
How to Unlearn a Disease - themantra514
http://m.nautil.us/issue/24/Error/how-to-unlearn-a-disease
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bitshaker
As a practicing hypnotherapist (converted from former skeptic), I can confirm
the thinking in this article is right on the money.

I constantly see people for all kinds of interesting medical issues that
aren’t being solved by medicine.

Most people know about smokers quitting with ease and without withdrawals.

I had someone who would hear the word “cat” and break out in hives.

Another person who had irritable bowel go away after getting over some
traumatic experience from their past.

Even my own experience with debilitating migraines gone with just a few
minutes of work with a trained professional. They haven’t come back since.

It’s of course not a cure all. You probably won’t reverse blindness or
anything. But it works for more than you’d expect.

Medicine is wonderful. So is the mind. Use both to get better.

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derefr
Isn’t a simpler justification for the first story (epileptic seizures during
recitation of a poem) that the particular synapses the student was using to
recite the poem had a problem (demyelination?) that provoked seizures when
used? Like a CPU core that has flawed silicon, or a road with a pothole, the
system as a whole can work fine if you avoid it, but it’s a fatal flaw if you
don’t.

~~~
Pimpus
Er, no. The initial reaction was caused by unconscious stress or rage brought
on by public speaking and the subsequent incidents were a learned Pavlovian
response.

I am always recommending The Mindbody Prescription on here and have no idea
why you lot refuse to read it. There is no excuse, this topic is too
important. And it would stop silly comments like yours dead in the water.
Everything the article mentions make perfect sense from the perspective of
unconscious emotion, and moreover, this perspective gives you great
understanding of psychology and curative and even predictive capabilities.

~~~
arpa
Hello. I am the resident asshole here and I am calling bullshit on your claim
that you always recommend the Mindbody Prescription. You don't. Three pages of
your comments have one reference to the book. These pages do paint an somewhat
arrogant picture of you, though. You might find it easier to get your point
across if you don't sound as superior.

That being said, your comment is spot on.

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carapace
Reminds me of the infamous "Five Minute Phobia Cure": a simple algorithm for
reprogramming your brain to not have a phobia anymore.

The fascinating thing about phobias is that they are such an intense and
durable _one-time_ learning. A phobic person never "forgets" to have the
response.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGUXQRubBrY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGUXQRubBrY)

edit:

I realized he doesn't actually detail the process there. I can't find a good
link right now but here's a live demo of reprogramming a bad memory that
includes some of the same elements:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_RQxt0Wcgk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_RQxt0Wcgk)

~~~
t34543
I hadn’t heard of this before - very interesting. I need to reframe a few
memories.

~~~
carapace
NLP catches a lot of flak (some of it deserved perhaps) for being pseudo-
scientific but it gets results and has a pretty rigorous (if nonscientific)
basis.

I attended a seminar given by Dr. Bandler about fifteen years ago and
volunteered for an on-stage demonstration (of hypnosis and some other
techniques). I don't remember much, and my subjective sense was that I was up
there for only a few moments, but I was told by a friend afterwards that it
was several minutes. During that time, whatever he did, I was relieved of a
severe depression that had ruined my life up to that point. Let me be clear: I
had suffered from years of vicious depression that kept me from living a
normal life. It went away and never came back.

~~~
abrichr
Do you know what was done/said to you?

~~~
carapace
No. I went up on stage, sat down in a chair and closed my eyes. Dr. Bandler
started talking and I remember him saying something like, "Oh I love it when
they fight me." and that's the last thing I remember. There was the dark
pink/grey light you see when your eyes are closed and then I was "waking up"
and stepping off the stage. I hadn't been asleep but I did not consciously
remember anything.

It was only later, during a break, when someone told me that it had been
several minutes, and that I had flushed dramatically and had other reactions
during the process. I have no memory of any of that. From my POV it was just a
few moments.

There may even be video available of the seminar. I don't remember the year
but it was maybe 2004, the seminar was a week long and in Chicago, and I think
it was technically DHE (Design Human Engineering), not NLP, if you want to try
to track down the actual incident.

After my depression was cured I kinda lost interest in NLP.

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darkerside
You improve what you measure. And right now, we don't measure our brain waves
at all. I can see a future where everyone has access to their brain patterns
in real time and is much better at exerting conscious control over their
emotions and physiological reactions.

~~~
nickjj
That would be really useful.

Right now it's like trying to debug a malfunctioning program except in
addition to not being able to see the source code, you also don't have access
to the logs.

Most programming problems are pretty easy to solve once you know what the
problem is and print statements / logs help a ton here.

~~~
merpnderp
Plus you have only the most general idea of the output. Try to compare how
depressed you are one day against another and you’ll end up with only the
roughest estimations.

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sidcool
Can this work with something like depression?

~~~
josephpmay
Probably. For example, transcranial magnetic stimulation is already being used
to help treat depression, and there's likely a lot more that can be done among
these lines.

