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Posted by: Frustrated ® 10/08/2008, 10:19:48 |
I was wondering if anyone has ever tried hypnosis to treat this condition? The reason I am asking is that, although there seems to be a biological cause for this disorder, the disease is progressive. In my life, it seems to get worse when I perceive my voice as "bad" and it seems easier to speak when I have been speaking "well" for a while. When my voice is "bad" it seems as if my self-confidence and self-doubt capture my brain and prevent normal thoughts of speech to flow. It seems that (for me at least) a majority of my SD symptoms are maintained by a learned negative thinking pattern that arises from stress or stress that is caused by the "bad voice". Also, none of us were born with this condition, so could it possibly be a learned behavior that can be "undone" through hypnosis or cognitive therapy?
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Posted by: wolfe ® 10/08/2008, 12:59:23 |
When I was first examined by a speech pathologist to determine if I had SD, a video camera was put down my throat to film my vocal cords while I spoke. Tight fit, ha ha It was clear on the film that the cords were not moving in a synchronized way. Also, at the last SD conference mention was made of a finding that there is some calcification (I may be using the wrong word there) in the part of the brain of that determines speech. This was found during an autopsy of a brain donated to the researchers by an SD sufferer. So at this point most researchers feel that SD is a physical disease. My belief is that there are observable physical reasons for SD. As with many diseases the psychological component can make the disease worse, but the basic physical processes don't change. For myself, I find that keeping my allergies in check helps my voice almost as much as a shot. Others have suggested all kinds of things related to good health and some kinds of voice exercises. Perhaps for you, hypnotism would help. Who knows? If you can afford it, what the heck? However there are scam artists out there who would like you to spend thousands on their treatments. I would avoid them. There are posts on this board about those particular kinds of treatments. Best of luck to you. |
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Posted by: Frustrated ® 10/09/2008, 14:01:48 |
Thank you for your input. I often wondered about the effect of allergies on my SD. I do have severe post-nasal drip and I have never been on medication for it. I actually don't know if I have allergies but I definitely have some bad post-nasal drip for about 6 months out of the year. I am going to see an ENT on Nov 2 and then a speech pathologist after it at Duke. I always wanted to know if my SD would get better if I did something about it. Since it worked for you I definitely am going to try it. Thank you so much again! |
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Posted by: Laurie ® 10/08/2008, 13:41:02 |
Recent studies have shown changes in the brain (thinning of myelin, etc.) in those with SD versus controls. No "negative thinking pattern" can create that sort of brain change so as much as we'd all love to believe we can fix it, control it, change it, we can't. SD has also been shown to have a genetic component in that those with SD have a higher incidence of focal dystonias in their families (and themselves) than controls. Negative thinking patterns in an individual with SD aren't going to cause blepharospasm (dystonia of the eye muscles) in his/her sister. No one was "born with" Parkinson's disease or Multiple Sclerosis... but I doubt anyone would argue that those are "learned behaviors" that can be "undone" by any sort of hypnosis or cognitive therapy. I'm not sure being born with a condition has any relationship whatsoever to its physical cause. I sometimes think that while we may think our voices improve in situation X or Y, really there is no huge measurable objective change. Chances are, you always sound like you have SD symptoms. Stress may make the voice sound worse (as it does in a normal person without SD), but stress is not making the SD worse. To explain that point... take a patient with Parkinson's disease who becomes very nervous.... the anxiety isn't making the Parkinson's disease worse per se, but it is contributing to the shaking as anxiety itself can cause shaking. So you might be shaking more but because of two things 1) you have parkinson's disease and 2) you are nervous. Anxiety and stress may cause voice changes (as they would in a normal person) and then the person with SD has two voice problems to contend with. But they are two separate problems. So eliminating the anxiety and stress does zero to help the underlying SD, though it may stop the anxiety and stress from making it worse. SD is also not related to "thoughts" of speech flow but instead is a motor control problem. Much like a shaking hand in essential tremor. It's a motor control problem, not a cognitive/behavioral issue. People can talk you in circles as to why grounding and various types of relaxation, breathing and one can only imagine will help SD and every other medical condition in the world for that matter. I'd be wary of their claims. If such a cure could actually work, someone would objectively verify the results, market it and then they'd be rich. Since they know they'll be proven wrong, they're left to sell the idea to the naive and desperate. And unfortunately, there are plenty of folks who still fall into these traps. I'm not trying to be critical of the suggestion, just pointing out the logic involved in SD treatment. SD can make one really desperate to try "anything" that may help. But you can't spend your time with treatments that have no logical basis.... like getting up in the morning and touching each wall of your house 4 times... that's certainly not going to fix SD. Why? Well, there is no connection to the treatment/act and the underlying cause. If you think hypnosis could fix something like Parkinson's disease, then the "logic" could follow that it could help SD. But if you find that idea absurd, then you have your answer. Most of the people who swear by various treatments that have no followable logic, I have found, fall into two categories... 1) their voice sounds just as bad as it did before the treatment; or 2) they have changed the way they speak (i.e., speak in a higher pitch or sorority/airhead type voice which will help most cases of AD/SD "sound" better... and then claim magical cure X is responsible for that improvement when really if you spoke in your natural voice, the SD would be there loud and clear). Laurie |
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Posted by: frustrated ® 10/10/2008, 04:00:06 |
Laurie, Thank you for your generous response. I am sorry if I offended you with my comment. I was not suggesting that SD is some sort of mental disorder that is not associated with any physical abnormalities. I would like to point out to you the logic behind my suggestion. I have only recently heard of the title SD and I have been wondering for the past 6 years if this was in fact all in my head because it was better and worse at times. As an aside- I agree with you that there may be no significant difference between the days my voice sounds good or bad, however I disagree with you when you say "you probably always sound like you have SD" because there are days when speech flows through me with little or no effort and there are days when it is a struggle to respond either "yes" or "no." I know it is always there, but some days the symptoms are much better than others. I had OCD when I was young (thanks for the jab by the way) and didn't realize until about 8-9 that most people don't think the way I do. So when I spontaneously developed this strange speaking habit at 16 I was not sure if this was another manifestation of what caused OCD cropping up in a different form, that I would grow out of by “thinking differently” like I did with OCD. I had no idea there was a biological basis for this disorder. I started to realize after 6 years of "willing" my voice to be different that this was not something I could take care of by myself. However I wanted to know if somehow erasing thoughts of this type of speaking would make me be normal again, by in a sense unlearning this way of talking. However, now that I know SD is a motor control problem, hypnotism obviously would not alleviate this problem and I understand your criticism. Obviously you cannot control/treat Parkinson’s with hypnotism/cognitive therapy. However, there is also a definite cause of Parkinsons and MS and it seems that there is no agreement let alone any idea about the cause of SD and all the areas of the brain it involves.
Since SD is a motor control problem and the basal ganglia is the area of the brain that controls motor movements, which is connected to other parts of the brain, could SD potentially be caused by an abnormality somewhere in the sensory input system feeding into the basal ganglia or in a region coming out of it? Have people found ways to cognitively cope with it? Voice therapy- does it work? For the anxiety comment- what about the Vagus nerve? The nerve that starts in the brainstem and controls motor function of larynx and responds to stress. Anxiety maintains the bad voice, I’m not saying it causes it but it definitely prevents it from getting better. Has there been any research investigating the activity of the Vagus nerve in people with SD? Is this the nerve that is involved in SD surgery? As I said above, I am new to this field of research and am only now beginning to delve into scientific journals to find out what is known and what is not yet known about SD. Doing a quick Google Scholar search (which is not what I would normally use but that’s all I have available to me right now) there are only about 120 articles that are primarily concerned with SD. The majority of these articles concern the treatment of the disorder, 5-6 are about quality of life and observations of phonation differences and NONE are about the cause or etiology of the disorder. Could you please post in reply the titles and authors that you got the information from, specifically if you have any about SD brain vs control brain? Again- thank you for your response. You seem to be very knowledgeable about SD and I would really appreciate if you could forward those articles so I can take a look at them. P.S. What do you do to help you cope with your SD, and do you do anything to treat it? |
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Posted by: Laurie ® 10/10/2008, 13:09:44 |
Hi, again, First, I'll just say that my tone is generally directed as those who like to blame patients for their SD, sell them cures that that have no logical basis and refuse to verify their results....not any individual patient who may desperately want to try various remedies. While no one knows the exact cause of SD, the differences in brains between normals and controls as well as the genetic findings shed a fair amount of light on the disorder and prove that, really, it is not a "voice" disorder but a neurological disorder. I have posted a link to one of these studies below. As for the vagal nerve involvement, I personally can't see that as primarily connected unless vagal nerve dysfunction can somehow cause thinning of myelin and deposits of various minerals in the brain. Surgeries to treat SD generally focus on the same muscles treated with botox... i.e., the thyroarytenoid muscle in AD/SD or they involve placing certain types of shunts to separate the vocal folds thereby stopping the spasms. As different muscles of the larynx are used to produce different sounds (i.e., consonants versus vowels, etc.), problems with one of these muscles will predominantly affect production of certain sounds more than others. This is why someone with AD/SD will often have a harder time pronouncing hard vowels versus initiating words with the letter H, etc. As for me personally, I use Botox to cope with my SD. I tried voice therapy as well which did absolutely nothing by my standards. However, if you are interested in manipulating your voice into a different pitch where the symptoms will be less obvious for some folks, speech therapy is an option although many speech therapists advise against making such artificial changes. Speech therapy can also teach you how to avoid making your voice worse or "over-compensating" by trying to talk around the spasms, etc. In the end, I hate to see SD patients blame themselves for the disorder and think will power can fix it. My fear being that if the researchers/doctors thought that way, there would be no hope for development of legitimate treatment options and research with a logical basis. I can't imagine having been diagnosed with SD 30, 40 years ago when no viable treatment was available. Had someone not realized the genetic and/or neurological basis for the disorder, we'd all be out of luck. Here's a link to the study. Laurie Related link: Focal White Matter Changes in SD |
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Posted by: Vash ® 10/10/2008, 13:13:24 |
Thank you for the information! Mind if I ask what sorority/airhead type voice is? I may be using that one. |
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Posted by: Laurie ® 10/10/2008, 13:20:56 |
I guess it'd be speaking in a high pitched voice, melodramatic and full of emotion. More stereotypically it'd be similar to when you hear someone say things such as "and like, can you totally believe that like totally happened?" Another option to minimize symptoms would be to speak in a very exclamatory/angry/over-confident voice. I'm not saying it's a bad compensatory mechanism. Temporarily, it might be a good one. Just that some speech therapists claim it's a cure or re-wiring of one's brain to speak normally (not to mention charging thousands of dollars to tell you that) when clearly it's not! Laurie |
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Posted by: Vash ® 10/10/2008, 15:10:43 |
Oh, ok. I posted about my "other" voice in the "Alternative Voice" thread. It's sort of a loud whisper which turns in a spam- free voice. Doesn't feel quite natural but then again, I've been using the wrong muscles for 6 years so it might take a while to get used if it truly is my natural voice. I'll have to check with a speech therapist. I'm getting my Botox in about month. If my spam-free periods feel like my "other" voice I might have found a way to repress the SD. I'll report anything here. |
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Posted by: Sumaya ® 10/09/2008, 16:15:50 |
I saw a video and this man mentioned something about hypnosis that was quite disturbing. I think his name is Roger Morneau. I know I wouldn't want somebody messing with my mind. The second reply on this post was really good and I so agree with that! People might not understand and make you think you're somehow responsible for the SD like it's something you can turn on and off. You can learn to manage better, learn to use your voice in a different way. That's something we can find out on our own, wich way works best for us personally. To some extend we can control things like sneezing and yawning...but it's not a psychological thing that can be fixed with the right frame of mind. I'm just concerned about your wellbeing. I'm worried hypnosis would do more harm then good in the long run. |
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Posted by: Hoarse Whisperer ® 10/09/2008, 20:40:37 |
Hypnosis won't affect your SD, but it may make you feel more relaxed. I tried hypnosis and acupuncture. They both made me more relaxed. When I'm very relaxed, my voice is better, but the SD is always still there. I can get the same results by laying in a quiet room and breathing deeply for 30 minutes. Cheaper too. Lori
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Posted by: Jewells ® 10/10/2008, 20:07:40 |
Hi all,
This is my first post to this website but I've been reading the postings for a long while. (Thanks to everyone by the way :-) ) I had to pipe in regarding this posting because I've had a much different experience than those posted here. I have had ADSD for the past 3 years. Possibly unlike others, the onset of mine coincided with a very traumatic event in my life. I was initially diagnosed with an extreme case of ADSD where I could barely speak and had difficulties breathing as well. Throughout my 3 years of searching for treatment, I have been through the gamut of antidepressants, psychologists, psychiatrists, 3 ENTs, 2 speech therapists, yoga, meditation, running, Ativan, Valium, magnesium, Kava, botox, and in fact a hypnotherapist/sports enhancement specialist who also specializes in folks with stutters. I gained slight improvements by the speech therapy, running, yoga and significant improvement with the Ativan, which I currently use on an emergency basis. The botox worked as well but I have since been able to bypass my botox treatments in lieu of hypnotherapy. I want to clarify this as my experience only but today my ADSD is considered to be very mild at worst. I began attending a hypnotherapist 6 months ago when the affects of my botox shot had worn off. With the hypnotherapy, I began seeing fairly dramatic improvements in my speech right away. My ENT has stated that it may be that my brain has rewired itself, maybe it was a byproduct of the relaxation affect of the hypnosis or maybe it was a confidence issue. Who knows, but for whatever reason there seemed to be a direct cause/effect relationship with this therapy in my situation. Just some input to possibly cloud the waters a little more. Let me know what thoughts are out there. I'll be interested to hear. Julie |
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Posted by: Maria ® 10/11/2008, 06:00:18 |
Hi Julie, Thank you for your post. It's interesting. How does the hypnosis work? Do you get positive affirmations in general and/or affirmations about your voice? How would you describe a good hypnotherapist? I don't know, but could there be so called SD-cases that really are a mix of different conditions (a complex of problems). What if these mixed cases might be somewhat helped by alternative methods, especially if there is a psychological component to it??!! As a matter of fact, many do report that their SD started with a traumatic event. A lot of different conditions can be triggered by emotional stress (or simply stress), especially if there is a predisposition to that condition in the organism. I was stuck with "it's all in your head" for twenty years. I even remember trying to suggest that my symptoms might have a non-psychological component to them and getting mocked for the suggestion. I think I got "brain-washed" to the point that I'm still wondering about the interplay between psyche and symptoms... I do envy people like Laurie - it must be very different to get an SD-diagnosis right away instead of getting stuck with "it's all in your head" and keep on wondering about these things forever! Maria
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Posted by: Jewells ® 10/11/2008, 22:45:11 |
The hypnotism isn't what you would think of as typical hypnotism. It's a technique that supposedly builds new neuropathways in your brain. She does a lot of brainspotting, biolateral stimulation, as well as general trance & relaxation techniques. The therapy originated as a treatment to trauma therapy but it's used with people suffering from anxiety, addictions, stuttering, dyslexia among other things. After a session I never felt anything immediately different in my speech but approximately 2 days later I would notice significant improvements and it would last about 2 weeks. As I gradually began speaking more normally the improvements became less and less dramatic but as I mentioned previously, my ADSD is currently mild at best and most people don't notice that I have a speech issue at all. |
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Posted by: Maria ® 10/12/2008, 13:11:59 |
Ah, I see... Thank you for explaining! I would be very interested in trying that kind of therapy - not only to help the voice, but also to feel less drained by all the changes that seem to be going on (constantly) in my life. I will look into it and see if there is something similiar here in the nordic countries. Yes, it's not such a big deal to live with a mild SD after you have experienced how it is to live with severe SD! Thanks again,
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Posted by: Gary Lea ® 11/28/2008, 00:51:47 |
I am a practicing clinical psychologist with SD successfully treated via surgery. Hypnosis and cognitive therapy which I practice will not treat SD. Period. However, if one is suffering from mucle tension dysphonia they may well help. So, the first goal is to try and determine if it is SD or MTD. But they will not help with SD. Gary |
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