Psychology Today: In Search of a Coherent Understanding of ME/CFS and Long Covid, Jake Hollis

Checking out his Linked In and PsychologyToday Profiles, he has claimed to be fully recovered in one place, but notes that he is on a journey in another.
Psychology today said:
Jake Hollis PsychD
About
Jake Hollis, PsychD, is a clinical psychologist specialising in fatigue-related chronic health conditions. He became unwell with long COVID and ME/CFS during the pandemic and has since fully recovered by harnessing the power of the mind-brain-body connection.
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The Fatigue Psychologist said:
I’ve come a long way since then, and I am living a fulfilling life again and moving closer to full recovery. This is not, of course, the same thing as returning to the same life I was living before I got ill. For me at least, I am much more interested in balance and spending time with the people I love than I was before got ill, when I was mainly interested in achieving things.

As much as I love the NHS and what it stands for, I decided to set up the Fatigue Psychologist for two main reasons. Firstly, I wanted to create a service that is able to support people with fatigue-related conditions to recover and thrive, not just cope and survive. Secondly, I decided to practice what I preach and create a working life for myself that is conducive to my own health and recovery.

In addition to the work I do here at the Fatigue Psychologist, I also work at the charity, Freedom From Torture. In this role, I support asylum seekers and refugees to recover from the impacts of torture.
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And, in the article he is back to claiming recovery:
This is how I make sense of my own recovery from ME/CFS and long covid. I look forward to going deeper into this fascinating area with you in future posts.
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He seems to only have his 'The Fatigue Psychologist' practice. As far as I can see, he is only available for online consultations, on Monday and Tuesday.
So, I'd suggest that he has not in fact recovered and some of the material he is putting out is misleading. It must be confusing when you have been trained in the power of the mind to not be able to cure yourself of ME/CFS.
 
"The prospect of making sense of your supposedly “medically unexplained” symptoms as a potentially reversible state of dysregulation and dyshomeostasis across multiple bodily systems lends itself to possibility, hope, and agency."

Sounds like he is dreaming up a new therapy or just doing a hash-up of the current ones....we must sort out our emotional dysregulation, our psychosocial stress and once back to homeostasis - we will all be skipping merrily towards the sunset....

I have found accepting the non-reversible state of my ME more useful for my psychological and physical health.
 
People laughed at Trump for suggesting using bleach to “cleanse” the body of Covid 19 yet these people get whole careers making even less medical sense of ME/CFS and LC “treatment”.
I’m feeling there’s some “inflammation” in my body just hearing about this bunkum…
 
Hutan said:
This man seems to think that you need a recovery plan to derive meaning, that there has to be some narrative arc from 'hero is challenged' to 'hero overcomes' with some deep learning as the compensation for the difficulty endured. That's not life, that is a story.
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A fairy tale.
Peter Trewhitt said:
This seems to be a surprisingly common theme in medicine from Freud to Wessely, to replace science with literary invention.
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The Narrative Rules All.
Utsikt said:
How can someone that’s trained on the human mind be so oblivious to bias?
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An entire profession, even. (With some honourable exceptions.)
 
Jake Hollis I wish you well, but please stop writing articles like this that may make you feel good about yourself and feel like you are helping, but which can cause enormous distress and harm to those of us not as fortunate as you to recover.

Your story is not new or special, it is a repetition of one we have heard from others, most of whom are spreading their story to make money from selling false hope to desperate people.

Have you invented a jolly name yet for your therapy? Lightning Process, the Switch, the Crysallis effect, Optimum health, Reverse therapy, Acceptance and Commitment therapy,... are all taken.

This stuff is not helpful. It leads to gaslighting, judgement, financial loss, false hope, crashes and deterioration.
 
No fundamental difference to this, IMHO:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_(Byrne_book)

Sold over 30 million copies, more than $300 million in sales, and also made into two films.

The only reason this toxic drivel fantasy persists throughout the ages is because enough people – and a few more than that – desperately want it to be true, and it pays very well for those selling. There will always be a market for it, and always be those who will gleefully prey on the desperate.

:grumpy:
 
New Jake Hollis article in Psychology Today:

Can Neuroscience Explain What Makes Fatigue Chronic?
The science of predictive processing sheds new light on persistent fatigue.


"Key points
  • The new science of predictive processing is prompting researchers to understand fatigue in a new way.
  • Persistent fatigue may be the result of the brain's hyper-vigilance following multiple stressors.
  • Positively, we can harness the brain's neuroplasticity to nudge it to become more flexible in its outlook.
(...)

So, how can the emerging neuroscience of predictive processing help explain ME/CFS and long COVID? Well, as I discussed in a previous post, these conditions may be precipitated by a sort of confidence crisis in the brain, which has been described by researchers as a loss of allostatic self-efficacy. On the back of cumulative stressors, which may be psychological, biological or environmental, the brain comes to doubt its ability to perform its main role: to maintain balance in the entire organism. Commonly, a final insult, such as a viral infection, triggers a "state of emergency" in the brain, also known as central sensitisation.


In this hyper-vigilant state, the brain’s predictive baseline becomes dislocated. It defaults to assuming that the world is unsafe, that there are simply too many stresses facing us, and that the body is not resilient enough to handle them."

(Not a recommendation, obviously.)
 
Wyva said:
New Jake Hollis article in Psychology Today:

Can Neuroscience Explain What Makes Fatigue Chronic?
The science of predictive processing sheds new light on persistent fatigue.


"Key points
  • The new science of predictive processing is prompting researchers to understand fatigue in a new way.
  • Persistent fatigue may be the result of the brain's hyper-vigilance following multiple stressors.
  • Positively, we can harness the brain's neuroplasticity to nudge it to become more flexible in its outlook.
(...)

So, how can the emerging neuroscience of predictive processing help explain ME/CFS and long COVID? Well, as I discussed in a previous post, these conditions may be precipitated by a sort of confidence crisis in the brain, which has been described by researchers as a loss of allostatic self-efficacy. On the back of cumulative stressors, which may be psychological, biological or environmental, the brain comes to doubt its ability to perform its main role: to maintain balance in the entire organism. Commonly, a final insult, such as a viral infection, triggers a "state of emergency" in the brain, also known as central sensitisation.


In this hyper-vigilant state, the brain’s predictive baseline becomes dislocated. It defaults to assuming that the world is unsafe, that there are simply too many stresses facing us, and that the body is not resilient enough to handle them."

(Not a recommendation, obviously.)
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How nice of him to wait to publish it the day after 12th of May..
 
Can it? Possibly. Does it? Haha, of course not. Not even close. About as close as I get to the Sun stretching my hands towards it. Maybe not even that much.

What I hate the most is that quacks go through those (actual) fads where they latch onto one thing, claim it "may be" the answer, by which they mean it is, then once the research goes nowhere after a few years they latch on to the next one, and no one ever makes them change anything about what they do, pretending that every new iteration, every copy-paste instance of the same, is legit.

They even answer the question here: "new science" and "may be". They got nothing. This "predictive coding" thing doesn't even make sense as an explanation in this context, but of course it's not what they actually mean, what they always actually mean is: "brain's hyper-vigilance following multiple stressors", which has nothing whatsoever do to with any of this, and has been the explanation for over a century.

It's still the same BS they paint over, the same button in the same button soup. Oh they switched carrots for parsnips this time, whoopdeefuckingdoo! It's still always the same Scooby-doo shtick where it's 'stress' wearing a mask that did all the spooky stuff they can't figure out. So damn pathetic.
 
I read Jake's bio on his website again: https://www.fatiguepsychologist.com/ He is very into the book "The Immune Mind" and how stress causes ME, predictive processing and the so called "cutting edge of neuroscience" and how he can treat ME and LC.

This all sounds like the recent sojourn into the S4ME forum by a possible clinician and a pwME strongly advocating this approach.

Seems to be quite a push to get predictive processing theory into the ME sphere, Garner and BACME further opining on it in the BMJ today, quoting the Norwegian psychologist, Reme's paper's as evidence. Supposition is not evidence.
 
New article by Jake Hollis in Psychology Today. Why is this guy getting so much space to post his musings there?

ME/CFS, Long Covid, and Disconnection From the Self
Could the ways you meet the world make you vulnerable to chronic fatigue?

Key points​

  • Certain personality traits have been observed in people living with ME/CFS and long Covid.
  • For some, it may be useful to explore how these traits may have made them more vulnerable to ill health.
  • Disconnecting from one's own needs may be better understood as a learned pattern than a fixed trait.
  • One hypothesis is that disconnecting from one's needs undermines the brain's attempts to balance the body.
"Physical symptoms are undeniably real. Meanwhile, clinicians and researchers have observed a cluster of personality traits that are present in many people living with these illnesses. A striking number of people affected by these conditions have traits such as perfectionism, people pleasing, hyper-responsibility, self-sacrifice, a high drive to achieve, and a strong aversion to letting other people down.


Related to these traits, research also suggests that people living with ME/CFS may be more likely to suppress emotions.

(...)

It is also worth noting that researchers have identified similar personality traits as vulnerability factors in many other, less contested, physical illnesses, from cancer to multiple sclerosis. Back in 1987, psychologist Lydia Temoshok proposed the “type C” personality, in response to interviews with 150 people with melanoma. She identified people in this group as consistently being: “excessively nice, pleasant to a fault, uncomplaining and unassertive”."

And goes on patient blaming while saying he is not patient blaming.

Jake Hollis is also one of the people who signed a BPS response by "recovered patients" to the Patients with severe ME/CFS need hope and expert multidisciplinary care, 2025, Miller et al opinion paper.
 
Wyva said:
New article by Jake Hollis in Psychology Today. Why is this guy getting so much space to post his musings there?

ME/CFS, Long Covid, and Disconnection From the Self
Could the ways you meet the world make you vulnerable to chronic fatigue?

Key points​

  • Certain personality traits have been observed in people living with ME/CFS and long Covid.
  • For some, it may be useful to explore how these traits may have made them more vulnerable to ill health.
  • Disconnecting from one's own needs may be better understood as a learned pattern than a fixed trait.
  • One hypothesis is that disconnecting from one's needs undermines the brain's attempts to balance the body.
"Physical symptoms are undeniably real. Meanwhile, clinicians and researchers have observed a cluster of personality traits that are present in many people living with these illnesses. A striking number of people affected by these conditions have traits such as perfectionism, people pleasing, hyper-responsibility, self-sacrifice, a high drive to achieve, and a strong aversion to letting other people down.


Related to these traits, research also suggests that people living with ME/CFS may be more likely to suppress emotions.

(...)

It is also worth noting that researchers have identified similar personality traits as vulnerability factors in many other, less contested, physical illnesses, from cancer to multiple sclerosis. Back in 1987, psychologist Lydia Temoshok proposed the “type C” personality, in response to interviews with 150 people with melanoma. She identified people in this group as consistently being: “excessively nice, pleasant to a fault, uncomplaining and unassertive”."

And goes on patient blaming while saying he is not patient blaming.

Jake Hollis is also one of the people who signed a BPS response by "recovered patients" to the Patients with severe ME/CFS need hope and expert multidisciplinary care, 2025, Miller et al opinion paper.
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Quoting 80s personality ‘research’ /suggestions which has been critiqued in the last however many decades as nonsense ( like ‘type A causes heart attacks is now giggled at) as if it’s ‘evidence’

Just surreal
 
Jake is promoting his practice again…..

I, too, feel we are being taken back to the 80’s talking about type C personality, what? Populist nonsense.

The research, (yet again in Psychology Today) is this paper,
https://psycnet.apa.org/buy/2016-23898-001. He references this twice, it is Chalder et al.

Taking skin conduction tests after watching a distressing film and being observed for emotional reactions by observers. This is pretty low on scientific methodology. One could poke many holes in this,

I had psychotherapy for 3 years during my training to be a psychiatrist and I am afraid I still have ME and it didn’t improve it.

I have worked with patients with a variety of personality disorders and can assess people’s personality traits and give a reasonable formulation of the ones that are impacting on them but wow the stuff he said about the brain wanting to balance itself is weird and wrong
 
ME sufferers could adopt a “type C personality” as a response to the stigma of the illness. Extreme niceness is a logical strategy when dependent on help from others that society says you have no right to. Not much point complaining and asserting yourself if you can’t look after yourself.

Besides, I thought our problem was supposed to be that we are too negative. Now our problem is that we are too positive? These people need to get their story straight.
 
I am not going to waste my time reading yet another piece of recycled crap. But I will bet he did not address the matter of adequately distinguishing correlation v. causation, of cause v. consequence.

Once again this horseshit tells us far more about what is going on in the author's psyche than in the patients'.
 
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hibiscuswahine said:
Taking skin conduction tests after watching a distressing film and being observed for emotional reactions by observers. This is pretty low on scientific methodology.
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Literally the basis for a "lie detector", aka polygraph. It's complete bunk.

Also, not coincidentally, bunk for exact same reason why all biopsychosocial questionnaires are bunk: some things can be happening for completely different reasons. Real professionals look for those. Quacks don't care.

The traditional pseudoscience around "lie detectors" is that some combination of skin conduction and heart rhythm 'detects' lies, when it does no such thing because that's not how anything works.

Here they substituted lying (or obfuscation, or deceit, or whatever) for fear. Exact same idea. Just as silly. The personality stuff is even more ridiculous, but is still widely believed in the medical profession because they tend to not clean house out of debunked nonsense, it only happens when something that actually works comes along. Which is happening less and less over time.

But it's far more telling about the general junk that is modern psychology, and publications like PT, than about people like Hollis. It's the same problem with Wakefield. He did not self-publish on a personal blog, or in the Journal of Romanian experiential medicine. He was published, and promoted, by the Lancet and its editor-in-chief, both totally escaped any blame whatsoever for doing so.

Because medicine does not do accountability. It works just like politics. It's who has support in the rooms where decisions are made that matters. Not the what and the why. Facts rarely matter here.
 
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