Pain Management and Pain Relief
Pain is a symptom of something being wrong with the body. It is warning signal to stop certain physical movements or activities, or an indication that medical attention should be sought. If you suffer from back pain this is in fact a sign that the activity you’re carrying out is unsuitable and is putting you at risk of further injury. Pain is therefore essential to allow us to flourish and survive. In general terms, therefore, pain has a function.
It is important that before consulting a hypnotherapist in respect of pain management you should therefore have consulted a suitably qualified medical practitioner to ensure that the underlying cause of the pain
does not require medical treatment, or that no such treatment is possible, or
that such treatment is either already being given and there is no objection to hypnotherapy for pain relief being given in addition.
You will be required to either produce a letter to this effect or yourself provide confirmation in writing that this is the case. This requirement exists in order to protect you from the possibility of causing damage to your body by leaving underlying causes of pain untreated, as hypnotherapy generally treats the symptoms of pain but (except where tension is a major causative factor) cannot treat the causes.
Signals from the localised area of pain or injury have to reach the brain before the feeling of pain is registered. However, pain is NOT simply a physical sensation but arises from a combination of both psychological and physiological factors. Sufferers of chronic pain (back pain, for example) often report a worsening of symptoms at times of stress; individuals who were relatively unconcerned about, say, a minor injury will find that the sensations of pain increase when someone comments on it or asks how they are feeling, thereby drawing attention to it.
Chronic pain may in turn cause psychological problems for individuals who may feel that the discomfort and inability to function normally will never end. For example, those with back pain or leg pain may be unable to walk more than a few hundred metres; those with tennis elbow may be unable to even lift a cup of tea, sufferers of migraine sometimes feel unable to get out of bed. Hypnosis and self hypnosis can however offer relief.
Hypnotherapy for pain relief works by altering the way the brain perceived pain – for example by training the individual in relaxation techniques and making suggestions whilst individuals are in hypnosis in respect of different methods of pain management – it being diffused throughout the whole body, or dissolving away, visualising pain as a shape – a circle or a square – and imagining first moving the shape, then increasing its size and gradually (once you have established that you can sufficiently control the size and position of the shape) being able to diminish the shape and therefore diminish the pain. Individuals can be taught to focus thoughts elsewhere, away from the site of pain – there are many examples of people overcoming what would otherwise be unbearable pain because they are able to focus their attention away from the pain and towards a more positive goal – athletes in the final stages of a marathon who manage a final sprint to the finishing line, or a desperately ill father who is able to walk his daughter up the aisle. It is no coincidence that many people with terminal illnesses are sometimes able to prolong their lives just beyond a certain date – a spouse’s birthday, or Christmas, or an anniversary – before finally letting go.
These examples – and there are many others – demonstrate the power of the mind in respect of pain relief. Hypnosis and hypnotherapy help you to learn to use your mind in the most effective way in order to deal with pain and discomfort. And because whilst you are in hypnosis you are very deeply relaxed, where physical pain occurs as a result of stress and tension – typically headaches, migraines, some dental pain, and neck, shoulder and back pain – being in hypnosis also helps hugely with the underlying causes.
