Before I started the trauma-healing therapies, I'd spent about 6-7 years trying to get well using other methods; initially mainstream medicine and mainstream psychiatry including antidepressants, then things like diet (paleo etc), exercise, nutrition supplementation, meditation, yoga.

I believed in them all just as much as I believed in the trauma approach, yet my health continued to get worse. Indeed, when I started the trauma approach I didn't believe in it. Yet it worked far better than anything I'd tried before.

Over the time I've undertaken the trauma healing, I've lapseed in and out of focusing on diet, exercise, etc. These things are of course important; I wouldn't be getting healthy if I was spending all day on the couch consuming burgers and Coke non-stop.

But my experience is that they don't have any positive effect if I'm not also doing the trauma healing work.

Also, you might examine/contemplate what the placebo effect actually is. If it's healing that comes about due a change in emotional state (i.e., belief and optimism that a cure is being implemented) then it serves more to prove the theory than cast doubt on it.

Edit: added the fact that I'd been sought help from mainstream medicine at the beginning of this journey.

Of all of those I think only excercise has proven positive effect on some things. Others are at best proven not to be harmful.

Strenuous exercise actually made my condition worse. That turns out to be a symptom of CFS/ME, I found out later.

These therapies generally proved to be ineffective when I didn't do any emotional work.

Since doing the emotional work, moderate exercise and nutrition work and stretching exercises (yoga/pilates) add to the effectiveness of my efforts.

You remind me of the people that start little unhappy but make themselves miserable for life by strenuously searching their happiness around everywhere.

> moderate exercise and nutrition work and stretching exercises (yoga/pilates)

That actually sounds like reasonable thing to do to your body.

Regardles of my intelectual objections I'm glad you finally started to improve.

Thanks for the kind words and the discussion :)

I understand the urge to be skeptical and dismissive. I've been like that myself over this very topic before I experienced and learned what I have.

Please do keep an open mind and think about what I've tried to convey. After all, the whole reason I shared my experience is because it aligns with aligns with the scientific hypothesis that's in the very article on which this discussion is based. So it's not just something I dreamed up. There is a growing body of research on this topic - though I wish it could somehow grow faster.

Best wishes to you.