What do Mental Patterns have to do with MS? Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is a disease in which the immune system is thought to be attacking the central nervous system. As with other autoimmune diseases, the disease is thought to be caused by the system’s reaction to internal messages within the system and not by an external virus or infection.
I have dedicated my practice to studying multiple sclerosis and designing an effectiveness hypnotherapy protocol to address the mental patterns of multiple sclerosis. Each of these patterns is associated to particular symptoms of MS. As not all people with MS experience the same symptoms, not all these patterns are present in every person with MS. When these mental patterns are transformed using a combination of hypnotherapy, guided visualization and NLP, the transformation can affect the symptom.
After interviewing other practitioners and successful cases, testing the processes they used, and doing my research on hypnotherapy for MS, I came to the conclusion:
People diagnosed with MS have ingrained mental patterns specific to their symptoms. When those mental patterns are transformed using a combination of methods that bring (1) insight into a person’s limiting mental patterns and (2) resources to modify those patterns, the symptoms decrease and frequently disappear.
What are mental patterns?
Mental patterns are ways of processing life, beliefs about yourself and others, and behaviors and ways of looking at the world. They become our personality. In research, these patterns are called psycho-social factors. Some examples would be:
- I need to meet your needs first is a way of processing life and prioritizing.
- I don’t believe I am worthy is a belief usually thought to be developed at an early age and underlying many self-sabotaging habits as well as the driving need to be validated by others.
- The world is unsafe is a way of looking at the world, which creates a strong need for control.
The Mental Patterns of Multiple Sclerosis
The key mental patterns of multiple sclerosis can be grouped in the following categories:
Patterns such as being externally identified, disconnected from the body, with difficult relationships with the family of origin, and needing everything to be controlled can leave a person very vulnerable to stress, mishaps, accidents, infection, etc.
Examples of each one of these groups can be downloaded as a pdf here:
These particular mental patterns, or personality traits, are not the fault of the person with MS, nor did they intentionally make themselves sick. These patterns are created when are children, and many of them then become reinforced over and over again by the culture, economy, and external values of our society (this is the reason that certain societies have a large amount of people diagnosed with MS and other societies have none). Many people that don’t show external symptoms of MS have similar mental patterns and personality traits. It is only when life gives a person a major stressful event (ILE) that these patterns created in childhood prove to be insufficient to cope with what is occurring and the body responds with MS.
Creating Health
The goal is to transform these patterns and relieve the body of the burden. The changes include healthier mindset, less self-judgment and the need to be perfect all the time in everything, stronger boundaries with others, more self-care and time for recovery, and a stronger connection to the body and its needs.