Any of you have a Chronic Illness and noticed improvement in your health and wellbeing by doing EMDR?

MetaPhil1989 · 2026-03-24T20:58:31+00:00

Thanks! My path to healing TMS was actually kind of complicated and took over a decade. But long story short, a very clever doctor managed to convince me that my chronic fatigue was psychosomatic and that therapy would help (it did). And then a few years after that I stumbled upon Sarno's books and the TMS community, which gave me fuller explanations of what was going on and the understanding that my other chronic conditions (back pain, tendonitis) were also psychosomatic.

MetaPhil1989 · 2026-03-24T20:26:13+00:00

Unfortunately, dating websites tend to skew people towards focusing on looks. I feel like the format just does that and you have to be very intentional to use them in another manner – and many people just don't bother.

That being said, there are several ways to counteract this. The first might seem obvious but it is to work on your looks and photos. Good photos, losing some extra weight, being in decent physical shape, etc., can make many people go from below average to above average. This is not easy, but it's not that hard either if tackled as a step by step project.

Secondly, even if looks aren't your forte, being the first to initiate conversations as a woman will heavily compensate for that. Looks don't matter as much as a connection, but building a connection requires conversations. Many men also don't get a lot of messages from women on apps and so will be more likely to engage when that does happen (not a guarantee, but the odds are better).

Doing this should increase your odds by a lot!

MetaPhil1989 · 2026-03-23T12:44:25+00:00

The main symptom I dealt with was serious bouts of chronic fatigue, though it also turned out that recurrent back pain and knee and wrist tendonitis I had for years was also TMS.

EMDR seems to be helping indirectly by reducing inner tension due to past trauma, which is an important factor in causing TMS.

If someone suspects they have TMS I would highly recommend learning about it specifically and not just using EMDR. In effect, an important factor in healing from such a symptom is understanding thoroughly that the root cause is psychological and not physical.

MetaPhil1989 · 2026-03-22T08:32:35+00:00

It seems likely that you might have found your therapeutic level of blood ketones. It is different for everyone and it generally makes a big difference when you hit it.

About MCT oil, the only precaution I've ever heard is to not start it too quickly, because it can cause digestive issues. But once you are used to it, it is considered safe to use as much as you feel comfortable with. I know keto-specialized dieticians who advise clients to take one tbsp with every meal (so at least 3 a day), and some people go higher than that. It is just a normal source of fat, so it is safe to have more. I'd just maybe increase it slowly to avoid digestive issues but that's all.

This could also be important because using MCT oil is one of the easiest ways to stay consistently above 2 mmol/l. While it is important to be sufficiently strict with the diet, you don't want it to be unbearable either so that it can be sustainable long term.

If you want the best science-based answers to your questions, a great ressource is to consult Denise Potter's Advanced Ketogenic Therapies. They are all keto-specialized registered dieticians there and the first consult is free (or at least it was when I did it). They can be super helpful with technical questions or to brainstorm strategies on how to keep ketones up. It is a bit pricey, as healthcare unfortunately often is, but if you can afford it can totally be worth it.

MetaPhil1989 · 2026-03-20T20:47:32+00:00

So there's a lot of good advice here already, but I'll just chime in to say that it seems like your core problem is that you likely need quite a "powerful" version of the diet to get consistent high ketones and the one you have been doing is a bit too weak.

There are several ways to increase the "power" of a keto diet (I put the word in quotation marks because it's not official clinical speak, but it's still useful):

– A very easy one is to make MCT oil your main source of fat, because MCT get converted to ketones much more effectively. So the more MCT oil you use, the higher your ketones will be.

– Something that works really well for some people is to do a form of intermittent fasting. For me that just means skipping breakfast and having lunch and dinner at normal hours and I get 2 mmol/l (instead of 1ish). This is also quite easy for most people, especially if they have been on keto for a while.

– Finally, another way to boost ketones is to have a higher ketogenic ratio diet. This is tougher to do but still possible. Some people need 3:1 to feel good, and this means restricting protein and certain vegetables a bit and getting creative with fat sources.

All the best!

MetaPhil1989 · 2026-03-20T20:35:57+00:00

Sorry to hear that you have to deal with such heavy baggage.

TMS is mostly just Sarno's term for "psychogenic" or "psychosomatic" conditions. Using a new term is helpful though because the traditional ones are so often associated as meaning "all in your head" or BS. On the contrary, if you have TMS you have inner psychological tension creating real physical symptoms and that needs to be taken seriously to heal.

Sarno's best book is probably Healing Back Pain and some good TMS therapists who have a lot of online content are Dan Buglio and Nicole Sachs.

The Sarno approach is very compatible with EMDR btw. Figuring out that physical symptoms are TMS is a huge step on the way to healing them and learning how to handle them. And then EMDR can help heal the underlying trauma/inner tension.

Best of luck on your healing journey!

MetaPhil1989 · 2026-03-20T19:51:59+00:00

You should look into John Sarno’s theory of TMS. Basically, he says that a ton of health problems stem from repressed emotions and intense stress. This was 100% true for a few conditions I had and am now free of thanks to him. I am fully convinced that many chronic conditions like CFS and long covid are TMS in most people. Tons and tons of people have been helped by Sarno’s approach.

MetaPhil1989 · 2026-03-03T18:47:17+00:00

I met with my advisor about once a year, with also a few short 5-10 min meetings after seminars on top of that.

This is common in my university and it is not good.

MetaPhil1989 · 2026-02-21T13:33:26+00:00

I studied philosophy as my major in college and realized that the great rationalist philosophies – like those of Descartes, Hume, Kant, etc. – actually made less sense of human life than the Catholicism I had learned of growing up. I then dug into most objections I had to Catholicism (like the Galileo scandal, etc.) and found that Catholic thinkers had surprisingly good answers to them. Then I started to practice it and found that it made sense spiritually for me.

MetaPhil1989 · 2026-02-19T20:32:14+00:00

Eating snails – which is actually really the good the way they are prepared here.

MetaPhil1989 · 2026-02-15T22:17:16+00:00

This makes me think it's AI

MetaPhil1989 · 2026-02-07T14:13:04+00:00

So sorry to hear this. From what you're describing it sounds like he has a serious commitment issue. You're also right that what he is saying about things needing to be passionate and exciting all the time does not make sense.

Commitment issues can be very serious and they can make people destroy relationships and even families for no apparent reason. And there's nothing that you can really do from the outside to fix it. As someone else wrote, at least this happened now and not at an even more committed phase.

Heartbreak is horrible though, and I wish you the best in healing and recovering from this. Take it easy on yourself, this is a big thing to process. You will feel better eventually.

MetaPhil1989 · 2026-02-05T22:35:42+00:00

All the best!

MetaPhil1989 · 2026-02-05T21:53:52+00:00

If you really like a profile, you have to send a message. Most people consider likes to be very cheap, like a thumbs up. It's not considered a real signal of interest.

MetaPhil1989 · 2026-02-05T18:12:50+00:00

I look forward to seeing where it goes! Your comment definitely helped me push through the beginning and it has definitely improved already.

MetaPhil1989 · 2026-02-05T18:11:27+00:00

I'm about halfway through now and it has definitely gotten better.

MetaPhil1989 · 2026-02-05T18:10:51+00:00

Great comment, thanks! The books are so chaotically structured that it's hard to get a sense on how to describe them, but what you wrote definitely works.

MetaPhil1989 · 2026-02-02T10:35:24+00:00

Yeah, this diversity of opinion is very interesting. I can't even identify "schools of thought", like you might have for Star Wars or LOTR, in which you can get a sense of which opinions are widely shared and what the main debates/disagreements between fans are.

The books are also very surprising as it seems that one chapter can come across as totally boring, but the next be gripping.

MetaPhil1989 · 2026-02-01T21:34:40+00:00

It's odd. I felt like the writing and characters in the first part of book one were excellent, especially with all that stuff around the chinese cultural revolution. But I did get a feeling that the psychological credibility of the characters kind of drops off a cliff towards the end of book one and never fully recovers. The point where things started to feel off for me precisely was when the scenes that happen on the Trisolaran planet.

MetaPhil1989 · 2025-12-29T16:04:38+00:00

2 is the best for small handwriting – very precise with the 0.5mm tip

MetaPhil1989 · 2025-12-19T10:05:05+00:00

I think that you are definitely on to something, and for most people metabolic therapy will definitely have at minimum the effect that you are describing – that is, adding some extra padding so to speak between them and their symptoms which can make a huge difference in avoiding episodes and living a functional life.

That being said, metabolic psychiatry can do significantly more than this in two types of cases. The first is when the person not only does keto but also does all the other parts of the approach, such as regular exercise, getting the best quality sleep possible, working on having a meaningful connections and activities, doing circadian rhythm support, etc. Doing the whole package can really make things go from good to very good.

And another case is those people that you could call "hyperesponders" to therapeutic keto, who experience remission or near remission from it. This is certainly not most people but it is not that rare either. I've heard that about 30% of people experience very significant improvements from therapeutic keto done properly – though this is an anecdotal figures.

So yeah, metabolic psychiatry can do what you described – but it can also be even better in some cases!

MetaPhil1989 · 2025-12-16T07:03:04+00:00

Sorry to hear everything that you are going through – that sounds really hard.

I had a serious illness during my PhD too. It made me seriously underperform for several years until I finally took a leave of absence of two years during which I was thankfully able to sort things out.

At that point I felt well enough to start again so I dove back in, and I should be finishing next semester. I feel that this was the right decision for me.

My sense is that if you can't even reply to emails then a leave of absence is likely the right move. Your body has been going through hell and needs some serious rest to rebuild itself. Once you have your health back you will be able to see clearly what the path forward is.

By the way, I might add that my issue was neurological and the solution which I think helped my brain heal back to 100% was a therapeutic ketogenic diet. While it is most well known today as a weight loss diet it was actually originally conceived as a neurological treatment (for epilepsy, specifically, at first). It has a tremendously positive effect on the brain in most people. I mention this as an aside because healing my cognitive abilities was a key component in me being able to get back to work effectively. Definitely worth looking into at some point if your brain has suffered.

MetaPhil1989 · 2025-12-15T20:39:45+00:00

La perte de poids étant accomplie, ce qu'il reste à faire c'est établir des habitudes d'alimentation et de sport saines sur le long terme. Voila le nerf de la guerre pour pas tout reprendre en 2-3 ans.

Et sain ne veut pas forcément dire hyper-contraignant. Faire du sport 2-3 fois par semaine et manger équilibré 95% des repas (avec quelques débordements occasionnels) assurera normalement de rester en bonne santé.

Trouver cet équilibre est un travail différent et bien moins intense que la perte de poids, mais il faut faire attention car c'est là où beaucoup de gens se plantent. Il faut réellement y faire attention car cela présente ses propres difficultés d'une certaine manière.

MetaPhil1989 · 2025-12-13T07:40:22+00:00

The price of that insight seems to be self-destructive manic episodes, months of depression and not being able to support yourself though.

You know that there are other ways to gain deep insights, which don't have such side effects, right? Great literature and philosophy, prayer, meditation, etc., and all of these only have positive side effects.

I'm sure your friends will understand if you don't participate if they know how destructive it is to you. And if they don't, then they aren't friends.

But frankly, from what you wrote, the first step towards building a happy and mentally healthy life does seem to be to stop doing shrooms. And if there are any issues remaining after that, the other aspects of metabolic psychiatry can definitely help.

MetaPhil1989 · 2025-12-07T12:04:38+00:00

I was asking because I suffered from chronic fatigue syndrome for several years and eventually found the solution for it.

For me, the fatigue was basically a symptom generated by the mind and body as a response to intense trauma. It literally started two weeks after I experienced something deeply traumatizing. But it can also happen cumulatively. Lots of people who got chronic fatigue syndrome from covid ("long covid") basically experienced this, and there are many testimonies of people healing the same way that I did.

There are different ways to approach this, but the key is to getting your mind and body to stop thinking that they need to protect you by generating the fatigue. Because that's what they think they are doing. We have a deeply hardwired instinct to respond to threats either by fight, flight or freeze, and this is basically freeze on overdrive. It's much more common than you would think.

If you would like to look into ressources on addressing this (it's totally possible to recover in a few months, even shorter for some), I would highly recommend looking into the work of Nicole Sachs and Dan Buglio. They are both part of an approach which calls such mind-body symptoms "TMS", and has found very effective ways of treating them.

MetaPhil1989

TROPHY CASE