Why "brain retraining" concept as course makes no sense

[Hoopoe]

Even if ME/CFS was a condition with a need for some kind of brain retraining, nobody needs artificial positivity, detached from reality or in denial of it. This would be the WRONG kind of retraining. The right training would simply consist of learning to do what you need/want to be able to do, by doing it.

And the right approach to brain retraining would not be authoritarian, along the line of "your attitude is wrong and here's how it should be", but rather recognize that a person's views, behaviors and attitudes were useful in the situation they once were in but may no longer be after a major improvement/recovery, and that the person must discover for themselves what is now appropriate because no one else can do that for them.

The view that brain retraining would need any special course to occur seems highly dubious because the brain is MADE for responding and adapting to signals coming in from the body and the environment. It does that all the time already.

The idea that ME/CFS symptoms are "learned brain behavior" or caused by "bad brain wiring" or negative thoughts are also nonsense, but I just wanted to give an additional reason, beyond the neuroscience, why these brain training courses are nonsense.

It seems to me that the kind of people attracted to brain retraining courses might be vulnerable to them because they view negative thoughts as something of great shame, rather an indication that something is not right.

 

[postviral?1971]

It's all magic dressed up as science, isn't it?

 

[EndME]

Even if ME/CFS was a condition with a need for some kind of brain retraining, nobody needs artificial positivity, detached from reality or in denial of it. This would be the WRONG kind of retraining. The right training would simply consist of learning to do what you need/want to be able to do, by doing it.

I'm not sure I'm understanding you.

My understanding is that a certain group of people proposes that there is a sort of neurological rewiring problem causing symptoms amongst people with ME/CFS which can be treated with "brain retraining" (of course there is no meaningful evidence that these programs work in ME/CFS or that one can somehow addresses neuroplasticity in a targeted and meaningful manner with such programs which of course are also all a bit different precisely because nobody has any understaning of meaningful mechanisms). From what can see it seems a bit like someone once heard the catchphrase "neurons that fire together, wire together" and then postulated their own beliefs into that (of course anybody eating rubbish from the trash can also be consider that "brain retraining" because you'll never stop your neurons from firing, but to claim anything reasonable you'd have to show some meaningful "retraining").

That is people postulate that these programs are able to address a core feature of ME/CFS, I don't see how that has anything to do with just trying to get on with life.

 

[Deanne NZ]

Have the neurolinguistic programming/brain retraining crowd tageted the weight loss market? It must be so much more potentially lucrative than the MECFS & chronic illness market. Surely they could apply the same theory - you are overweight because you have unresolved trauma and your brain is sending signals that you are hungry and you must eat to protect yourself. It would be easy to measure success - no special diets required. Just a change in thinking. The obesity epidemic would be cured.

 

[V.R.T.]

The right training would simply consist of learning to do what you need/want to be able to do, by doing it.

And the right approach to brain retraining would not be authoritarian, along the line of "your attitude is wrong and here's how it should be", but rather recognize that a person's views, behaviors and attitudes were useful in the situation they once were in but may no longer be after a major improvement/recovery, and that the person must discover for themselves what is now appropriate because no one else can do that for them.

This is exactly how I approached retaining/rehabilitating myself when I tried the psychological approach. I became convinced my physiological symptoms were a response by my brain to 'protect' me from drinking alcohol (recovering alcoholic) by keeping me in the house. I remember jogging down the road telling myself it was no longer necessary and I was safe now.

Guess what, I deterioated badly. So even without the nonsense the brain retrainers promote, this approach utterly destroyed my functioning.

 

[Utsikt]

One of the many harms of brain retraining is that it teaches you to ignore symptoms. Some symptoms can be ignored in some cases, but a lot of them are there because there is something wrong somewhere.

BR, CBT, GET, pacing up, etc. assumes that there is nothing wrong, but doesn’t have any proof of that. Or that whatever is wrong is either deconditioning or maladaptive thoughts. But there is no proof of that either, and quite a lot of proof that it isn’t the case based on negative results in studies that target deconditioning and maladaptive thoughts.

 

[alex3619]

Or that whatever is wrong is either deconditioning or maladaptive thoughts. But there is no proof of that either, and quite a lot of proof that it isn’t the case based on negative results in studies that target deconditioning and maladaptive thoughts.

Of course, say they, it might be that the retraining was not quite right, either in formulation or delivery, so it might work next time? Right? In that light I would like to promote the idea of an exorcism. I mean there is no evidence that will be any help at all, but when has that stopped them?

[Sarcasm if you are in deep fog and unsure.]

 

[rvallee]

Have the neurolinguistic programming/brain retraining crowd tageted the weight loss market? It must be so much more potentially lucrative than the MECFS & chronic illness market. Surely they could apply the same theory - you are overweight because you have unresolved trauma and your brain is sending signals that you are hungry and you must eat to protect yourself. It would be easy to measure success - no special diets required. Just a change in thinking. The obesity epidemic would be cured.

They would not dare, weight is an objective measure. It's actually stuff like this that makes it clear they don't even believe in their own BS, because if they did they would be their main targets. There is so much more money to be made/saved here, and they completely avoid it precisely because they couldn't get away with their BS. It's as big a tell as an obese snake oil salesman selling a weight-loss cure who refuses to take it, for some BS reason.

Notice the contrast with GLP-1 antagonists, the Ozempics and others. They actually work, unlike any mind-body woo. This is the contrast between real and fake medicine: one works, the other doesn't. The biopsychosocial ideology has literally not produced a single breakthrough in over a century of trying, not even anything as low impact as aspirin as a painkiller.

Same with addiction. Addiction programs are always specific, whereas the claims of mind-body pseudoscience are completely generic, vague ideas about neuroplasticity, or whatever. Instead, many addiction programs will feature alternative substances, like with methadone, or pharmaceutical treatments.

If the outlandish claims made about CBT were any true at all, there is no reason why any generic course, where the "educational" material is simply focused on addiction, wouldn't work. But, of course, they don't work, so they don't bother much, not beyond a meek "you could try, but it's a long shot", which is how their fake treatments got corrected as, and they lost their minds about it.

Ironically, time is usually what does most of the work in addiction programs. One day at a time, control the cravings, they will diminish. A natural process controlled by time alone. In our case, they simply lie and pretend like the natural recovery process was their doing. But it's time that does it, not anything they do, or anything we can do about it.

No, instead they stick to things that can't be verified. All because being overweight and drug addiction are problems that the profession believes in. The idea here is that pseudoscience is fine for pseudo-problems. Which actually reveals that, generally speaking, the medical profession doesn't even take seriously problems like anxiety and depression, because they see them as fine targets for this BS. They pretend, sure, but they see them as pseudo-problems, trivial nonsense that doesn't deserve much attention beyond pretending to be doing something about it.

I did a quick search. On google search, most of the results are pop psychology, or speculation about how it could work. Searching scientific publications, there are a few hits, including a handful of trials that actually show far better results than anything having to do with the psychosomatic they throw at us: The effectiveness of a comprehensive mind body weight loss intervention for overweight and obese adults: A pilot study.

But they're small pilot studies, with no controls, and they still mostly emphasize secondary measures. The rest seems to be mostly speculative imagining. It's far better than the best they have about us, but it's so methodologically flawed that no one cares. They know it's not credible, so it got no interest. It can't be overlooked like with us, where most don't believe there is anything wrong with us. I can barely find ten of those in total, which would be about a month's worth of the same for generic psychosomatic issues.