Mind-body interventions in patients with multiple sclerosis

The patients included in the hypnoanalysis group should assist to 11 sessions which consisted in 1 interview and 10 hypnotic sessions that lasted around 1 hour (1 weekly) performed as follow: 1) the first day consisted in a semi-structured interview of questions related with their life, before, during and after the diagnosis, a possible emotional cause of the disease and impressive events before the disease; 2) the second session was performed in hypnosis and consisted in the search in the “book of their life” of at least for 5 events related with the cause of the disease and in the restructuring of at least one of the events that apparently still affected the patient, these restructuring was based in the reimprinting technique described by Dilts et al.(this technique consisted in modify the traumatic scene by identifying the resources that the patients and the others involved ones needed, and changing the possible beliefs created in the event); 3) the third session consisted in calling the responsible part of the disease and asking it for the cause(s) of the disease and possible solutions of it and repeat each possible solution 100 times in their mind and if they agreed they made a commitment with that part to change in that aspects; 4) the fourth day consisted in talking with the inner child and with their perfect or ideal version and asking them what they needed to be happy (in the case of the child) and to be like them (in the case of their perfect version) and they made a commitment with both parties to change what they ask for, finally they performed a final fusion among them and the child and the perfect version; 5) the fifth session consisted in searching in the book of healing for all possible actions that will lead to the physical improvement of disease and repeat them 100 times; 6) the sixth session consisted in a script related to mind-body interconnection based in a script of Satir ; 7) the seventh session consisted in a script that gave them to a motivating future, based in a script of Virginia Satir; 8) the eight session consisted in visualizing the brain and the immunology system before the disease and now, looking for differences and asking them what they should do to be like before the disease and make a commitment with that cells in doing what they ask them; 9) the ninth session consisted in repeating the script related to mind-body interconnection ; 10) the tenth session consisted in comparing 3 events that had predisposed to the disease with events that had predisposed to healing in their life and identify the abilities that will help them to perform the second ones and repeat that abilities 100 times in their mind (Supplementary file 3); 11) the eleventh session consisted in repeating the script of a motivating future. In addition 15 minutes of healing imagery were also included in at least in 5 sessions. The same person, performed all sessions and after the post-intervention measurement, the patients were given the transcripts of their hypnotic trances. It is important to mention that all answers were specified with more questions until a clear answer was provided (i.e.: if the answer was “because I was afraid” the next question was “What were you afraid of?”).