ABSTRACT
This chapter contains: the patient’s emotional response to life events, as a maintenance factor and the role of thoughts, rules and beliefs in affecting this response. The patient should then re-rate their strength of belief as a percentage score. The clinician should always ask what the patient’s concerns are about giving up the rule. A fundamental difference between working with negative thoughts and beliefs however is the considerable amount of repetition that is required to shift some of these ingrained ideas, and the ingenuity and persistence that the patient and therapist have to display on using behavioural, emotional and cognitive approaches in weakening these beliefs. The clinician working with the Chronic fatigue syndrome patients may either be able to treat the person themselves using the cognitive behavioural therapy approach or refer the person on to an appropriate practitioner.
