A Patient’s Workbook for Functional Neurological Disorder: Helping to Release the Pressure

This self-help workbook offers guidance for people coping with functional neurological disorder (FND), as well as their partners, families, friends, and healthcare professionals. It uses a visual metaphor based on the groundbreaking new Pressure Cooker Model to help you understand the condition and to reduce the symptoms. Firmly rooted in neuropsychological principles, this model is practical and relatable, bridging the gap between theoretical and clinical models of FND.

The Pressure Cooker Model focuses on the person with FND, as well as the contribution of the person’s environment, interactions, relationships, and surroundings to FND, and looks to improve recovery, reduce stigma and increase FND awareness, providing a radical shift in thinking about FND. Grounded in neuropsychology, this book helps people understand their FND triggers, as well as their emotional and physical symptoms, and offers many strategies for self-care and building healthy relationships.

The book is accompanied by an extensive set of entirely free online resources and templates to help people with FND manage a range of genuine and disabling functional neurological symptoms, from motor symptoms (such as tremors, functional weakness, and gait difficulties, to sensory symptoms such as tingles and numbness, and cognitive symptoms such as memory and concentration difficulties or brain fog, and dissociative seizures. It is valuable reading for anyone with FND, their partners, families, and friends, as well as healthcare professionals in any field working with people with FND.

Dr Egberdina-Józefa van der Hulst is a Principal Clinical Psychologist working in the National Health Service in the United Kingdom. She has extensive experience with providing highly specialist clinical neuropsychology input to people with Functional Neurological Disorder, brain injury and complex trauma, and is passionate about undertaking systemic work including facilitating family support, group reflections and complex case discussions.