A Balanced Approach to Physical Symptoms in Therapy
Today, a fellow therapist asked me, “Aren’t you worried about treating someone as if they have neuroplastic symptoms when they actually have a serious medical condition?”
This question raised a lot of interesting thoughts for me. So welcome to my TED Talk!
Firstly, the vast majority of people who seek treatment for neuroplastic symptoms already have seen all the doctors. Rather than not being evaluated medically, the much more common scenario is that they have seen all the mainstream doctors they can get referrals for. They may also have seen a few nontraditional practitioners as well. They have likely heard from their doctors that there’s nothing that can be done medically, or have tried all the recommended medical treatments, or have gotten sick and tired of spending all their money and time on alternative treatments.
Moreover, some neuroplastic conditions present in a way that doesn’t lend itself to a medical diagnosis. Symptoms might move around randomly, from one part of the body to another. They might hurt the day after exercise, but not during it. Or pain might start right when they walk into the gym. Or symptoms may have started simultaneously in both hands or both shoulders.
Or they may happen only when it rains, or during the full moon, or on Monday mornings. Those are conditions that doctors just shrug their shoulders at.
Furthermore, it occurred to me that therapists don’t worry about this very much when they’re treating neuroplastic conditions that appear psychological, such as depression – even though that can also be caused by a medical condition. I always make sure my clients with depression, anxiety or insomnia have had a full physical exam and labs done, since I don’t want to find out a year into treatment that a client is hypothyroid or has a deficiency. It’s always important to make sure our clients are getting adequate medical care – whether or not they are being treated for physical symptoms.
When I developed debilitating neuroplastic dizziness, vertigo, nausea, vomiting and insomnia, my doctor spent months trying to figure out what was medically wrong with me. I had many rounds of lab tests done, a trip to a neurologist, and an MRI. Every test was normal. All that accomplished was delaying my recovery, and I ended up hospitalized with Major Depressive Disorder after being unable to eat or sleep for several months.
That’s not to say that those tests didn’t need to be done, but it wouldn’t have hurt for me to be getting support from a mind-body therapist at the same time.
The truth is that you don’t have to choose between being medically evaluated and receiving treatment for neuroplastic symptoms. Your doctor should treat your symptoms as legitimate, and should run any and all diagnostic tests needed and refer you to any appropriate specialists. AND, whenever it becomes apparent that there may be a neuroplastic component to your symptoms, mind-body treatments should be pursued. If they work, then it is clear that your symptoms were neuroplastic all along.
To find out if mind-body treatment can help you overcome your chronic symptoms, Contact Me.