Change your Mind, Change your Body
Significant eyesight changes have been found in people
with multiple personality disorder (MPD)*. In some cases,
one personality** has good vision while another is nearsighted.
(Goleman, D., 'Probing the enigma of multiple personality',
The New York Times, 28 June 1988.) This means that
eyesight is not constant or all the personalities, sharing the
same eyes, would all have the same vision.
Other physiological changes have been documented
in people with MPD, including:
Eye color changes between personalities
Severe allergies in one personality but not in another
Asthma in one personality but not in another
Diabetes in one personality but not in another
Even x-rays can differ between different personalities
NLP Practitioners who work with people who have physical
ailments know that people can, in a sense, "re-program"
themselves to deal with and sometimes cure their own ailments.
I know of several people who have recovered from diabetes,
asthma, allergies, and who have changed their vision back
to 20/20 when medical doctors and optometrists told them
they were stuck with their ailments for life.
While conventional wisdom would say that’s not possible because
these are physical ailments, my ears perked up when I heard that
people with MPD sometimes have physiological changes when
they change personality. If “multiples” can do it by accident, it
seems plausible that we who are lucky enough to have some
control over our moods and minds can do it on purpose. Again,
NLP Practitioners know from both training and experience that
the mind has tremendous influence over the body (some would
say they are same). What excites me about the physiological
changes that people with MPD experience is the scientific
evidence it provides that, in a sense, explains how it is possible
for something like NLP to affect people’s physical ailments.
In my own experience as a Practitioner, I recently helped a young
woman with exercise-induced asthma recover from her ailment and
be able do vigorous exercise without the need to rely on her inhaler.
She gained fifteen pounds of muscle in her first two months at
college on a full basketball scholarship – how’s that for vigorous
exercise – and only needed to use her inhaler once.
*Note: MPD has been renamed by the American Psychological
Association as Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID).
