Therapist

[AvacadoPits]

My therapist seems to think if we go through all the trauma I've had in my 59 years that all my symptoms will go away.

[Lady4]

I think you need a multi-disciplinary approach as it could heightened symptoms initially. Is she experienced with patients with FND?

[AvacadoPits in reply to Lady4]

No. But thinks she has all the answers. "Go thru the traumas and it will be fine. And dont say i cant" yeah. But i really cant do some things

[Louiselovesyellow]

Well, I went through MONTHS of therapy and had 2 Cognitive Behavioural Therapy as was recommended for my FND. No change at all. It continues just as it did and over 3 years has gradually worsened so it didn’t work for me! I can’t remember the actual statistic but something like a third or a quarter of FND sufferers have had no trauma in their life at all and still developed FND! I think the medical profession are gradually (very gradually in most cases) realising this is not a mental trauma response! Certainly not in all cases! Xx

[Van604 in reply to Louiselovesyellow]

I agree - I had over a year's worth of therapy costing thousands of dollars and at the end the psychologist told me my problem isn't psychological and to see a neurologist! During therapy, digging up stuff from the past just upset me - we have the capacity to forget for a reason! And I am lucky in not having anything really traumatic in my past - certainly nothing to explain my severe FND symptoms. They need to admit they just don't know and that any treatment is trial and error.

[Lady4]

I also got this response for you from another group on unpacking traumas:

"I am definitely not an expert but it was explained to me that your life is a bucket and each experience or trauma takes up so much room. At some point the traumas fill the bucket and impact the ability of the autonomic nervous system from functioning in its ideal state. So working with a professional in addition to the implementation of strategies to calm the fight or flight system (ANS) such as grounding, deep breathing, yoga, exercise, mindfulness and self compassion can make significant gains."

[LilyMarshell]

It irritates me when people think that FND is just a psychological condition... Given that trauma can interfere with it, but it's not solely caused by it.

FND is when your brain misfires upon experiencing a trigger - this could be any form of stimuli including physical touch, taste, temperature, sound, light, emotion - anything.

I would recommend finding a different therapist who's either got training in FND or is willing to work through your triggers with you. If you can record when you're having symptom bursts, you can try and figure out what happened to trigger them. It's not all emotions, which is why men are underdiagnosed [but that's another situation entirely].

[Shimmyaway in reply to LilyMarshell]

Pinpointing your own triggers is not always too difficult, but finding out how to stop reacting to them is the puzzle ..and what sort of therapist can help us? I tried hypnotherapy, but unless you can lie or sit still, without shaking at all, then the therapist's magic will not work as it depends on an initial state of reasonable relaxation, which some of our FND afflicted muscles have forgotten exists .

[LilyMarshell in reply to Shimmyaway]

Person Centred Therapy, DBT, and EDRM have had good success with FND. It's not always easy for people to work out triggers, I've had FND for over two decades now and regularly figure out triggers that have been a question mark for years.

Finding the triggers and learning how to react to them is the key to remission, but it's not entirely possible for everyone - which I never said it was, as someone who it hasn't worked for.

But being told to go over all traumas to magic away symptoms is not useful from a therapist...