17. Cognitive Behaviour Therapy and a Boat called Positivity

Right! I said I'd write about my Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) session in Blog 15. I didn't reach it in that one ... a fairytale filled my 500 words ... but CBT is one of the two key ME treatments, loved by psychologists, rated as a cure for ME by rosy-spectacled researchers, taken from NICE's guidelines as a healing treatment by many GPs - so hey I really must pay it some heed.

Hm. Are there crowds of overjoyed people in the UK, USA, Denmark, Germany and 
The Netherlands standing on the ... roof, tag, dach, dak ... of their ... house, hus, haus, huis ... shouting that their ME has been cured by CBT?  

No! Engin! Nein! Nee!  

It's recognised that CBT can help you live with a chronic health condition or cancer but that's not what is being said by researchers and journalists; they are proclaiming that it improves the symptoms of ME.

The reason for the different languages is that CBT and GET are established as key treatments for ME in all these countries 'under the influence' (hic) of the PACE trial. Its results are highly influential and wide reaching. Trend setting. They provide the evidence-base world-wide for ME treatments. Such influence! Such responsibility for the researchers! 

I felt it right that I was referred for CBT to support me to live with ME and to return to work with it after several months sick leave. I was not sold it as a cure. So I went along with some faith in it as a supportive treatment.

I blurbed about myself for a while and went away with an image of a boat filling up with water and me trying to empty it using a perforated spoon. Yes, I recognise that this is what life is like; so busy in the here-and-now trying not to go under that you can't look ahead and see clearly what changes now could reap benefits in the future. 

So, encouraged to look ahead rather than focus on now, I have a picture of the boat making a 1 degree angle as it cuts through the water, the angle becoming wider as the bemused sailor -me- looks ahead. So, a 1 degree change can make a big difference in the longer run. The 1 degree difference can be like sitting quietly relaxing at lunchtime rather than joining colleagues in the noisy canteen. I'll give it a go. 

I'll put out of my mind that it's merely a picture of a boat with a drowning sailor and, too, the question of how such an image can take on life-like proportions and equate to life; a boat can cut through the water at that angle but who's to say that the path of life goes at an angle and not in a straight line or as I've found in the past an ever decreasing circle? Such negativity ... taking the helm of a boat called Positivity and leading it into a whirlpool! My psychologist will be thinking I have a false illness belief and that I want to stay ill!