Megan Beier, PhD, is a health and rehabilitation psychologist specializing in multiple sclerosis (MS) at the Rowan Center for Behavioral Medicine. She shares the ways she counsels and prepares people who are newly diagnosed with MS so they can build their emotional well-being on a wise foundation.

So there’s a few things. As a psychologist, I have kind of a little bit of a different take on this than maybe some other providers. My first thing is: Get educated on MS. So, I’ve had people who really don’t want to think about it because their MS symptoms — after that first exacerbation when they are getting diagnosed with relapsing-remitting MS — kind of go away and they’re feeling pretty good. But I do think it’s important to really understand what MS is, what the symptoms are.

And you know, [also understand] potentially what’s coming next so that you can have a good plan. I also find that some people feel really relieved after the diagnosis. Some people completely ignore it and just go on with their life as if it didn’t exist at all. And I think that sometimes that second category — while it’s good in the moment — may not be good for the long term.

So I ask some of my patients to explore what their expectations are about the future, what they hope to get out of life, what they think MS will bring to their life, both in a good way and maybe in … a not so good way. I ask them to start identifying what strategies they already have for managing uncertainty because living with MS can be a very uncertain diagnosis. And so if you have strategies, that’s great. If not, maybe start to explore either with a psychologist or therapist or even on your own: What other strategies can you use to up that tolerance of uncertainty?

I often talk to people about finding their team. Where can they go for certain answers to different medical questions? Do they need to build a team? Do they already have a team? Do they need to look outside of their state if they’re living in kind of a neurology desert or a rehab desert? Who can do virtual sessions if you need to get in touch with somebody? So just having those people that you can go to if something comes up is often very reassuring.

And finally, I really like to ask people to start exploring and challenging some of the beliefs that they have around disability and what it means to be healthy, even challenging some ableist beliefs because often when I’m working with people who have a lot of fears about MS, most of the time, those fears are coming from a misunderstanding of what life could be like when using things like mobility aids. And actually, those can be really great tools for expanding one’s life and not necessarily something that’s holding somebody back.