The Illusion You Will Be Forever Able-Bodied and the Limits of Empathy: 2023 Remix
How an existential lesson from my brief strategic therapy patient is relevant to chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis patients
Competitors in the 2012 Euroleague tournament Source: Wikipedia
This is a revision of an essay I wrote in 2016. I have carried the essay with me as I migrated from one blogging platform to the next since then, which is a story in itself. This Substack article provides an updated remix. I have tinkered with the essay to change its emphasis without altering the details of the clinical case narrative that is at its core.
This remix provides more background about myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (MEcfs) and also more about the distinctive brief strategic therapy that I practiced and taught for many years. I hope to attract the attention of two very different audiences to the relevance of one topic that seems unrelated to the other, with the aim of beginning a conversation and a collaboration that should be mutually beneficial in the years ahead.
We know that one of the largest psychotherapy trials ever conducted showed psychotherapy could prove ineffective and harmful…