Sly Saint
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Seventeen years after losing my father to cancer – a few days shy of my 13th birthday – I can still hear the nurse’s words: ‘Daddy’s gone, darling.’
Thankfully, somewhere along the way I managed to turn the volume down low enough so I could live a relatively normal adult life. Occasionally I think about that day – anniversaries and birthdays are the worst, as any person who lost a parent at a young age will tell you. But on the whole it is an experience that, while formative, I don’t think has left me particularly scarred.
So when, a decade after Dad died, a therapist sat opposite me asking me to revisit the moment, demanding I ‘face the trauma’, I was bewildered.
I was there to address another, immediate problem – an eating disorder that had left me critically malnourished and hospitalised....
After six months, I was discharged. I wasn’t perilously underweight any more, but I certainly wouldn’t say I had recovered.
I am better now, but it wasn’t thanks to my well-meaning therapist. I owe it to a no-nonsense dietician who helped me understand the truth about nutrition, which helped me fight the thoughts that scared me off certain foods, and the unrelenting support of an online community I built for others with eating disorders
Studies show that roughly two-thirds manage to recover without long-lasting difficulties. ‘The mere distraction of just getting on with things, the passing of time and social support from friends and loved ones can be hugely important in helping people cope with a traumatic event,’ says Dr Simon Wessely, regius professor of psychiatry at King’s College London. ‘We mustn’t underestimate this and think a psychotherapist is always necessary. Sometimes people like me can get in the way.’
you said it.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/...tml?ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490&ito=1490
(having spelled out the potential harms of one kind of therapy, the article says that "CBT is more effective" and preferred by the NHS, as a therapy. Yet there is no mention of similar potential harms caused by CBT, or that many physical illnesses are being attibuted to childhood trauma ).
eta:
In journal of Psychosomatic medicine from 2012
Childhood Trauma in Multiple Sclerosis
https://journals.lww.com/psychosoma...dhood_Trauma_in_Multiple_Sclerosis__A.12.aspxConclusions
Our findings suggest an association between childhood trauma and MS in this cross-sectional study. Larger prospective longitudinal studies are needed to clarify the relationship between early-life stress and the risk for MS in genetically susceptible individuals.
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