Sweden: Webinar: Gunnar Olsson on ACT for ME, hosted by Bragée ME Center

Gunnar Olsson
Fatigue, exhaustion, ME and ACT
About psychology, energy and mitochondria - a new holistic view

This webinar (in Swedish) took place on 14 April 2021, and the recording has now been published. It's part of a series of free so called educational seminars presented by Bragée ME-center.

Olsson is a well-known BPS proponent, and his ACT for ME method is known for being very heavily influenced by CBT/GET.

Gunnar Olsson
Trötthet, utmattning, ME och ACT
Om psykologi, energi och mitokondrier - en ny helhetsbild.
https://www.bragee.se/utbildning-210414-act-ros-me

Earlier threads about some of Olsson's ME studies here, here, here, here and here.

(I haven't been able to watch the webinar yet. Not looking forward to it, to be honest, but I feel that it's really important to be aware of what kind of educational material on ME Bragée Clinics are producing and distributing.)

 

I'm unable to listen properly because of PEM, but I've listened with half an ear to a few bits.

One thing that seriously caught my attention was something he said about 6 million SEK for ME research that went missing in 2012? (Approx £516 600 or $712 000 using today's conversion rates.) I will definitely be looking into that...

When talking about ACT he said something that really surprised me, something that completely contradicts the info in his ACT for ME research project documents (see threads linked in my post above). He said "do not confuse ME with psychiatric illness" and "do not expose them to physical activity". Wow... I really really hope he genuinely means that. He said that they have realised that the focus of ACT for ME should be defusion. I wish he had expanded a lot more on that.

However, at the very end when he's talking about his planned oxidative stress/Q10 study and what outcome measures he has chosen, after mentioning the HPA axis he talks about collecting data from the anamnesis questionnaires, about onset and "illness history of severe stress in life, that's very common, from childhood abuse, difficult childhood, to accidents and other kinds of abuse, that is vastly common".



There was an awful lot of talk about psychological flexibility too (unhelpful avoidance behaviours, fears etc), referring to Martin Jonsjö's work and doctoral thesis, which Olsson supervised.

Looots of general talk about the citric acid cycle, oxidative stress,...

He said that Bragée has asked him to design an ACT program for them, which will start in 2021. 9 sessions with psychologists and "socionoms" (what's the English word for a person with a university degree in social work?). It wasn't clear to me if that will be offered only to the pain rehab patients or to ME patients as well.

Based on this talk, I couldn't help getting the impression that Olsson is someone who is really into his special interests, not really interested in ME per se, but happy to accept ME research grants to see if he can figure out a way to somehow apply his special interests to ME.

I hope someone else will be able to add a proper summary of the talk, this was just some of my random thoughts. Please feel free to correct me if I got anything wrong.

 

Defusion is a pile of manure when it comes to treating ME. Personally, no matter how I tried to manipulate my thoughts if I'm too active PEM kicks my butt.

An idea of how Cognitive Defusion is used in ACT.

Source: https://highfocuscenters.pyramidhealthcarepa.com/what-is-cognitive-defusion/