Hypnosis is an effective tool for managing pain because it changes your awareness and teaches you how to overcome pain by increasing the level of comfort you feel.
Hypnosis is not a substitute for medical help. Remember, pain is a resource of the body that should be listened to, as it can alert us to something that needs attention.
For those who have or are seeking medical help, or those experiencing chronic pain, hypnosis is an excellent way to see pain from a new perspective. With hypnosis, you can remove the hurt from the pain and create an awareness that can help you to become more mindful of life outside of pain.
If you’re ready to deal with the pain, please contact me.
What is pain?
Pain is defined by the International Association for the Study of Pain as:
‘An unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage or described in terms of such damage.’
Pain can be categorised into two types:
- Acute pain: the majority of these cases concern pain that results from disease, inflammation or injury. It will generally come on suddenly and can be accompanied by anxiety and emotional distress. It’s treatable and defined by the fact that is will have an ending and will lessen as the body heals. In some cases, it can give way to chronic pain.
- Chronic pain: this type of pain persists over a longer period of time and is made worse by the environment the person is living in and their psychological state. Chronic pain can be resistant to orthodox medical treatments.
Hypnosis can be used to help both types of pain, although acute pain is often helped by a person learning self-hypnosis. Chronic pain, by its very definition can be helped by hypnosis (formal hypnosis, as well as self-hypnosis). The use of relaxation techniques assists in a person’s ability to deal with the pain and the reduction of anxiety helps further. Hypnosis can also be useful due to the effect it can have on some of the chemicals working within the nervous system, the effect being that certain impulses are slowed down.
Hypnosis, guided imagery and meditation are all similar mind-body therapies and they all work really well in the treatment of pain. They are also wonderful complimentary therapies for any kind of procedure or medical treatment a client may be undergoing.
The primary goal of these types of therapies for healing and as a complimentary therapy is to help get back a feeling of control by helping the person better understand the mind-body connection. The unconscious mind is an incredible tool and there is no telling how powerful it can become once trained to fight disease. Since it doesn’t know the difference between reality and imagination, there is no limit to what the mind will accept in a hypnotic trance.
Hypnosis can also help those battling pain by helping them better manage their symptoms by becoming a fighter and waging war, using their powerful imagination to heal the body. Hypnosis for healing and pain reduction are extremely powerful tools for creating new and sometimes more effective coping mechanisms to help manage day-to-day stresses people suffer from as part of the healing process.
It’s important to have a sense of empowerment when fighting disease and hypnosis can help by reducing the associated stress and anxiety of coping with pain, allowing a person to change their perspective from one of hopelessness to one of hopefulness.