Pain is a signal … a very important signal. Therefore it is vitally important that all pain is assessed before you attempt to relieve it, otherwise you may be not become aware of a serious underlying issue before it is too late. A reputable and ethical hypnotherapist doing pain hypnosis will not attempt to interfere with a pain signal until it has been cleared by a physician that there is no underlying disease or injury responsible that has not been addressed.
It is almost impossible to eliminate a meaningful pain signal and as long as a client believes that the pain is important or meaningful to them, it will be difficult for them to learn to use pain hypnosis (self-hypnosis) to manage their experience of it. When a hypnotherapist is faced with a pain that does not go away, the issue then becomes whether the physician has misdiagnosed the cause of the patient’s pain or the person is hanging on to their pain because they are not yet convinced it is of no consequence. Physician misdiagnoses are not uncommon. It must be kept in mind that hypnotherapy cannot overcome medication and withdrawal induced pain.
If the client does not wait until their pain levels are so intense that relaxation to any degree is impossible, pain levels can be reduced from the first session and effectively managed over a short series of sessions (typically 4-5) until the individual is pain free. Clients typically find that they can achieve greater levels of analgesia (sensation but no pain) fairly quickly. Those clients who are in intense pain may require several sessions to obtain significant relief, however once accomplished, unless a new unrelated pain develops, the level can be maintained through self-hypnosis and customized CD hypnotherapy.
Reasons Many People Seek Hypnotherapy Treatment for Pain:
- cannot tolerate the medications for pain control and seek a non-medicinal option in pain hypnosis;
- don’t want to relieve their pain only to sit around in a drug-induced stupor;
- are becoming aware of the long-term memory-related side-effects of anesthetics;
- are opting for hypnosis for pain control during birthing, dental work and surgery; in the days prior to the advent of ether, there is documented evidence that thousands of surgeries were performed very successfully with the only anaesthetic being hypnosis-induced;
- seem to respond better to hypnotherapy- induced analgesia and anaesthesia then to medications in certain chronic and progressive diseases.
The techniques of pain control used by hypnotherapists allow the client to discover that in fact, pain will not destroy them and they can learn to relax and stop struggling against it. Struggling against the pain is actually what causes the suffering experience…the fret, worry, anxiety, frustration, tension, etc. In hypnotherapy the client learns that they can overcome the body’s natural reaction to tense the muscles around a wounded area, which puts pressure on the nerve endings, which in turn create more impulses. As they relax, they experience a breaking of the cycle of tension, pain impulses, muscle cramping, spasms, more tension and so on.
- Hypnotherapists report a great deal of success in assisting clients to significantly reduce or eliminate pain that is no longer needed as a warning, all without medication.
- Meaningless pain, as previously defined, is very amenable to hypnotherapy, which has no ill side-effects.
- It has been reported that hypnotherapy has proven invaluable for former substance abusers who cannot tolerate narcotic pain medications.
- Clients can also successfully learn to develop anaesthesia in hypnosis, however most people are very happy to have only analgesia which is feeling the sensations but not the pain.
The suffering associated with pain is rooted not in the signal itself but from the fear, anger, anxiety, worry and many other reactions people experience when faced with pain sensations. The control of pain requires a re-interpretation of the pain and the re-framing of its negative associations. Typically, with hypnotherapy treatments, pain does not have the same association for a client as they become practised at attaining the deep relaxation state of hypnosis that allows their body to stop struggling. Self-hypnosis for pain management is very popular and such well known experts in pain management as Michael Ellner teach various techniques world-wide.
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