5 ways a psychologist or therapist can help with chronic fatigue

Counselling Directory just published an article I wrote, offering five reasons working with a psychologist or therapist can be helpful for those living with ME/CFS or long covid.

Here is a summary of the five reasons:

The prospect of working with a psychologist or therapist for physical health conditions like ME/CFS and long covid might seem strange at first. However, as a clinical psychologist who has successfully recovered from ME/CFS and long covid, and who now supports people living with these conditions, I would like to share five important ways that psychological therapy can be helpful.

1. Living with an invisible chronic illness is psychologically distressing

Working with a psychologist or therapist can offer a rare lifeline for someone living with a fatigue-related condition to feel genuinely seen and heard. It can be profoundly stabilising to have someone to deeply listen to, bear witness and validate painful feelings accompanying these conditions, such as terror, hopelessness, anxiety and despair. However, more than just helping you to cope, feeling genuinely understood by another human can aid physiological regulation by calming the autonomic nervous system. This process is known as co-regulation. As neuroscientist, Lisa Feldman-Barrett has written: “The best thing for your nervous system is another human. The worst thing for your nervous system is… also another human.”

2. The mind and body are deeply interconnected 

Many people report having experienced significant stress in their lives in the period before developing ME/CFS and/or long covid. Therefore, working with a psychologist or therapist who has a sound understanding of the mind-body connection can be a valuable intervention. Working on the stressors in your life, as well as the ways that you respond to them, can be profoundly healing for the body as well as the mind. As Monty Lyman has written in his recent book, The Immune Mind, “A well-targeted psychological therapy with a clued-up, understanding clinician, is, ultimately, a powerful biological treatment”.

3. Neuroscience is beginning to transform our understanding of chronic symptoms

In recent years, neuroscientists have made some mind-blowing discoveries about the way the brain makes sense of the world. Exciting new knowledge is already being applied by some practitioners to support people living with chronic symptoms, with positive effects. In particular, researchers and clinicians in the field of persistent pain have used the knowledge of a new field of neuroscience predictive processing to influence the development of treatments which directly seek to reverse the vicious cycle described above. Working with a psychologist or therapist who understands this emerging science can be a game changer in helping an individual with ME/CFS or long covid establish a more coherent understanding of their health condition.

4. Working through trauma can help regulate your nervous system

Research clearly shows that people who have had adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are at greater risk of developing a chronic illness later in life. One possible reason for this is that traumatic or overwhelming experiences can predispose an individual’s nervous, endocrine and immune systems to respond to events in threat-oriented ways. Doing trauma-focused therapy to work through overwhelming memories can allow the brain and body to shift from an energy-draining survival state into a healing rest and restore state.

5. Working on behaviour patterns can support recovery

Both research and clinical observation suggest that many people living with fatigue-related health conditions commonly exhibit certain rigid or extreme patterns of behaviour. These include perfectionism, being hyper-responsible, relentlessly striving to achieve, people pleasing, self-sacrificing and fear of letting other people down. It is not difficult to see how these ways of meeting the world may contribute on some level to burnout, exhaustion and fatigue. Psychologists and therapists can support their clients to better understand and achieve greater autonomy over these conditioned behaviour patterns. This can free you up to connect more deeply with their authentic desires and needs.

Head to Counselling Directory to read the full article.