ME and The Lightning Process

I met Claire Brooker last week when she gave a presentation to 4 Networking in Islington.

She’s a very entertaining and inspiring speaker – talking from her own experience of recovering from ME.  And clearly recovering well.

She used the Phil Barker Lightning Process (www.lightningprocess.com) and has progressed from recovery into managing long term god health.  I’m sure anyone who has experienced ME or knows anyone who has can appreciate this achievement in any case.

Claire was really interesting in how she spoke about getting over the condition, and I just wanted to quote some of my favourite comments.

“I love the medical profession .... But they just couldn’t take me where I wanted to go.”

Claire tried supplements diet, a healer and alternative therapies  - but found them all lacking.  She needed something that would go deeper – and above all she needed to be in charge.  (I think with ME a lot of specialists end up trying to take charge of a person’s progress – and then paradoxically it’s the person’s fault when they don’t recover because they didn’t do what the therapist wanted – GH)

Claire made an interesting comment about people’s stories about ME.  – It’s really easy to read stories about people who HAVEN’T recovered – fortunately for Claire she found a story about someone who HAD!  - What a simple message to all therapists.

The model itself seems to make quite a lot of sense (in just 5 mins explanation).  Claire needed to replace her adrenal response with “something better!” (another nice phrase – no pathology).  And then she needed to discipline herself to maintain this – identifying when she was slipping into old patterns and substitute “something better.”

Thanks Claire for some very clear points put very simply. 

clairebrooker@gmail.com

There’s a Lightning Process talk on 20^th September in London.  I’ll see if I can find out more about it

I know that there is controversy over whether the approach works or is an exploitative scam.  My guess is that the system works for some people and not for others.  As for whether it’s a “cure” or not..... I don’t think it is, and I think people expecting this are going to be disappointed.  Claire’s message was very clear that continued self management was essential to maintaining a good quality of life – and the system does not allow you to return to old patterns.

Geoff Hogan

15^th Sept 2011