After four sessions of individually designed hypnotherapy, Emily’s functional seizures had stopped and her family described her as completely back to normal
When a young person begins experiencing functional seizures, life can change with frightening speed. Ordinary things such as going to school, leaving the house, seeing friends or simply making plans can become difficult. The young person may stop trusting their own body, while parents can find themselves constantly watching, waiting and wondering when the next episode will happen. This was the situation facing Emily and her family.
Emily is not her real name. Some personal details have also been withheld to protect her privacy. This account is based on the family’s direct experience.
For the broader clinical context, our page on hypnotherapy for FND explains the approach in general terms; this functional neurological disorder case study focuses on one family’s experience.
At a glance
The problem: Emily had been diagnosed with Functional Neurological Disorder and was experiencing functional seizures, fainting, confusion, exhaustion and episodes of disconnection. The effect: Her confidence in her body had been badly shaken, making school, independence and everyday life much more difficult.
The approach: Her hypnotherapy programme was designed around safety, nervous system regulation, body confidence, symptom responses and a gradual return to normal life. The result: Within four sessions, Emily’s functional seizures had stopped and her family described her as completely back to normal.
When your own body no longer feels predictable
Emily’s symptoms included functional seizures, fainting, confusion, fatigue and periods of feeling disconnected from herself and her surroundings. Physical or mental exertion could leave her exhausted and uncertain about what her body might do next. School became particularly difficult, not simply because of whether she was physically capable of attending, but because she also had to contend with the fear of having an episode while she was there, feeling trapped away from home or being unable to cope with a full day.
This created a powerful cycle. The more unpredictable her body appeared, the more closely she had to monitor it, and the more important every sensation could begin to feel. A small change in energy, awareness or physical feeling could become a warning that something might be about to happen. This did not mean that the symptoms were imagined. They were real, involuntary and disruptive, but it suggested that the patterns producing and maintaining them might be open to change.
A diagnosis, but not yet a way forward
Emily was diagnosed with Functional Neurological Disorder. The diagnosis helped to give the symptoms a name, but a name alone did not restore her confidence or show her how to begin reclaiming her life. Her family had been advised that resolving the FND could take around nine months. For a teenager with FND who was already losing parts of her education, confidence and independence, nine months felt like an extraordinarily long time, and we wanted to understand whether there was another way of approaching the problem.
The question was not simply, “How do we stop a seizure?” More useful questions concerned what Emily’s nervous system was trying to do, what it had learned to anticipate, what made her feel safe or unsafe, and how fear, attention, expectation, exhaustion and avoidance had become connected. We also needed to explore whether those connections could be changed and, most importantly, whether Emily could learn to trust her body again.
Looking beyond the symptom
Functional seizures are dramatic, but the seizure itself is not necessarily the whole problem. By the time somebody experiences repeated episodes, their life can become organised around preventing the next one. They may avoid places, sensations, activities or emotions that appear to be connected with previous episodes, while family members can understandably become highly alert to every sign of change. The person can begin living inside a shrinking circle of perceived safety.
Our approach with Emily was therefore designed to address the wider pattern, not just the most visible symptom. The work focused on helping her experience safety in her body, reduce the need for constant internal monitoring and develop a different response to physical sensations. It also aimed to weaken the association between normal activities and the expectation that something would go wrong.
The hypnotherapy programme
The work involved hypnotherapy for functional seizures, designed specifically around Emily and the way she was experiencing FND. It was not a standard script or generic relaxation treatment, but a programme organised around five connected areas.
Establishing safety
Before asking Emily to change anything, it was important to help her experience a genuine sense of safety and control. Hypnosis provided a focused state in which calming imagery, physical comfort and internal signals of safety could be developed. The intention was to give her nervous system another possible response, rather than allowing alarm and shutdown to remain the automatic pattern.
Rebuilding trust in her body
When the body has repeatedly behaved in unexpected ways, it is natural to become suspicious of it. Emily needed opportunities to experience her body as something she could understand and work with, rather than something she had to fear. The hypnotherapy helped her notice sensations without immediately treating them as evidence that a seizure was about to happen, encouraging a calmer relationship with physical feelings and a growing expectation that her body could settle, adjust and recover.
Changing the response loop
An FND episode can become surrounded by anticipation: a sensation produces concern, concern increases attention, and increased attention makes the sensation feel more significant. The expectation of an episode becomes stronger and the whole sequence gathers momentum. The work helped Emily interrupt this process earlier, so that rather than fighting every sensation or waiting helplessly for events to unfold, she could begin associating those moments with calm, orientation and choice.
Restoring confidence and identity
FND can become more than a medical diagnosis and begin to influence how a young person thinks about themselves. Life can become divided into what they could do before and what they believe they can safely do now. Our work supported Emily in reconnecting with the capable young person she had always been. The aim was not to pressure her into proving anything, but to help her imagine and experience ordinary life without the constant presence of FND.
Reconnecting with everyday life
Improvement had to mean more than feeling relaxed during an appointment. The real purpose was to help Emily return to school, independence, ordinary routines and the freedom to make plans. Every step back into life provided new evidence that she could do something, remain safe and recover. That evidence mattered because it challenged the expectation that normal activity would inevitably lead to another episode.
What happened over the following four sessions
The change was rapid. Within four sessions of beginning the hypnotherapy work, Emily had stopped experiencing functional seizures.
More importantly, the improvement was not limited to one narrowly defined symptom. Her family described her as completely back to normal, and everyday life was no longer being organised around the possibility of another seizure. The future began to feel available again. The family had been prepared for the possibility of a nine month recovery, but Emily’s experience was very different.
This does not mean that everybody with FND will respond within four sessions. It does demonstrate that a diagnosis of FND does not necessarily dictate a fixed recovery timetable.
Why we believe the approach helped
We cannot isolate one element and claim that it alone produced the result. Emily was an individual, living within a particular family, school and personal situation. However, several parts of the work appeared especially important. She was treated as someone experiencing real involuntary symptoms, not as someone imagining or deliberately producing them, and the treatment was shaped around her own experiences, fears, patterns and goals.
Hypnosis allowed ideas of safety, control and physical confidence to be experienced, not merely discussed, while the work addressed the fear surrounding symptoms as well as the symptoms themselves. Recovery was connected with returning to life, rather than endlessly monitoring whether every sensation had disappeared.
Emily was also given an active role in the process. Treatment was something being developed with her, not something being imposed upon her.
What this case does and does not tell us
This is the experience of one young person. It cannot tell us whether hypnotherapy for FND in teenagers will produce the same result in another case, how quickly someone else might respond, or whether their experience will follow the same course. It is nevertheless important because individual outcomes can reveal possibilities that broad averages and predicted timescales sometimes obscure.
Emily’s experience shows that meaningful change can happen, that functional seizures do not always have to dominate a young person’s future, and that hypnotherapy deserves serious consideration as part of an individually designed approach to FND.
Could hypnotherapy help you or someone in your family?
FND can affect movement, awareness, sensation, energy, speech and many other aspects of everyday functioning, and no two people experience it in exactly the same way. That is why our work begins with the individual. We look at what is happening, when it happens, what appears to increase or reduce it, how it has changed everyday life and what the person most wants to be able to do again.
From there, we can decide whether hypnotherapy may offer a useful way forward. If you would like to discuss hypnotherapy for non-epileptic seizures or other FND symptoms affecting you, your teenager or somebody in your family, contact SICH for a confidential initial conversation.