Ashok Gupta (speaker) explains that illnesses such as ME/CFS, fibromyalgia, and chemical sensitivities are not the patient's fault and involve the unconscious brain. He urges patients to forgive friends/family/doctors who dismiss the illness, because getting angry and investing energy into proving the illness (e.g., advocacy or forums) can distract from personal healing. For chemical sensitivities he advises against reinforcing fear by over-avoiding exposures and recommends gradual brain retraining so patients can live more normal lives while reasonably minimizing exposure.
Chapters
It's not in your head, but I do believe it's in the unconscious brain. You're not at fault for having this condition, and you know that. And if people say hurtful things that, oh, it's all in your head, or perhaps try some CBT or, you know, just be positive you'll get better, or maybe it's a depression. You know, it doesn't help you to get angry and upset by what they've said. Just forgive them, because they don't. They're not aware of this condition. They don't understand it. And perhaps if you were in their shoes, you might say a similar thing. So we don't want to get caught up in getting angry at our family, our friends, our doctors, because only we suffer. And also when we get angry at what they're saying, we start looking to justify the condition and we start getting into advocacy groups and making sure that people understand it's really a physical condition. But then we compromise our own healing journey because we're so invested in making people realize that it is real. I know it's real. You know it's real, and that's what matters. And so, you know, certainly there can be a lot of people who get involved in patient groups and patient forums, and they're so invested in making sure everyone realizes that it's real. And that's great work that they've stopped really thinking about how they can heal themselves. And certainly in chemical sensitivities, we start getting people saying, you need to live in Nevada in the middle of nowhere with no exposure to chemicals. It's just not realistic. You're just reinforcing to the brain that these chemicals and these electrical fields are dangerous, whereas actually we can retrain the brain out of these responses so that, you know, it's not. We're not saying that we want to flood ourselves with chemicals, but at least we can lead a normal life whilst we also minimize our exposure to chemicals.
