Managing
Your Pain with Hypnosis
By Deborah
Ferris, Certified Hypnotherapist (519) 688-9282
If you suffer
from chronic pain, then you know that your life can revolve around the pain and
most of all you want a way to eliminate or alleviate your suffering. In fact, there are a number of ways that you
can manage your pain, everything from drugs to exercise to meditation and counselling. Today, more and more people are using Hypnosis
to combat their pain.
Marc Marcuse, with the
Many respected medical journals
such as the Australian Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis and the
American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis publish papers on the
effectiveness of Hypnosis in helping people to better control pain from a wide
variety of conditions such as arthritis, chronic fatigue, migraines and other
serious illnesses (Evans, F., 1990, Hypnosis and pain control. Australian
Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis 33(1), 1-10).
But before you decide to
visit a Hypnotherapist to help you with managing your pain you need to check
with your doctor first to make sure that your pain isn’t coming from a
condition that hasn’t been diagnosed. Pain
is a signal in the body that something is wrong in the body and/or mind and
your doctor can tell you if you need to go on medication or other forms of
treatment.
A referral from your physician
indicates that you are under his/her care for your condition whether that is
arthritis, fibromyalgia, migraine headaches or some other serious chronic
condition. Hypnotherapists work with the medical profession to complement the
care you receive.
What happens in Hypnosis?
When you visit a
hypnotherapist for the first time, she will want to get to know you and the
medications that you might be on for your pain.
So she will do an extensive in-take including asking you questions about
how the pain affects your life and what you see as the benefits of being pain
free or having less pain. As well, the
hypnotherapist talks about hypnosis during the session and answers any
questions you might have. The rest of
the session involves you relaxing and going into hypnosis so you can reach your
goal to diminish or in some cases even eliminate the pain. You will also learn Step 1 Self-Hypnosis in
the first session.
While in hypnosis you experience
a natural, focused state of mind in which your senses are heightened. You feel relaxed, positive and refreshed as
you connect with your powerful subconscious mind.
You may feel like a part
of your mind is detached yet you can hear the hypnotherapist and even answer questions
if you are asked to speak. You also feel very comfortable.
Imagine Your Way To Living Successfully with the benefits of Hypnosis
You also use your
imagination to help you to decrease the pain.
If your pain level is at a 9 (on a scale where 0 is no pain and 10 is
the highest amount of pain), then your subconscious mind will help you to
reduce the pain level maybe to a 5 or less.
The result is positive
for you. By lowering the pain level, this could result in your not needing to
take as much pain medication. You can
experience more energy, more flexibility and better health. As you practice self-hypnosis at home, you
can find yourself continuing to lower or even completely release the pain from
your condition.
Dr. Richard M. Linchitz
in his book, Life Without Pain, describes hypnosis as a “…super alert state of
the unconscious mind…”. He adds that
“your unconscious mind is wide open, ultrasensitve to your demands for improved
health, and rapidly responds to them.”
When you use your
subconscious mind to stop pain, endorphins are released. These amino acids bring relief from pain as
well as helping you feel better.
There are a number of
techniques that the hypnotherapist uses that will help you to diminish your pain level.
You can also learn how to do these techniques so you can do them at
home.
Pain Reduction/Elimination Techniques
One of the techniques found to be successful in diminishing
pain is called objectification and identification. When you are in
hypnosis, you are asked to see a large circle in front of you. It doesn’t
matter if you can actually "see" it, as long as you can imagine or
think about seeing it, that’s fine. You are then asked to let this
represent your pain. As well, you are asked what color it is. Often
people see their pain as red or white hot.
By letting your pain become an object such as a
circle and then identifying the pain with the circle, you have successfully
used your imagination to change the circle/the pain.
You may then be asked to imagine the circle coming
nearer and therefore larger and you will notice that the color becomes more
intense. You will notice that the pain increases momentarily. This actually demonstrates to you that you do
have control over your pain and that you can diminish the pain by reversing the
process.
By visualizing the circle moving away from you, you
can shrink it in size, “see” the colour becoming less intense until it
gradually descends to a cool colour. As this happens you experience the
pain diminishing.
Transfer the Pain
Another technique that you can practice on your own, while you are
in self-hypnosis, involves transferring the pain from its original site to
another part of the body like an ear lobe or the end of your finger and the
pain can be then modified and reduced.
It is easier to handle the pain when it is in the ear lobe or in a
knuckle or the end of your baby finger.
Numb the area
You can also release pain by imagining
that one of your hands is numb and once the hand feels numb you can apply the
numbness to the part of your body that has pain. While you are in hypnosis, you will be asked
to imagine that your hand is submerged in a bucket of ice water or injected
with a medication like lidocaine or novocaine. just as when the dentist gives
you Novocain to numb your tooth so too can you numb your hand. You next imagine that you can move that
numbness to the area that needs relief.
These techniques and others, practiced in daily
self-hypnosis, allow you to control the pain whenever you find it necessary.
Counselling
Sometimes people who are experiencing pain don’t
want their pain to go away. They are now
receiving a lot of positive attention from their family and maybe they don’t
have to go to the job that they really hated because they are too sick.
The pain is real that they experience but at the
same time they are afraid of getting better or in some cases it can be a
subconscious desire to keep from recovering and being able to lead a normal
healthy life.
Counselling can help you to get a better
understanding of your pain and what it means to you and your family. As well, you might find that your family is
not fully supporting you in your rehabilitation. If you think that you are getting pay offs
from being a chronic pain sufferer then counselling
as well as hypnosis can be helpful.
By booking an appointment, you can experience and
learn to better manage your pain by diminishing its intensity or even
experience the elimination of pain completely.
Hypnosis can give you relief so you feel better and without any side
effects. It helps you to relax and as
you know anytime you are able to relax then the pain can subside. When we are tense and stressed, as well as
afraid then the pain experience is more intense.
Hypnosis can compliment the care that you are
currently receiving and help you to lead a normal life and to feel positive
about yourself.
Deborah Ferris is a Certified Hypnotherapist,
Psychotherapist & Reiki Master. She
helps her clients to connect to their subconscious mind to heal themselves by changing
negative habits, beliefs and behaviours.
Deborah helps you to lose weight, stop smoking, handle stress better,
release anxiety, alleviate pain and boost your self-confidence.
You can reach her at (519) 688-9282 in
Tillsonburg. www.healingconnection.ca.