When I studied psychology, I quickly got into the biopsychosocial approach since I loved more integral, systemic, and holistic approaches in general.
BIO-PSYCHO-ECO-SOCIAL APPROACH
Really, I got into what I called a BioPsychoEcoSocial approach since ecology is part of it too, maybe the most important part. (I wrote my undergraduate thesis on that.)
What does it mean? It just means that our health has all of these aspects: Our biology, our psychology, our society, and our ecosystems. It’s all part of what forms our health and influences our well-being.
It’s what we all already know, just formalized a bit.
UNDERSTANDING MY CFS
It’s the approach I use to understand my own health. I live with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) and it’s helpful to understand it by looking at these four aspects.
Biology
They find biological changes in people with CFS, and it’s likely I have some or all of those too.
It may have genetic components. When I uploaded my genetic profile to a European database, it told me I had a genetic variation associated with CFS.
When I initially got CFS at age fifteen, it was a few months after mononucleosis (Epstein-Barr). That’s a quite common connection. It’s possible the EB virus stayed in my system, and my system’s reaction to it may have led to CFS.
I was much better in my twenties and most of my thirties. When the CFS returned, it was following weeks and months with pneumonia. (My doctor wouldn’t treat it, and I – for whatever reason – didn’t change doctors.) I also lived in a house in Oregon with some mold problems, and it was after a long and wet winter.
Psychology
Although nobody knows for certain, it seems likely that childhood trauma may play a role in CFS. It may be one of several stressors that sets the stage for CFS. I certainly have my share of that.
I also had a lot of stress and teenage angst when I initially got CFS at age fifteen.
When the CFS returned in my thirties, I had a lot of stress from feeling “trapped” in a life situation that didn’t feel right. (Of course, I trapped myself in it since I could make changes but didn’t until I eventually did.)
Ecology
What’s the ecology part of it?
There may be good evolutionary reasons for having genetic variations that (also) set the stage for CFS. These variations may have other advantages for individuals and humanity as a whole. For instance, according to the genetic database I uploaded my genetic info to, it has to do with sensitivity. It’s not good for everyone to be extra sensitive, but it’s good for humanity and society as a whole to have some individuals like that.
I suspect diet and environment play a significant role in the onset of CFS, and it certainly plays a role in managing it and possibly healing from it. A clean environment and a healthy diet set the stage for better health, and environmental toxins and eating food grown with chemicals in depleted soil sets the stage for less good health.
Also, at least my psychology is influenced by what I see happening with nature and what I know is happening around the world, and I assume it’s similar for most people. Grief and anxiety come up when I see the unraveling and destabilizing of our ecosystems, and that’s another aspect of the overall stress.
Social
The social aspect also plays a role in my CFS, in several ways.
It may have contributed to the onset. I didn’t feel safe and comfortable in my family growing up, due to the dynamics between my parents and their fear of what others may think of them. I also didn’t feel comfortable in my class in school since there was a good deal of hostility and bullying from a few people there, also directed at me.
All together
I suspect that CFS comes about from a combination of predispositions and stressors, from all four aspects mentioned above. Nobody knows for certain, but that’s how it looks for now.
Managing and finding healing from CFS also involves all four of these, and I have explored and worked on all four since my late teens.
NORWEGIAN WEIRDNESS
I am partly writing this because I was reminded of some weirdness in the Norwegian CFS community around this. Several people there seem to have a beef with the biopsychosocial approach to understanding CFS.
They seem to mistake it for a reductionistic psychological understanding of CFS, and of seeing it as mainly or only psychological in origin.
To me, those two approaches are at the opposite ends of the spectrum.
A biopsychosocial understanding takes a holistic and whole systems view of health and disease. We look at all the many different factors influencing it to get a better and fuller understanding of what may be going on.
A reductionistic approach, whether it’s psychological or biological or something else, reduces it all to one thing and overlooks the rest.
So if you refer to a reductionistic psychological understanding of CFS, call it that. Don’t call it biopsychosocial since that’s something very different.
Image is created by me and Midjourney