How Can Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Affect Our Lives?

According to the National Fibromyalgia Association, Fibromyalgia experts estimate that about 10 million Americans suffer from Fibromyalgia Syndrome, most of whom are women.

Dr. Ray Strand, author of What Your Doctor Doesn't Know About Nutritional Medicine May Be Killing You, says that Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome are considered by many to be different expressions of the same disease.

An article in the Medical Journal of Australia on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (MJA 6 May 2002 176 (9 Suppl): S17-S55), explains that no pharmacological medicine has been proven effective for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Therefore, medical treatments are mostly aimed at relieving symptoms and reducing obstacles to functioning, such as loss of concentration, sleeplessness and depression.

We have a very different approach to Fibromyalgia treatment and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome treatment.

How The Option Institute Can Help

Phyllis Bottome said, "There are 2 ways of meeting difficulties: you alter the difficulties, or you alter yourself to meet them."

The Option Institute endeavors to help people do the second before they try to do the first.

Living with the symptoms of Fibromyalgia and/or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome can be a very difficult experience for many. There are many physical symptoms that can be extremely challenging to deal with.

And yet, those of us with these illnesses are, in many cases, sold a set of beliefs that leaves us feeling disempowered and, ultimately, exacerbates, rather than relieves, our experience of being sick.

Our programs give participants the tools to change these beliefs and thus change their emotional experience of their illness. We help people make peace with what is happening in their bodies.

At the same time, we help people adopt a new, more empowering set of beliefs about their physiology. For some, this change in belief and change in emotional state results in a change in their actual physiology. These people report a dramatic dissipation of most or all of their symptoms of Fibromyaligia and/or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infection Diseases at the National Institutes of Health reports that new studies seem to show that cognitive behavioral therapy (as well as an appropriate exercise program) can greatly help many. We offer an attitudinal and cognitive-based approach which we believe can offer you a possible road to personal well-being. We have seen what is possible and can help you take steps to achieve it for yourself.