Using hypnotherapy to treat FND: transforming your mind

Introduction by Alison

As I have shared in previous posts, I have been living with Functional Neurological Disorder since 2000, and was diagnosed in July 2003. 

At that time, the condition was poorly understood, and my neurologist had few recommendations for me.  Over the years, I found and explored many treatment options, many of which helped to some degree, but I’ve never had more than a few days at a time completely symptom-free. 

After my intensive treatment at the MoRe program had its results diminished by my partner Al’s accident, I had to spend some time focused on regaining control over my symptoms.

I still have symptoms that just won’t leave, ones that have been with me for nearly half my life – and I was finally inspired to take another step in treating it when I met Morag, and learned of her specialty in hypnosis with a Cognitive Behavioral Therapy(CBT) focus.  

I’d read about hypnosis as a treatment for FND, and when I met Morag it clicked for me that she just *might* be able to help me manage my symptoms!

Morag provides an outside perspective on FND

I had never heard of FND until I met Alison, a bubble of fun, very aware and in tune with her own condition and with great insights on all FND, who came to me wanting to learn self-hypnosis methods to de-stress and relax. 

As I discovered, functional neurological disorder (FND) is a strange disorder, difficult to identify or classify, that can affect people in different ways.

Having FND means you can suffer from uncontrollable physical movements, spasms, or vocalizations.

You may also experience unexplained pain or numbness or tiredness or epileptic-type seizures.

The number of ways this disorder can manifest itself is long and differs with each individual and can also change for each individual over time. As well as this, different triggers can spark off symptoms in each person.

FND has been compared to most neurological conditions, the most recent social outbreak being Tourettes.

There is no known neurological explanation for this disorder. It’s as if somewhere between the mind and the action the communication has dropped out.

What causes it? What can stop it? Why are there so many different symptoms? Why do these symptoms shift and change within each individual?

Questions with no answers.

The unpredictability of the disorder, its myriad ways of manifesting itself, and the fact there is no one cause or cure can understandably lead to low mood, low self-confidence, and increased levels of stress, and anxiety for those who live with it daily.

Alison explains why she chose hypnosis

Neurologists have been able to identify that trauma in some form is often responsible for FND symptoms starting.

FND symptoms seem to be a maladaptive response in an attempt to protect the person with FND from the trauma they’ve experienced.

This condition is still frequently misdiagnosed by neurologists and too many patients with FND experience medical gaslighting and are accused of malingering.  

I was grateful when I met Morag to realize that she was entering without any of those preconceptions about the condition, and by guiding her towards quality information resources about the condition, she was quickly able to understand what I was trying to do in terms of treatment.  

My primary goal is to help settle my nervous system out of fight-or-flight mode and relax. 

Meditation was helpful for that, but I felt that the hypnosis process could help take that progress to the next level, with me able to enter a relaxed state more quickly and easily and become more able to calm my symptoms or even prevent them by staying in a calm state.  

How it started – Morag‘s perspective

When you relax completely your stress levels drop, your breathing calms, and your muscles relax and soften. Your mind and body can hit the pause button and reset, as you naturally recharge your batteries. You can move from the flight and flight mode that Alison mentioned above to one of rest and restore.

Once in this calm and peaceful state, you can practice techniques to help self-regulate your emotions and physical tension, and in so doing gain greater self-mastery. This often has the delightful spillover effect of improving your self-confidence and helps you feel more positive about life in general.

When you live with FND you may feel you have no control over your body as it doesn’t respond as you want it to, or indeed as it used to. You lose trust in it. Hypnotherapy can help you rediscover that trust.

Alison explains her expectations and prior experience

I knew that others with FND had found relief with hypnosis, and I understood the basics of the mechanisms. 

I knew from experience that treatments that end up helping me often trigger symptoms while I first use them.  I remember working with a pelvic floor physical therapist and being symptomatic at points during treatment, and sometimes having my legs collapse as I left her office.

I had a similar experience with meditation. 

Initially, my attempts to meditate were interrupted by violent severe movements, my body jackknifing or rolling violently back and forth, or having full body spasms. 

I’ve learned over time that treating my movement symptoms the same way as I treated all other distractions worked, although it leaves me meditating while laying down in bed for safety reasons.  

I expected something similar for hypnosis, so I knew that I needed to find somebody knowledgeable in hypnosis and very accepting of how my condition worked so that they would be able to maintain their calm as my body freaked out.

Morag explains Hypnotherapy

Very simply, hypnosis is a state or mindset of deep, focused yet relaxed concentration. You close off to everything else around you as you focus on a particular situation, behaviour or feeling. You suspend reality as your imagination opens out maybe beyond your usual boundaries.

Hypnosis is something that everyone can learn to do, it’s completely natural and safe. An important point to note, you are active in the hypnosis process, it’s something that you do and not something that is done to you as you remain passive. You need to work!

Hypnotherapy is a collaborative process in which you allow yourself to follow the guidance of the therapist. The hypnotherapist’s suggestions let you explore and rehearse different feelings, thoughts and behaviours in your imagination in order to help you overcome your current challenges in real life.

Hypnotherapy is often used as an effective technique to help manage chronic or acute pain, feelings of stress or anxiety, overcome certain sleeping disorders, help conquer unwanted habits and help treat certain stress-related illnesses. It can also be used to gain confidence in certain areas such as public speaking or sports performances.

In a nutshell, when you rehearse situations, feelings, and behaviours in your imagination, you discover that you can make significant shifts in your real life. This is quite mind-blowing in many ways, and yet so hopeful and welcoming.

As we said earlier, when you have FND a connection between the mind and what you want the body to do has broken somewhere. Hypnotherapy is a tool that can help you build a bridge to repair some of the brokenness.

Alison shares research on the relationship between Hypnosis and FND

Because FND tends to be very responsive to stress, treatments that reduce stress often help reduce symptoms. Hypnosis is a recognized treatment for FND and can be very successful for patients.  

By entering into a trance state, we enter a dissociative (“a disruption or discontinuity in the normal integration of consciousness, identity, emotion, perception, body representation, motor control, and behavior” DSM) state, which is the same mechanism that’s broken for folks with FND.  

With FND, our symptoms basically are the product of uncontrolled, unintentional disassociation, and hypnosis is the process of intentionally entering that state in a controlled way, with purpose. 

It focuses on managing the mechanism that causes the symptoms, which means that we don’t need to recognize the triggers or treat those initial causes, but can experience the dissociative process and regain control over symptoms.

I’ve practiced mindfulness for years to try to better manage my FND symptoms, and I’ve heard it explained that hypnosis and mindfulness are basically opposite ends of the same spectrum of altered states. 

Morag shares the sessions

And so, we started our journey together. Originally we had three sessions booked, with the objective of giving Alison tools to achieve deep relaxation.

We worked online via zoom. This meant that Alison could set herself up comfortably in her own space and not worry about having to negotiate traveling to and from an appointment

During our first session, Alison’s symptoms were quite severe, she had warned me that this could happen, just hang on in there she said, I’ll be alright!

It was the idea, the words, and the emotions around relaxation that triggered her body spasms. It was as if her body was fighting against the idea of relaxing.

Alison‘s experience in sessions

I used to get frustrated with this. 

I’d reached a point of having hours to days at a time symptom-free, but whenever I’d do the exercises, my symptoms would come out. 

While doing a course on Mindfulness-based stress reduction and doing some further research into FND, I realized that my symptoms were emerging in part because of my own anxieties about my symptoms occurring. 

I also was letting down my guard, so to speak, by relaxing, and releasing a tether on my symptoms that I wasn’t consciously aware of.

Shifting my mind to recognize that my symptoms were just another part of my body’s existence, and feeling neutral about it, I found that my movement symptoms would decrease in duration and intensity both as the meditation or hypnosis session went on (and my mind-body got used to it) and with practice (as I started to meditate or run a self-hypnosis recording daily).  

Whenever I am doing something new and different, my symptoms shoot up, but then they calm down with processes like this, and often I’d find that I’d be symptom-free as I moved into more relaxed states.  

Morag

After our three sessions together we observed that hypnotherapy was allowing Alison to gain more control over some of her FND symptoms.

We decided to continue the sessions and see how hypnotherapy could help Alison feel less pain, gain more mastery over certain symptoms and simply feel better.

As Alison practiced the exercises we did together and deepened her self-hypnosis skills, her confidence grew and her self-belief and trust blossomed.

From the outside, It was a privilege to see Alison gaining control over her body.

Over the 7 sessions, we had together her body became more and more responsive to calm and stillness.

Alison

Part of my morning routine almost every day was to play one of the self-hypnosis recordings. 

I’d lie back in my bed and listen, putting myself into that dissociative state, and would relax more deeply, or adjust my pain dial, or whatever else the exercise was focused on. 

I could hear the sound of my legs pounding the bed, or my body thrashing around from the first time I did the exercise, but in each session, my actual symptoms in the moment were less severe, more manageable, or simply nonexistent. 

It gave me a sense of pride, knowing that I wasn’t having those symptoms anymore under those same circumstances.

Outcome – Morag

Over the course of our seven-sessions spread over 4 months, this is what Alison achieved

• The ability to relax deeply and completely with no or very minor interfering disruptive movements. The upshot of this is that she can benefit from the healing power of mental and physical calm.

• She is able to lower the intensity of a persistent and annoying pain sensation in her leg and keep it in the background of her life 

• Alison uses a physical gesture that is connected with certain happy, confident, strong memories (an anchor) when she walks, and this has greatly reduced a physical limping symptom.

I had learned a whole lot about this disorder and just totally admired Alison’s determination to find ways to manage it more

We have no way of knowing if the improvements will last or not or if different symptoms will appear.

However, the skills and techniques that self-hypnosis, hypnotherapy, visualization, and relaxation can offer will stand Alison in good stead, not only for all things FND-related but also for other goals, positive energy, and general well-being.

Alison discusses the longer-term outlook

Morag and I did our hypnotherapy process July-November 2021.  It’s now April 2022. 

I maintained the habit of using those recordings we made to help me get back into a relaxed state, and as needed to regain control over the symptoms for months, though I’ve had a few periods where I didn’t maintain the practice as much.  

I also now weave in meditation sessions, trying to alternate between the two, which is one of the techniques Dr. Price recommended.

I may have symptoms for the first few minutes of any exercise, which I view as an adjustment period. The longer my breaks between sessions, the longer it may take for my body to quiet.

I view these symptoms as my body’s way of blowing off steam, but I’m usually completely still much more quickly than I used to be before using hypnosis.

The numbness/pain in my leg isn’t as constant as it used to be and I’m better able to reduce the severity on the rare occasions when it flares.

I’m grateful to have this additional arsenal of tools to help me manage my FND. 

I have noticed an uptick in symptoms over the past several months, during which I’ve been less focused on maintaining my meditation and self-hypnosis process, and I also have had several major changes in that time, including a medication adjustment that I knew could increase my symptoms.

I still have fewer symptoms than I had before Morag and I began our work together.

My goal with my FND is to improve my management, minimize bad symptom days and live my life as freely as possible, and I’ve found hypnosis to be another useful and supportive tool in that process.  

Morag’s recommendations for finding the right hypnotherapist

When you decide to choose a hypnotherapist here are a few things to consider

Do you want to have sessions in person or online?

There is no right or wrong, both options are valid. However, your choice of therapist will be less and may even be nonexistent if you live in a more remote, rural location.

There are several kinds of hypnotherapy. Hypnosis is in fact a technique that is connected with therapy. Here are the main three schools of hypnotherapy.

Cognitive behavioural hypnotherapy integrates CBT with hypnosis. It focuses on identifying and changing the beliefs, emotional behaviour and thoughts that are keeping your challenge/problem in place.

Ericksonian hypnotherapy or NLP uses indirect suggestion, metaphor and storytelling to alter behaviour, rather than direct suggestion.

Hypnoanalysis is connected with psychoanalysis and psychotherapy and is interested in uncovering the originating cause of the problem or challenge you face.

Most therapists offer a free initial chat – use this as an opportunity to ask questions and get a feel for the person. How do you feel talking with them, what do they spark in you? Read through the website and the testimonies, watch any video testimonies.

And then ….. make a decision!

Conclusion

FND  occurs much more commonly than most people think, and it needs to be treated appropriately. 

While there are some treatments out there of dubious value, hypnotherapy is a proven tool for managing FND and it can help you to manage your symptoms.

You need to be sure that you feel comfortable with your hypnotherapist, as while hypnotherapy isn’t mind control, you aren’t going to get much out of the session if you are instinctively fighting against their suggestions.  

You want to have the option of multiple sessions and work with the understanding that the process may take some time. 

Hypnotherapy helps you to break mental habits by exploring options or practicing control.  While your symptoms may increase during treatment, I’ve often found that in the long run, symptoms are reduced.  

We all deserve to be happy and have better control over our symptoms.  

Hypnotherapy is definitely a tool I’d recommend exploring to help manage your FND.  

Morag Stevenson BA Hons. DIP CBH, is a qualified and experienced cognitive behavioural hypnotherapist who specialises in helping people overcome and manage stress and anxiety.
She works using CB hypnotherapy. mindfulness and relaxation techniques. You can learn more about her on her website: http://www.positiveactionstoday.com