Most of us have suffered some form of physical pain during our lives. Pain can have a significant impact on our daily routine and can affect our performance. Sometimes it may become so bothersome that it wrecks our whole day.
Increasingly people depend on pain medications when pain becomes too bothersome and impacts on their daily lives. But depending on a tablets isn’t as healthy as you think. You can find that your body becomes dependent on a certain dose of a pain medication and, when something more severe occurs, one tablet is not enough.
That is why some therapists recommend hypnosis to relieve the pain rather than merely depending on synthetic medications. Hypnotherapy can be very effective even when the source of pain is unknown. We also know that pain is a subjective experience meaning the person who feels it is the only person who knows he or she is in pain even if there are no symptoms to prove that pain is present. Therefore, hypnotherapy plays a vital role in relieving pain for people experiencing subjective pain. Hypnotherapy trains a person’s mind ways to process the pain he or she feels so that pain is no longer noticed.
Contrary to the belief of some, hypnosis is not a state of unconsciousness but is an altered state of consciousness. So in the process of hypnotherapy to relieve the person’s pain, the individual is in control which is totally different from the belief that they are losing control over themselves. Hypnotherapy is about gaining control over your own body to a higher degree, allowing yourself not to feel or perceive pain.
Pain can be caused by our emotions. Emotional stress leads one person to have physical pain even if there are no proven symptoms of the pain. Stress levels in our brain can create a flood of chemicals throughout our body leading to inflammation which is perceived as pain. Hypnotherapy allows us to control our own cells and even the pain we feel.
All that hypnotherapy does is convince our brain to stop the signals that cause it to perceive pain. Once we have control over our brain, we no longer need to depend on synthetic medications to relieve our pain. Control over our mind is a powerful tool and it is a healthy option to relieve pain as well.
agreed – this reminds me of a documentary a few years back of a woman receiving root canal surgery purely using hypnotherapy for pain control, no anaesthesia at all. On a scale of 1-10 her pain levels were never higher than a 2 and when they were, he helped her to bring them back down again.
When working with clients, I remind them that comfort levels are on a sliding scale because when people are experiencing pain, it can seem like its constant and relentless. However just getting into the habit of grading the levels of pain where 1 is most comfortable and 10 is least comfortable can give people back a real sense of control and more able to notice times when there are improvements.