I have unfortunately been thrust into the chronic illness “community” three years ago, and since then keep meeting people with complex chronic conditions: mold, vaccine injury, Long COVID, chronic fatigue, Grave’s disease, gut issues, autoimmune, etc.
I’ve observed that the most vitriolic debate in many of these communities is the medical people “we must treat what’s wrong with us” vs. the mindbody people “we must treat the reaction to the fact there is something wrong with us”. Both hate each other, there’s tons of bad blood, people are banned from certain communities, etc.
Having looked into and practiced both methodologies, my sense is that, like most complicated dichotomies, both are right, although for deeper and more complex reasons than I’ve ever seen explained publicly.
My thought is to write a breakdown worthy of Scott Alexander to serve as a reference for tempers on both sides to cool.
But honestly… effort. If someone else has done this, I’d rather not. Anyone know of extant, rational analyses of things like DNRS, Gupta, (brain retraining), John Sarno’s Tension Myositis Syndrome, pain reprocessing therapy, Emotional Awareness and Expression Therapy, etc.?
I saw that Spencer Greenberg had written on the topic recently, but I’m imagining something further-reaching and more comprehensive.
Specifically for ME/CFS and Long Covid, I recommend s4me.info. Pretty much all of the major studies on the mind-body methods already have threads there with discussions. The tl;dr is that they are extremely low quality studies in ways that will not be a surprise to anyone familiar with the replication crisis and these techniques very likely do not work for ME/CFS or LC.
This blog is good as well: https://mecfsscience.org/
Human health is very complex. There’s a lot we don’t understand about it. Part of what makes a good rational analysis is to accept that reality is complex.
I’m not sure what you mean with the term “mindbody people” there are many different approaches that consider how the mind affects the body to be important and not all of them would fall under “we must treat the reaction to the fact there is something wrong with us”. While the sentence might apply to Sarno, if you take for example Thomas Hanna who speaks about sensor motor amnesia as the key issue, that’s not about treating the reaction to the fact that there’s something wrong.
On the other side, mainstream medical people who follow the official guidelines on a topic like CFS and those who speak of Chronic Lyme Disease and want to treat it with strong antibiotics + malaria medication aren’t the same community or methodology.
I had bookmarked this post as fascinating (but I claim no first-hand knowledge here): https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/BgBJqPv5ogsX4fLka/the-mind-body-vicious-cycle-model-of-rsi-and-back-pain
Looks potentially pretty relevant. Is that the kind of thing you’re looking for?