Tips for Whānau
Don't believe the bullshit
It is likely that medical professionals will suggest that your loved one is faking their symptoms, behaving badly or seeking attention. This happens to most of our people.
Please do not take this stuff on board. We have a problem with this particular disorder. FND has not been taught in medical schools, but somehow disinformation about this condition has been handed down like Chinese whispers since Freud.
If you are feeling strong enough, please challenge them to do a bit of reading. Send them to www.neurosymptoms.org. It's going to take a lot of micro-protests to shift the culture around this.
You can feel confident standing up to your Doctor and telling them that their approach to your loved one's illness is both archaic and harmful. Your darling will love you all the more for it. They really need you now.
If you believe the bullshit it can really hurt your family.
You would benefit from the recovery tools too
Watching somebody we love suffer is incredibly tough, especially when you feel so powerless without the answers you seek. FND can play absolute havoc with your finances and life plans.
No matter how tough it gets, the more calm and resilient you are, the easier it will be for your darling to recover. Your own experience will be less painful too.
You would benefit from using FND recovery tools on yourself. It's scientifically proven to help with mental well being and it feels good too.
Keep good records
You may need them. It is legal for you to record a conversation with a medical professional if the conversation is about you. If you feel that you need to record what is happening get your loved one to push the buttons. Netsafe sets out in this page how to go about recording digital evidence. Medics do not have the right to take your phone, but you do not have the right to take video or photos of staff of other patients. If you stick to recording audio of conversation that is about your loved one alone, you should be alright.
You can get AI to convert audio recordings into text documents and keep these as records.
Helping your Child
If it is your child that is suffering, you will be going though a special kind of hell right now. There are lots of parents in our support group. Come and meet them.
We think that the parable of the Two Arrows is particularly important to your situation now. We think that with parent-child relationships it's as if parent and child take one arrow each. The child takes the arrow of physical suffering. The parent takes the arrow of the worry.
Much of what happens in your home now depends on how your manage your worry. Try to stay calm. Try not to dwell in dark places. The recovery tools will help you with this.
Have hope. Kids can come out of this really fast. We are working on getting more support from the health system. There are lots of people in the Universities working on this now.
Remember, it could well be worse for you than it is for them.
Check out the list of FND hacks at the bottom of this page.