I first encountered Lilian Sjøberg when she began to interact in the comments section of my posts. My interest was piqued because she was one of the only other people who were saying some of the same things as myself. In particular, she had also unearthed the dopamine-adrenaline link, and hence had come to the realization that not only does chronic stress exacerbate the symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease, but can even be causal of them.

Another example was how Lilian talked about the devastating nocebo effect of diagnoses of hopelessness.

In some ways, Lilian was even way ahead of me in spotting the patterns and joining the dots. For example, she pointed out to me videos of people from WW1 with shell shock, who clearly had movements disorders not dissimilar to PD, as well as novel interpretation of the placebo effect, connecting it to the removal of stress.

Lilian is also way ahead of me in terms of turning what we have independently learned into a pragmatic therapeutic programme. While I have self-experimented and shared openly what I’ve learned along the way, Lilian developed the ideas into a strategy which she has applied to helping people with PD directly, that she calls the “HOPE-shortcut” method.

Lilian demonstrated to me how she had already helped a number of people with PD, who, with the support of her coaching, had become better. This includes a Danish man who, after going back to his neurologist subsequent to Lilian’s interventions, removed his PD diagnosis.

However, it took me a long time to accept Lilian’s repeated offers of help (years!!!) because I was stubborn and thought I could fix myself without anyone’s help. I see now, due to fast track improvement since wholeheartedly accepting Lilian’s help, this was part of my belief system that was keeping me stuck.

“Imagine a life: where you are aware of your stress patterns. Where you are aware of the situations that trigger your anxiety or stress. Where you know exactly what you need to do to become stress-free again. Where you are getting stressed on fewer and fewer occasions. A calm life with more energy.”