Pain Relief and Management |
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Pain is a complex experience that involves physical and emotional components. Each component offers an opportunity for relief. |
Extended information about hypnosis for pain relief and management.
Pain is generally a much more complex matter than most people are aware. Apart from the actual physical sensations of the pain itself there are often other emotional components that contribute to the experience of pain. In cases of chronic pain, feelings such as fear and frustration can intensify the amount of worry and stress experienced by the sufferer. The physical and emotional components can then seem to get mixed up together with one aspect antagonising the other and vice versa.
Hypnosis can be used in a number of ways to treat chronic pain. Sometimes straightforward sympton relief is possible and hypnosis is used to directly modify or significantly reduce the amount of pain being experienced. This involves creating the trance state and then employing one or more of a number of well established techniques to target the sensations of the pain itself. Often this can result in enough of a reduction to bring welcome relief. In some instances the relief can be significant to say the least.
The emotional aspects of the pain can also be addressed with hypnosis. emotions such as fear, frustration and anger, even when quite justified, tend to add fuel to the pain. The relaxation itself that often results from the trance state often has a calming effect on these types of emotions in and of itself. The emotions can also be assessed, reviewed and at times even modified with the use of therapeutic techniques. This can have a diffusing effect on the experience of the pain which is often surprisingly relieveing to the sufferer.
Another important benefit of hypnosis for pain relief is that it is completely safe and many people find that they can reduce or even sometimes eliminate the use of pain relief drugs after using hypnosis to manage their pain. Of course if you decide to modify your dosage of medication then it is very important to discuss this with the doctor who prescribed the medication. It is also very important to remember that any pain is an important signal from the body and must be diagnosed by a medical practitioner before utilising hypnotherapy for symptom relief.
So how does hypnotherapy help with pain relief?
There have been literally thousands of tests carried out around the world since late in the 18th century to discover how hypnosis helps in regard to pain relief. Although hypnosis has been proven again and again to be effective to differing and sometimes surprising degrees in the relief of pain we are still really none the wiser about the actual mechanisms involved. Our knowledge of what can be achieved and the devlepoment of techniques to help different people with different types of pain have continued to evolve to great effect regardless of the absence of a difinitive model of the brain science involved.
Theories range from those which attribute the relief of pain through hypnosis to actual physical changes occuring at the location of the pain to various theories about perception and the way that certain sensation are interperated by the brain. However hypnosis has always been a field that relied more on results than on theories. If you think about it, we don't really understand how certain forces of nature such as gravity or magnetism work yet they get utilised to great effect everyday.
We also really know very little about the functioning of the brain and its role in perception of sensations. Hypnosis may sometimes challenge our current understandings about certain things but that does not diminish its potential to effect real relief for those suffering from chronic pain.
