by healthied up by your bootstraps or boot licking either will do tbh) don’t make people feel awkward with your sickly self, fake it till you make it, and so we get to “be your own Dr.”

What else do we expect of each other? It isn’t really a free choice to admit failure or pretend success.

I think people accept this framework because it’s too hard not to. I think none of us exposed to it and brought up on it escape victimisation through it and most of us perpetuate it upon others to some extent or other.

Then there is a huge industry built on a very clear understanding of these dynamics and power relationships, ready to exploit our collective and individual predicament and profit handsomely from this one.

 

Probably not the kind of anecdote you were looking for...

I can't remember the source of this anecdote - it may have been Youtube.

A very frail, elderly man was in a nursing home. He had a daughter who was absolutely obsessed with the wackiest versions of "alternative medicine". She controlled her father's diet, stopped lots of his drugs, gave him all sorts of weird supplements, and also believed that people could heal from being in the vicinity of crystals.

As a result of this treatment the father became more and more ill and frail. But what actually killed him was one of the crystals rolling under his thigh without anyone noticing and he ended up with a huge hole in his leg that didn't heal and became severely infected, and he died as a result.

 

My god that is so sad.
But I would say it was inattentive care that killed this disabled father from the care home and the daughter. Rather than her unusual beliefs.

 

I'm also wondering if the popularity of psychosomatic explanations for illness is due to repressive attitudes towards negative emotions. By which I mean that in some cultures / families you're supposed to repress your emotions, unless you have a "serious" reason to do otherwise. The idea of psychosomatic illness then becomes liberating to the emotionally repressed patients who are experiencing the onset of some bad illness, as it gives them permission to express their negative emotions.

The negative emotions / experiences were always valid, and didn't need to become more valid by being seen as the cause of illness.

 

Reading the Wikipedia article on neuro-linguistic programming, I found this interesting section (bolding mine):

This makes it all the odder that so-called “brain retraining” programs like the Lightning Process, as well as other “holistic” approaches, enjoy credibility as treatments for ME/CFS with a part of mainstream medicine, even beyond proponents of the (bio)psychosocial model.