Psychogenic non epileptic seizures: why is your memory so bad if this is all psychological?

An almost universal cognitive complaint in persons with PNES is that their memory is bad and it is not unusual after going through neuropsychological testing of memory (verbal, visual, etc.), that these complaints are officially confirmed.  Although we are not sure, these memory problems are probably due to more than one reason.    The most obvious answer is that if you are clinically depressed or anxious (which...

Mindfulness and psychogenic non epileptic seizures

I was reading a few books by Dr. Kabat-Zinn, Director of the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.  He reports how useful mindfulness is when working with medically ill patients who are in excrutiating pain. I was intrigued by the concept of mindfulness and surprised by the similarities between it and the Western treatment approach I use with psychogenic non epileptic...

Now that you’ve been told you have PNES—What’s the next step?

Did you feel shocked and confused the day your doctor gave you the diagnosis of psychogenic non epileptic seizures?  Who wouldn’t?  How many months or years went by while you carried a diagnosis that wasn’t really yours?  But for many, the last straw isn’t this, but rather that you were informed that you did not have a “medical problem” and were told to seek out psychiatric and/or psychological...

So you’ve been told you have PNES – What’s that?

You’ve certainly been dealt a real challenge.  Why? Because PNES is  a very complicated psychological condition that seems to defy logic.  There are however some promising treatments. We only need to figure out who they will serve best. In my opinion, the biggest problem lies in that we may be lumping different conditions into one single category and asking questions from a single viewpoint.  How do we define...