Anyone Understand Conversion Disorder?

Day after day, I see searches on a subject near and dear to my heart that proves too many talking voices on the internet is not a good thing.  So many write the same thing about what conversion disorder is that makes me wonder if these people are just trying to hear themselves speak.  I'm serious here that this is a disgrace to the human existence.  People either need to wake up and show that they understand this or sit down in the cheap seats and listen to those that do.

If you are offended by what I write, I do not apologize for this.  If you are offended by that, again I do not apologize for this.  There are so many people reaching out for help and wondering does anyone understand conversion disorder.  What do they get in return?  A bunch of repeated and regurgitated gobbledygook that says nothing, does nothing and shoves them deeper into a world of confusion and despair.  Shame on all those that propagate this on in the name of hearing themselves speak.  If you are one of them, shame on you!

Conversion disorder is a serious condition and when someone is in this, it is hard enough to get an accurate diagnosis, let alone be told that diagnosis.  When you suffer from this, your entire world falls apart and you learn that there is not one thing you can trust in the world.  You cannot trust others to stand by your side that have been with you all your life and you cannot trust your body that it will function from one moment to the next.  Your life becomes a living hell of helplessness and uncertainty.

Each day that you live in this fog of despair and you wonder if you will make it, no one understands you and the medical establishment often fails miserably because of their own inadequacies.  Each day you live in this horror and torment, you wonder if the next minute will hold something you will not be able to deal with in your day, or will it be something that you can not guess what it might be from minute to minute.  The symptoms change, and the exhaustion comes as a friend but yet, no one seems to have answers.


This is the horror that conversion disorders patients deal with and they are turned away by the medical establishment in lieu of one test after another, hoping to find answers but coming up short.  As they watch their bodies shut down and go into pseudo seizures, they are only a spectator watching a horror film.  As they watch themselves being taken care of from urinating and pooping to cleaning themselves and feeding themselves, they die of humiliation inside.  As their minds go in and out of consciousness and as their bodies act as if they are gasping for a breath of air from anxiety attacks, the conversion disorder patient wonders does anyone understand?

There are treatments out there that are working for this, not to just minimize the symptoms so they go into remission, but that they are healed in the body.  Of course, this requires everyone in the healing world to embrace a new concept of what conversion disorder is and what a somatoform disorder really means.  It is more than words regurgitated from memory at will and until you experience what it is that I'm talking about, it will just be a bunch of words strung together.

Of course these treatments not only require the healing community to embrace the truth and philosophy behind why it works, but it requires the patient to allow themselves to think outside the box.  The paradigms we have grown up with and the paradigms we heal with are not enough when it comes to conversion disorder.  We must take a different route than what we know and both the healing practitioner and the patient must do this together.

We can no longer sit by the way side and embrace practices that are shots in the dark without any truth or merit.  Just because it is our belief, does not make it so.  We must come together and learn how to interact with the body in a way that brings about healing, not just adding more pain and misery and suffering to the patient.  Health is not about pushing procedures or medications, but going to the root cause of what is taking place and understanding that what is seen in the body is often connected to the experiences that have brought the patient to this point in their life.

I write this blog post because I went through a conversion disorder in 1991 that almost left me for dead on a hospital testing table.  I found my way through it but it was not easy.  I found a pioneer in healing trauma that has helped me to understand how the mind and body work together or how they work against each other. A bunch of words written time and time again on the internet or shared in an academic setting is useless.  They do little to help anyone, but almost act as a boat anchor keeping us from sailing forward.  We as humans can do better this and we must do better than this.  I'm here writing this because I'm tried of the status quo and it is high time we kick this new awareness and conscious into high gear.

For Further Reading

• Blog Post 7/11/11 - Recovery From A Conversion Disorder

• Blog Post 2/6/13 - Conversion Disorder Doesn't Mean You're Crazy 

• Dr. Paul Canali Interview - Mind Body Interface Of Conversion Disorder

Resources:

• Read more about my experiences Somatosync.com 

• Learn about my story in my book, Hope And Possibility Through Trauma

• I was also a featured guest on the Dr. Drew show about Leroy NY.

• I was part of the 200 Male Survivor Oprah show. 

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Blog Post And Images (c) 5/2/13 by Don Shetterly

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