My name is Pascale Bruinen and I am a Dutch writer, public speaker, confidence coach and brain trainer in preparation for surgery and medical treatments such as chemotherapy and radiation.
On January 1st 2016, after eighteen years of serving as a public prosecutor, I gave up my job. Ever since, my work focuses on mindset optimization – helping people to create more positive and therefore healthier thoughts, feelings and convictions – and mental prehabilitation; helping patients to prepare themselves in an optimal mental way for surgery or medical procedures such as chemotherapy or radiation.
Because of my academic background, I use extensive scientific research as well as my successful personal experience with self healing when I needed major abdominal surgery in 2016.
My experience with self healing
In 2016, I unexpectedly had to undergo major abdominal surgery of which the good or life threatening result would only become clear during the operation. In the two and a half weeks leading up to my surgery, I included everything I had learned about physical and mental well-being into a balanced brain training program that had only one goal: to generate the best outcome. Thanks to daily intensive meditations, affirmations and visualizations, I was able to arrive top fit and full of confidence and optimism in the operating room.
I didn’t only get the best outcome, but to the astonishment of my doctors and nurses I didn’t even need any painkillers after my surgery, not even an Advil! This happened even though my anesthesiologist had warned me beforehand that I would need to have extra painkillers administered via an epidural. I also recovered in just a couple of days instead of the predicted 6 to 8 weeks, exactly like I had envisioned beforehand in my daily visualizations.
This way, I have experienced first hand the self-healing powers of the body. Moreover, I have discovered that your beliefs, your deepest – conscious but more often subconscious – convictions shape your health and life.
Public speaker, confidence coach and brain trainer
I specialize in the biological effects which mindset and the expectation effect have on the body. The expectation effect is what scientists describe as a biological self fulfilling prophecy: what you expect with regard to the amount of pain you’ll suffer, your possibility of healing, how long your recovery will take, how many side effects you’ll experience or the way in which you’ll age determines for the most part your actual biological reality, both in a positive and negative way.
The expectation effect is based on extensive scientific research regarding the placebo and nocebo effect. The placebo effect means that measurable healing effects on your body occur exclusively because of your positive expectations. Scientists discovered that your brain anticipates your expectations by activating the matching mechanisms and substances. So if you expect to age well, you’ll experience less chronic disease and less cognitive disfunctioning compared to their peers that have negative expectations about aging.
The nocebo effect is the exact opposite; this means that measurable damaging effects on your body occur exclusively because of your negative expectations. So if you, for instance, expect a lot of pain, you’ll actually experience a lot of pain compared to people who undergo the same procedure but have more positive expectations.
In my work, I teach people how to relax and how to install a deep positive belief in their brains regarding their health, surgery, medical treatment, prescribed medication or aging process.
Interested in learning more? Please mail me via info@pascalebruinen.com and I’ll be happy to answer all your questions.
Writer
I have written several books: ‘Self-Recovery from Within’ (2021), ‘The Year of the Owl (2016) and ‘Fortunately, my first corpse is fresh’.
For more information on Pascale’s books, please check out the writer page.
I am the founder and owner of the Academy for Self-Recovery, an online knowledge center for scientifically proven self-care and self-recovery interventions. If you want to check out the website (in Dutch), please visit this link.
