(Aeon) – It took months for my functional neurological disorder to finally be diagnosed. It’s a condition that must be recognised

In my case, neurologist #4 noticed that if I performed certain complex tasks that distracted me, such as moving my left foot around in a counterclockwise direction while reciting the alphabet backwards, the movement of my tongue and mouth stopped.

In the language of FND, this is called ‘distractibility’, and it suggests that the brain and mind work best together when we are less preoccupied with their functioning. Distractibility generally doesn’t work if there is a structural pathology. But just because the condition is functional (and perhaps even reversible) did not make the diagnosis any easier for me.

I was beginning to see the limits of what biomedicine could do. (Read More)