uk Therapy

Reverse therapy

Jennifer felt miserable experiencing constant pain without ever having a respite. For over 14 years she’d been suffering from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) and experienced fatigue, joint pain, ‘brain fog’, headaches, IBS and disturbed sleep, every day.

Desperate to return to some kind of ‘normal’ life she decided to try Reverse Therapy. “By the end of my first session I understood what was causing my symptoms and why this was happening to me. I felt so relieved to have some one listen to me, believe me and provide a reason for it”.

Reverse Therapy is a ground breaking new therapy pioneered by Dr John Eaton, a UK based Psychologist and psychotherapist who has spent the past nine years researching a unique approach to Bodymind healing. Although Reverse Therapy can be used to treat a wide variety of symptomatic conditions, it has been mainly used for the treatment of CFS, producing nothing short of spectacular results in the UK so far.

John first became interested in the relationship between Bodymind intelligence in 1996 when his wife, Yvonne was diagnosed with a rare and debilitating auto-immune condition called Sarcoidosis. At first he noticed that his wife’s symptoms often rose or fell according to her emotional state, indicating that some symptoms may be a type of ‘distress signal’ designed to alert his wife for a need to re-establish her emotional health. He then came to believe that certain symptoms might also contain an implicit ‘message’ that - if acted upon - could reverse the body’s need to create the symptoms.

Finally, his investigations led him to the realisation that the body has an intelligence all of its own and that this intelligence was centred in the limbic system – the so-called ‘Emotional brain’. Essentially, he believes that all physical symptoms have a meaning and purpose and that healing can come about as soon as we uncover the deeper meaning of the messages the symptoms are trying to convey to us.

Bodymind’s main purpose is to promote health. It does this by monitoring the efficiency of the different systems under its control, maintaining a balance between external demands and internal resources, and using emotions and symptoms as feed-back to warn the person when he or she is under threat. Bodymind also actively seeks the maximum of pleasure, satisfaction and personal fulfilment – and symptoms can arise when these are lacking, such as often happens, paradoxically, in states of illness – Bodymind sends further symptoms to warn us not to give up activities that can get us back on the road to recovery!

Another realisation that led forward to Reverse therapy was the finding that some types of illness – those that John calls in his book ‘non-specific illnesses’, which include CFS, Fibromyalgia, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, certain Auto-Immune conditions as well as some Skin disorders, Circulatory problems and Pain conditions – are linked to the state of ‘dis-ease’.

Dis-ease arises when we are profoundly out of sync with our own deepest needs When Headmind and Bodymind are in conflict, we have lost the balance between external pressures and personal needs and, as a result, have lost touch with who we really are. This state of dis-ease, which is picked up by Bodymind’s sensitive, shielding, mechanisms, triggers the need for Bodymind to ‘up the ante’, using symptoms as a more urgent warning signal that corrective action is more and more urgently required. Chronic Fatigue Syndrome fits the picture of a disorder in which symptoms are created through glandular dysfunction, but which points to the action of Bodymind working through powerful mechanisms in the Emotional brain.

In fact it is the Hypothalamus – the ‘master controller’ of the glandular system, which sits just underneath the Emotional brain that is key to understanding the development of CFS. The job of the Hypothalamus is to translate the perceptions of the Emotional brain into hormonal messages working mainly through the Pituitary and Adrenal glands. When the Bodymind feels that we are under threat in some way – and also that we are failing to heed it’s warning signals, it triggers the Hypothalamus to put the organism on ‘red alert’ and to use symptoms as a last resort to warn us that we are in jeopardy. At that point Bodymind pauses to check whether we are taking corrective action to restore emotional balance to our daily schedule. But if unhealthy situations continue – whether at work, in relationships or in the home, then the Hypothalamus becomes persistently over-active, leading to a breakdown in the organism’s delicate feedback control over the different body systems. At this point the symptoms may become chronic and Bodymind stores away a cellular memory in the Emotional brain about the problem, so that each time similar situations come up the cellular memory activates the Hypothalamus again.

Reverse Therapy works by taking the side of Bodymind (rather than Head intelligence) and finding out what it is that the body is trying to ‘say’ through the symptoms. Although it is a talking cure Reverse therapy is not a psychotherapy but a Bodymind healing process. Most forms of Psychotherapy focus on getting rid of symptoms but Reverse Therapy doesn’t do that. It works with symptoms rather than against them. Reverse Therapists don’t focus on dreams or work with childhood memories and - most importantly - they don’t try to change peoples’ thoughts about the past. Nor do Reverse therapists work with beliefs or other cognitions. Still more radically, Reverse therapists do not actually agree that there is such a thing as ‘The Unconscious Mind’. Instead they argue that most of the unconscious processes that produce emotions and symptoms are the work of Bodymind.

At the heart of Reverse therapy lie three core processes that complement each other. The first is to investigate the history of the symptoms, focusing particularly on what was going on in the client’s life when symptoms first appeared, and also on more recent situations in which symptoms were re-triggered. As this investigation unfolds, clients are taught how to attune to Bodymind communication using simple body-focusing techniques – what Reverse therapists call ‘going into your Body’ rather than ‘staying in your Head’. In this way, clients develop intuitions about the emotions that Bodymind is encouraging them to express. And that, in turn, leads to the discovery of the ‘symptom message’ – the specific, corrective actions Bodymind is calling for in order to abolish the state of ‘dis-ease’ and restore emotional balance to the client’s life.

Reverse therapy teaches clients to become aware of what Bodymind is trying to communicate through symptoms, and to act to resolve the problem. We all of us have the ability to become aware of what it is our body is instinctively telling us in certain situations – through our feelings and emotions, as well as through specific symptoms.

Once clients learn to attune with their Bodymind and act on its message then symptoms reverse and full recovery follows. Jennifer is now well and leading a ‘normal’ healthy life.

For more information see our website at www.reverse-therapy.com. Or read the book – ‘M.E., Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Fibromyalgia – The Reverse Therapy Approach’ by Dr John Eaton