Fighting Fit After Twelve Years of Pain

For the past twelve years, Liz Low has suffered from swollen, painful joints and extreme fatigue, which has prevented her from living a normal life. Despite several visits, her NHS GP was unable to diagnose Liz’s condition, after blood tests showed that there was nothing physically wrong with her.

Eventually, Liz’s health deteriorated to such an extent that she was forced to give up her job as a teacher, and was only able to return to work part-time after a lengthy career break.

Finally, tired of the steadily increasing list of prescription drugs that were necessary to manage her condition, Liz decided to try something new, and visited Louise Levy, a trainee practitioner for the Stress Illness Recovery Practitioners Association (SIRPA).

Louise was quick to recognise Liz’s symptoms as being typical of someone suffering from stress-related illness. Today, after following the SIRPA Recovery Programme, Liz is living a full and active life.

She said:  “I can’t thank Louise and SIRPA enough and would strongly recommend both to anyone suffering as I once was. To realise what it feels like to have 100% health after some 12 to13 years really is like smelling the flowers for the first time. Words can't adequately express it really.”

Through the SIRPA Recovery Programme, Louise helped Liz to identify a pattern in her symptoms and to see that they were the result of certain triggers. Louise then showed Liz how to manage these triggers and her symptoms using hypnotherapy and visualisation techniques, amongst other techniques.

Liz is now completely drug free and is studying at college one day a week, in addition to her three days teaching.

Clinical Specialist Director and co-founder of SIRPA, Georgie Oldfield, said: “The very basics behind recovery from chronic conditions that are in fact stress illness and not due to a physical cause, involves educating the patient to understand how and why their very real symptoms are present.

“Uncovering the hidden stresses that have resulted in these symptoms is the key to solving the problem”, she added.

The SIRPA Recovery Programme, launched in 2010 by Georgie and her co-directors, has reported a success rate of over 70%, in many cases where traditional treatments have been ineffective.

Twenty-one per cent of regular attendees at a GP practice have medically unexplained symptoms. Each year, over five million people in the UK develop chronic pain, but only two thirds of them will ever recover.