I help people with Hypnotherapy (AHA, ASCH) who have experienced medical trauma. As a clinical naturopath, medical herbalist, medical nutritionist and PACFA registered mental health professional, I look at the whole of your life experiences.
You may even get health fund rebates.
I, myself, experienced a life threating medical trauma that caused disability. It was nothing I did but what was done to me by a careless clinician. It left me disabled and having to find a way forward in my own life.
When a medical trauma happens and changes everything you need competent professional guidance to help you move forward in life.
What is a medical trauma?
This covers a wide range of physical debilitating changes including:
- Loss of limb
- Loss of organs
- Effects of an accident
- Paraplegia or quadriplegia
- Cancer
- Recovery from infectious diseases
- Dealing with medical negligence
- Psychological reactions to your disability including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
The list can go on but what I want you to grasp is the concept that you’ve been physically and mentally damaged in ways that were out of your control. Assessment must be extensive, so we know what you are dealing with.
You may already have received great help, but the likelihood is that it was not holistic and perhaps uncoordinated. One of the major problems of modern medicine is that there can be several specialists all not talking to each other. (1)
Is your clinician listening?
My own experience, when I had medical damage, was that the majority of clinicians I saw were only for 3 to 5 minutes before they moved on to the next patient. Not only did they not know all the problems I faced, but also they were getting facts wrong, because they didn’t take the time to deep dive into my case. (2)
To help you I will coordinate with any specialist you see and act as your patient advocate. When you are injured and sick, you need informed health professionals to act on your behalf when you’re too traumatised to that for yourselves.
My first consultation is two hours and ask you hundreds of questions and want to see reports so I can assess how I can really help you.
What is physical rehabilitation?
Recovery and adaption happens in stages focusing on one aspect at time. It can’t be rushed, because if you try to do things you aren’t ready for, it can be dangerous and set you back.
Medical trauma affects the whole body, and you lose muscular tone and strength, so you aren’t able to physically do what you did before. It’s frustration, disheartening and at times you just might feel like giving up. You may have lost organ function which affects the rest of your body.
Before I was injured, I worked out 10 to 14 hours in the gym and ballet study, danced on the points of my toes and rode my bike. I was amongst the fittest and strongest of my generation. Eighteen months later it was hard to walk to the end of the road.
As a professional dancer and acrobat, when I was young, I spent time recovering from injuries so fortunately I knew what to do. I also worked in sports injury rehabilitation. The patients I see don’t know where and how to begin so I teach you to piece your body back together to create progressive rehabilitation. (3)
Reveiwing medications?
Clinicians often prescribe medication but then fail to review them as time passes. This means as you progress you may now be taking the wrong medication. I frequently see this in the clinic. (4)
I will work with you and your clinician to review your medication and listen carefully as to whether you think they are actually working and teach you to monitor their effects.
What I also find is the medication may be too strong for your needs, is often mis prescribed, and then ends up doing more harm than good.
I also look to see if that medication can be substituted with a more natural option that does the same job and is sometimes better, without side effects. We can consider all your options.
What foods affect your recovery?
Most hospital food is just about the worst diet anyone can eat. It’s not tailored to your illness or disability, but just another meal off the menu card. The nutritional healing potential is not considered.
Part of the treatment is to look and what you are eating and guiding you. As a medical nutritionist I am aware of the importance of nutrition in physical healing. (5)
I also help you change your eating habit by using hypnosis to reprogram your brain to choose healing foods.
You are a whole person, and it is important to have everything pointing in the right direction to accelerate your healing. Your brain only works right when you eat right and visa versa.
Coping with the grief of medical trauma and injury
In my research into this field one thing comes up repeatedly. The grief you experience when medical trauma changes your life beyond your control. (6)
You may have lost your old life, no matter how much you may have loved it, either temporarily or permanently. There can be a sense of loss, anger, despair, sorrow, depression, hopelessness and certainly injustice.
What happened was not your choice and it may have been the very last thing you wanted in your life. The injury may have taken years off your life expectancy, caused disability, and destroyed the quality of your life as you knew it.
Even though you experienced mental and emotional trauma, you can’t stay in the at space inside your mind. You have to move forward with your life, and hypnotherapy can help you accelerate that adaption.
So why use hypnotherapy with medical trauma?
I’m not the same person I was before I experienced the physical damage. The physical limitations I now have mean I can never do what I used to do. If I hadn’t used hypnosis to get me through it would not be here today. Fortunately, I had experience in working in physical and mental trauma.
Depending on your injuries you may or may not get back to your previous life, which is a journey according to your own individual injuries. You may have to create a new life according to your new circumstances.
Hypnotherapy can help you adapt faster mentally and physically. There is no separation between the mind, and to fix your body you have to fix your mind.
I am a very thorough practitioner and may ask for physical tests and assessments to work out how to accelerate your journey. And of course, at the center of that will hypnosis to help you manage your journey.
References
(1) Laçiner, K., & Şenol, Y. (2024). Evaluation of types of traumatic events and comorbid mental and physical diseases in adults with posttraumatic stress disorder: A retrospective study. Psychiatry Investigation. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11382564/
(2) O’Dowd, A. (2024). Patients with long term conditions are being harmed by poorly coordinated care, watchdog warns. BMJ, 389, r761. https://www.bmj.com/content/389/bmj.r761.full
(3) Matsuzawa, K., Takahashi, T., Sakata, J., Uchida, T., Suzuki, T., & Sakai, T. (2024). Effectiveness of a progressive rehabilitation approach without sport activity restriction for acute lumbar spondylolysis in high-level athletes: A retrospective case series. Cureus. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12967225/
(4) Du, W., Gnjidic, D., Pearson, S.-A., Hilmer, S. N., McLachlan, A. J., Blyth, F., Viney, R., Joshy, G., Day, C., & Banks, E. (2019). Patterns of high-risk prescribing and other factors in relation to receipt of a home medicines review: A prospective cohort investigation among adults aged 45 years and over in Australia. BMJ Open, 9(3), e024275. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30772867/
(5) Smith-Ryan, A. E., Hirsch, K. R., Saylor, H. E., Gould, L. M., & Blue, M. N. M. (2020). Nutritional considerations and strategies to facilitate injury recovery and rehabilitation. Nutrients, 12(10), 3022. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7534941/
(6) Kalpakjian, C. Z., Tulsky, D. S., Kisala, P. A., & Bombardier, C. H. (2015). Measuring grief and loss after spinal cord injury: Development, validation and psychometric characteristics of the SCI-QOL grief and loss item bank and short form. The Journal of Spinal Cord Medicine, 38(6), 780–790. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4445025/
