NLP & Belief Vs. Diagnosis

Patricia: “So I am officially diagnosed with selective eating disorder, so to all my family members and friends who always made me feel bad for not eating certain foods there’s a reason! its a real disorder!”

Pam Castillo: “A diagnosis is only useful if it comes with a remedy and a permanent fix, and that was taught to me by my teacher Dr. Richard Bandler, father and co-founder of NLP™”

Sam: “I wouldn’t say that, Pam. When my son was diagnosed, there was no remedy or permanent fix but it helped us to understand why he reacted and acted in the ways he did, it explained his (and my) picky eating, it helped us to plan things around his condition and it also helped us to get specific schooling that he needed. A diagnosis is, in my experience at least, useful at any rate, not just with a remedy or permanent fix.”

I used to think like Sam, too. In fact, many years ago I too, was happy and even relieved to be given a diagnosis of some symptoms that had eroded my health and had been seriously debilitating for 14 years (nothing related to eating). That is UNTIL, I discovered the real power in the human mind combined with the fact that modern western medicine seemed to have very few real and permanent solutions for so, so many of the things people suffer with.

I began a quest to leave no stone unturned to change my physical health and to be done with my symptoms turned “disease” by a “diagnosis”. I began to study beliefs and how to change them. I began to realize I did not have to believe what the doctors said was “factually predicted outcomes” for me based on medical tests and current medical knowledge. I could, in fact, be skeptical and remain curious. Those 2 things allowed me to be hopeful once again. “Diagnosis without remedy = hopeless acceptance” vs. “Skeptical and curious = hopeful”. Hope makes many people feel better moment to moment.

I began to see how very limited modern western medicine can be and how a more holistic approach (which is often unproven by current scientific means and standards) was getting results and remedies for some. And if some were getting results, I wanted them, too, and then I was even more curious if I could. While I was a science nerd and scoffed at anything woo-woo, I decided to suspend that belief because my life with my disease was unacceptable and I refused to give up on the possibility of change. I studied my “disease” from different world views and from different modalities and began to learn to use and to control my mental and unconscious directives to change my “condition”. I learned NLP, Neuro-Linguistic Programming and decided to use it to change my health. Sometimes modern western medicine (and I am very much in favor of some of the benefits and still use that system when necessary) simply has it wrong and does NOT allow for the “leave no stone unturned” approach. Why? that’s a whole different discussion, and not very important to changing things. I began to study the placebo and nocebo affects and I realized slowly that belief is a tremendously important aspect of wellness and change.

Unfortunately, very few people learn HOW to change beliefs and calibrate when there’s a difference. Sometimes the scientific model, flawed and limited itself, can not prove the source of the difference because we simply haven’t invented the tests and machines to do so yet. But ask anyone who has changed or gotten rid of their symptoms and they don’t care about scientific proof if they got results. The occurrences of spontaneous remission and “cures” often are as high as any current medical protocol and for ME, all that was worth testing out on myself. “HOW” questions are much more productive than “why” questions. So I asked myself, “HOW is it that some people got better from what I had without medical intervention?” For others, you might ask: HOW is it that some people get rid of phobias without any medical or psychological intervention? What would need to happen inside my body to become fully well again? Once I learn how to connect to the Unconscious process with the very specific language that COULD make the difference I realized instantly, like a lightbulb going on, that much more was possible than the current medical model was willing to explore for me.

I took matters into my own hands and that was 15 years ago now. It took me literally 3 times of using on myself what I had learned in NLP training to be completely free of all the symptoms I had. So did I really have that “disease” I was diagnosed with? I don’t know. I just know I have never had any of the symptoms again and I have helped others to get rid of theirs as well. Diagnosis? Well, it did give me an emotional validation, though as I think back, I already intrinsically knew something was wrong and not working correctly and I didn’t need the docs to say so, it’s something we all know. Is the name important?

Well, I contend the name and label might very well keep people from becoming symptom free and just may limit the possibility of wholeness that could be available. Many smart folks used to believe the world was flat too. Perhaps it’s good not to believe in diagnosis without remedy and to believe in different outcomes that you just hadn’t discovered, yet.

What more could you do? Be? Have? if you were free of that disease. Leave no stone unturned and give it a go. What if you could get better and the only thing standing in the way was the incorrect, hopeless diagnosis that someone said you couldn’t. In the past, there was compelling evidence for many smart folks to believe the world was flat too. Am I saying a belief alone will change things? I’m saying maybe things are not what they seem and no one knows it just yet. Go ahead and prove them wrong if you can by suspending the belief in diagnosis without remedy. What have you got to loose?  This mom left no stone unturned-

Galeet Lee Levy:
“I wanted to give an AMAZING shout-out and a HUGE thank you to a person who had MADE MY 2013 dreams come true. She is the amazing and one and only Pam Castillo. My daughter was suffering for YEARS from a [food] phobia that no therapist, doctor, hypnotherapist, or anyone before was able to cure her. Pam was able to do so. The changes we are seeing are simply ASTOUNDING. Thank you Pam for not giving up, and for your dedication and believing, you have DONE it! If anyone suffers from any kind of phobia, fear, or is having any difficulty in life, Pam Castillo is the person to go to, thanks again a MILLION for everything!”

©2014