Mickel Therapy Part 1 – What is it?
Mickel Therapy is a talking based treatment for conditions including Anxiety, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), Depression, Fibromyalgia, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, M.E / Post Viral Fatigue, Stress & other chronic illnesses.
Mickel Therapy is a treatment developed in 1999 by a medical doctor (Dr David Mickel) which seeks to address problems with the Hypothalamus gland in the brain. This gland which normally regulates everything in the body becomes overactive creating a wide range of symptoms.
As with all treatments we have evolved, refined and developed Mickel Therapy, partly under the influence of Psychologist Professor Cowie of Queenʼs University Belfast. Rather than concentrating on the stand alone function of the Hypothalamus we began to see it as part of a network of brain systems involved in emotion (they are often called the limbic system – the term is dated, but still useful).
A convenient way to put this it is that Mickel Therapy seeks to draw a distinction between the thinking brain and the core emotional mid-brain or body which generates emotions independently of thought. The therapy teaches clients to translate their symptoms back into emotions and take corrective action so the symptoms no longer need to occur.