I've done an enormous amount of research and thinking about what's wrong - as most of us have had to since the medical professionals have proved themselves incompetent to help. Between ER staff, various putative PCPs, specialists, therapists, etc. I figure over a two year period I went through nearly forty folks until I found someone I could work with. Persistence is everything.
So here's my two cents worth about what's going on...
The number of terms used to describe my (our) condition are: anxiety, panic attack syndrome, conversion disorder, psychogenic non epileptic seizure, non epileptic attack disorder, somatoform disorder, malingering, POSSESSION BY DEMONS!!! Ahem.
That there are so many names should tell you two things right off the bat. One, the condition is very complicated and possibly more than one single condition. And two, the names describe not the condition itself, but only the approach the name-maker is taking to explain a group of symptoms he has decided belong together (they might not belong together and his grouping may be missing additional important and potentially essential symptoms).
Now then, complicating matters even further is how much COMORBIDITY is wrapped up in the he thing. In case you are not familiar with the term, it's doctor-speak for having more than one serious condition at the same time. Is Condition A responsible for a particular symptom or is Condition B or Condition C or D responsible? Or is some combination of them responsible? Or - and this is really terrifying - is a particular symptom happening because of a specific condition or another or are the drugs/treatment for one or another of those conditions causing that symptom? Or is the symptom a result of interactions between the drugs/treatments? Or an incestuously hellish combination of all of the above?
I'm diabetic and I have high blood pressure, for example. When I'm in the ER with BP of 170/120 is that because I have high blood pressure and not taking my meds? Or because I'm diabetic and my blood sugar is screwed up? Or because I'm having a panic attack AND NO ONE IS TREATING IT AS REAL? What's the easiest answer for them to jump on? Because that's the one they WILL jump on and ignore the other possibilities...
Looking back over my life (I'm sixty) I now see patterns and symptoms that were never recognized before. Never put into context. Never addressed.
It's clear to me NOW that I've been suffering from "panic attacks" since childhood. Anxiety and depression have always been there as well. How those interrelated conditions have manifested has shifted and morphed over the years. I have experienced a wide variety of quite disparate manifestations and continue to do so. I now believe that the underlying problem is a difficulty in processing stress. That explains for me all the anxiety, depression and panic attacks - they are simply three different quite LOGICAL reactions to overwhelming stress. Now then, there are people who have had far greater stresses than me and have continued to function. Why have I had such problems? Nature? Nurture? Both nature AND nurture?
What comes to my mind is the image of the 100 year old guy who's been smoking two packs a day since he was ten and he's still healthy as a horse at a century on. I ain't him and neither are you. Science is just now beginning to understand that genes (and how they are expressed #epigenetics) vary widely from person to person. My sense is that we are gifted with a set of genes that have been expressed in such a way as to make the processing of stress far more problematic than for most folks.
So when it comes to our condition - yes, much is in our heads, but at bottom it's in our genes. And so there's only so much we can do with the psychological part. Thinking annoyingly chipper "happy thoughts" can only go so far.
Misdiagnosis, incorrect pharma and/or treatment strategies, and blamestorming us MAKES US MUCH SICKER. Makes any patient with any condition much sicker - but especially any patient where stress processing is a significant factor. So use the word malpractice, kids. It's appropriate. It's REAL. It's what we experience all the time.
So anyway, those of us (which is probably ALL of us) who have comorbidity in our lives - something other than FND - need to make our medical providers understand that when they ignore or minimize our FND and stress processing they are responsible for making ALL our other conditions much worse. Horse's head meet bed. (Godfather reference)
Hugs and good.
Anyone do an epilepsy test?
Functional Misery Disorder
How can this be FND when I have a positive Babinski reflex?
My 34 fiance' has FND, or does he?
Gastric signs and anorexia 
