At the time I participated on the course, I had zero, nothing, NO knowledge about the disease I had finally been diagnosed with after many years of frightening and painful symptoms. The disease was called ME, and I had never heard of it before.

Like most others, over many years I had had frequent deteriorations as a result of doing more than I actually was able to manage. I didn’t know any better. So when someone with the same diagnosis told me about recovery with LP, of course I had to try it. it Who doesn’t want to get better? And what harm could be done by trying?

In retrospect, I’ve realised I was an easy target: – Without knowledge about the disease and in desperate search for recovery. So I contacted an LP instructor. Before I got accepted as a participant, I had to fill out a questionnaire and provide a signature that I’d accept what the instructor had to say, without being critical or asking any questions. The questionnaire got submitted and I received a green light that I was accepted as a participant.

This is how you get participants who are “ready for change”, and filter out those who are critical of the method. – Because if you are critical, the method won’t work, and you’ll also ruin it for other participants by being doubtful. This is imprinted from the start. I also signed that I myself was responsible for the outcome of the course. This is how the instructor was released from any consequences should the course/method lead to deterioration.

All the participants signed the same form. It was standard procedure. Here is what we learned during the course: The method: When symptoms appear, step on a piece of paper that says 1. STOP! Then step on a piece of paper that says 2. NOW/CHOICE. Then choose between a piece of paper that says 3. THE PIT or a paper that says 4. A LIFE YOU LOVE. This exercise should be visualised every time you get symptoms or have thoughts about illness.

Throughout the course we learned that – You DO ME, you do not HAVE ME, and you can choose whether you want to continue doing ME. – We also learned that we had to BELIEVE in the method in order for it to work. In addition we were told to get rid of aids, chairs to rest in and so on. ANTHING reminiscent of illness had to be removed from our lives, be it people or objects, thoughts or feelings. We were also strongly advised against having contact with other ME sufferers, and we were instructed to tell ourselves and the world that we had recovered. All of this was necessary, otherwise the method wouldn’t work.

We participants were encouraged to stay in touch, support each other and “stand together against negative attitudes”. – In other words we learned to lie to ourselves, we learned to suppress symptoms and we fancied we were recovered. Because after all we had learned to stop doing ME.

We were also strictly instructed NOT to reveal the method. Because it would ruin other people’s motivation and thus their possibility of recovery.

This instruction, together with the message that we could be prosecuted if we shared the course material with anyone, resulted in me keeping my mouth shut about what I knew for many years.

Smart concept, isn’t it?

We also signed a declaration that we had recovered: On the third and last day of the course we filled out a form where one of the questions was: “Do you have ME?”. We answered “NO” – Because we had learned that we had to stop “doing ME”.

Afterwards the forms were collected, with the participants signatures on that we no longer have ME. – Afterwards, these answers were used as recovery numbers from LP-courses. Many have tried to get the forms back without luck. LP-instructors and their supporters claim this is not true, but I can swear that those at our course did this. Many I’ve been in contact with who have also participated on an LP-course confirm this.

It took almost a year before I had to admit to myself that I had been thoroughly cheated. I got sicker and sicker, even though I used the method all the time. No one on my course improved, and one became life-threateningly ill after a few months.

In other words the course that promised to make us better, had instead made us worse.

I know of many who say that they have had major psychological problems after the course when they didn’t recover, and even more who have experienced a severe deterioration in general of all the symptoms of the disease. Some even have gone from being able to move around to becoming in need of being nursed.

And this can be both long lasting and in the worst cases permanent.

Because they forced themselves to pretend they were recovered.

They wrap the message in medical terms so that it sounds plausible. And this is how they fool people into believing in the method, as I got fooled. Should I be embarrassed over having been tricked? No!

Because: When you apply for these courses, you know NOTHING about the method. You have gotten an impression that LP is something very special. And precisely because some people claim to have recovered from ME thanks to this method, AT THE SAME TIME as it is never revealed what the method actually is, you get fooled.

You become curious, are desperate to get better, and have a choice between trusting those who tell the stories or believing that they are lying. And you wouldn’t want to think that badly about people, would you? BUT: Having learned what this course really is, I know that lying to oneself (and by that also to the outside world) IS the method itself. In other contexts this would be called brainwashing.

Then LP instructors claim you can read about everything in books written on LP. It’s claimed that there are detailed descriptions of the method itself, and that it’s perfectly legal to tell others about the method, just not to copy the course material. It’s also claimed that you don’t sign anything about having recovered/having stopped doing ME, and that it’s not forbidden to ask critical questions on the course. So I say: ok then, that’s great!

Then there are no reasons not to tell the stories, be critical and stop lying to oneself. But: no one is refuting the claim that you are responsible yourself if you deteriorate.. And this point is the most important one. If you deteriorate after LP, you have no rights, as it is a commercial, alternative treatment.

Finally: I hope more people with negative experiences/no effect from LP will share their story on this website. It’s important to tell about the other side of this method, as instructors and supporters as far as I’ve seen, have never admitted that many deteriorated from using LP. When this fact is withheld, then we who have experienced it ourselves must speak up about it. AND as everything is already in a book, there’s no reason to stay quiet. The secrecy of this method and its context should end now – before more people are injured.