Insecure Attachment and Unexplained Illness, A therapist's map - 21 April 2018

Cheshire

Cheshire

Senior Member (Voting Rights)
FWIW

With Dr Gwen Adshead, Professor Helen Payne and Professor David Peters

At this one-day discussion, we will attempt to map out the association between insecure attachment experiences and medically unexplained symptoms. While theories about hypersensitivity, environmental impacts and post-viral conditions offer certain routes into understanding such conditions, on this occasion we are looking at disorganised attachment as a possible predisposing factor when these illnesses are intractable. We will also consider the impact of attachment on how the condition is managed by the patient. Gwen Adshead explains that, "Attachment style can buffer or increase the perceived stress of illness (either explained or unexplained) and can influence response to psychological interventions aimed at reducing medically unexplained symptoms. Attachment style may mediate between childhood abuse and adult somatisation."*

In considering the mechanisms underlying somatisation, and how it can be relieved, Gwen will be joined by Professor of Integrated Medicine at the University of Westminster, David Peters, who will consider the functions of co-regulation between mother and baby, and between therapist and patient, rooting this discussion in the biology of affect regulation. Professor Helen Payne from the University of Herts will offer an embodied therapeutic technique for shifting the experience of the symptom and enabling people suffering from MUS to live well. Together the three speakers will attempt to show links in the mind-body system with attachment, and how new insights can lead to helpful therapeutic approaches.
Click to expand...

http://www.confer.uk.com/insecure.html
 
So tired of all this talk of human beings as delicate flowers that can't have any bad stuff happening early in life - without becoming permanently messed up. In some way. Usually mental illness, or depression, or "somatic" illness.

Its obviously not like that, because prior to the mid 20th century, almost everyone had really bad stuff happen to them in childhood, at least by today's standards. Posh people often had distant parents who they rarely saw, multiple (variable) nannies and they often had to deal with boarding school and its bullies. Poor people often had dead parents, or exhausted parents, or parents who drank to relieve their misery, or they had okay parents but got packed off to work at a young age and forced to live miles from their family. Wartime kids, well, there's a whole extra layer. Its a wonder any of the kids who witnessed horrors during wars were able to function at all. But oddly, most did.

If you raise this objection, the defense is always that it depends on the person, and that only vulnerable people succumb. There's some weird combination of horrors/deprivations PLUS being "psychologically weak" that's supposed to explain it.

So let's just cut out the middle man and just say some people are vulnerable to some conditions and other people aren't.
 
This strikes a chord with me as I see Prof David Peters has his ex-job as a GP in the Marylebone Health Centre mentioned in his blurb.

This is a UK NHS GP surgery in central London and I was once a patient there. This is the medical centre that wouldn't treat my chronic sinus problems as my GP there didn't "believe" that there was such a thing. Don't remember Prof Peters there but what a useless bunch of GP's they were.
 
Stuff like this I can feel is not even worth engaging with, as when people understand the problems with PACE all this chaff will fall too... but I've been thinking that for years now, and come to see how stuff exactly like this can go on to have an influence on how patients are treated!
 
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