NHS booklet for 'Medically Unexplained Symptoms' & a Central Sensitivity Syndrome, e.g. FM & CFS

I was astonished to come across this free (imo) brilliant British NHS booklet (link to the pdf below at the end of this posting) written by Professor of Health Psychology Michael Hyland, who recovered from Chronic Fatigue/ME, and Anthony Davies, a Senior Consultant at the Plymouth Pain Management Centre and Associate Professor at Plymouth University, England, who has treated patients with Fibromyalgia (FM) for over 20 years.

The booklet doesn't go down the 'buried emotions' route, it's a 'when your body says no' (to stress) route. (So it's not one for Sarno purists.) The booklet's explanation using a hardware/software analogy for the body is perhaps more palatable to some people.

As regulars on these forums will know from my postings, I have gone from being bedridden (for a total of over 18 months) and housebound for many years (as I came to mind/body work late) with Fibromyalgia (to include horrendous back pain and severe Chronic Fatigue/ME and a myriad of other mind/body symptoms) to functioning pretty normally by comparison. Much of the advice in the booklet equates to what I have been doing on my mind/body 'journey' (that it took ages to work out and settle on for myself through a process of trial and error) and I'm now going to layer in the relaxation techniques from the booklet into my daily routine to further support the neuroplasticity changes—rewiring the brain and nervous system's 'stop program' (as the booklet describes it) through gentle, repeated safety signals and habits.

The booklet's introduction says that it's "for people who have been diagnosed by their doctor with a Central Sensitivity Syndrome. This includes patients with Fibromyalgia or with medically unexplained symptoms (MUS)."

https://www.somersetpain.co.uk/SiteUploads/18/Uploads/Body programming PatientGuide.pdf

 

Thank you @BloodMoon

I’m about to have a pain clinic appointment on the NHS, which I’m pretty scared about, I want to make sure I’m going in with a mind body approach (I’ve waited for this appointment for 7 months since I was booked in) and I don’t want to be “medicalised”. So to see this from an NHS perspective is really encouraging, thank you

 

@HealingNow
Have this loaded into your phone. Show it and ask questions.
Just because it exists, doesn’t mean their own providers even know it’s there!
Les Aria worked for Kaiser in the US, a very large umbrella healthcare provider but nobody knew what he was doing and the care he was providing patients with psychogenic pain.
It is wonderful this pamphlet exists (thanks @BloodMoon), I wonder if others like folks in SIRPA know it is published?

 

Go well. Thankfully people are much more open to mindbody approach now including NHS clinicians. Primary care physicians feel hopelessly ill informed but the specialists are catching on

 

A really good suggestion, and also a very good point!

Although the authors of the booklet were hoping that courses (specifically based on the booklet, which was published in 2016) would be rolled out across the NHS it looks like that hasn't happened.

(I just did a search and it seems that the only NHS Trusts that are doing the courses based on the booklet are in the South West of England, i.e. Plymouth Hospitals NHS has 8-week psychologist-led program, Somerset Community Pain Management runs a 7-week course with Tai Chi elements for fibromyalgia patients, and North Devon Healthcare NHS Trust offers body reprogramming groups as part of pain management at their Marjon site.)

However, that said, it's not to say that other hospital Pain Management Departments in other NHS Trusts aren't now open to a mind/body route for their patients... I say this, because, for example, the Pain Management Department's webpage on my local NHS hospital's website shows a link to the 'Flippin' Pain' website which focuses on mind/body; this is their (the 'Flippin' Pain') website https://www.flippinpain.co.uk/real-stories/ (Real Stories - Flippin' Pain).

I hope you get a good reception at your appointment, @HealingNow.