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Chronic pain is very common, especially in the elderly. Research has shown that as many as one in ten people suffer from chronic pain (that’s over 25 million people in the United States alone)! For many, the impact of chronic pain is not limited to the physical pain endured; it also affects a person’s mental health as well. The affects of this mental health may result in depression, anxiety, lack of sleep and trouble focusing.
With chronic pain, pain stimulus signals are sent even when the body is not suffering from an acute injury; or it may come from the result of something that is already “healed” by the body. For example, if you accidently sprain your back, you will have an immediate pain sensation. After a relatively short period of time (a week or two at worst), the body heals the damage caused by the sprain. Yet, the sensations of pain may continue persist. Some people are in chronic pain as the result of disease, such as arthritis.
The most common forms of treatment for chronic pain include medication, surgery, brain stimulation, local electrical stimulation, heat, and acupuncture. Acupuncture, by the way, has been found to be one of the most effective ways to manage and release chronic pain over all of the previously described modalities according to the American Medical Association.
When all else fails and you find that you still are experiencing persistent chronic pain, you might consider hypnosis as a solution. It is still not known exactly how hypnosis works, but research has found that hypnosis is capable of reducing, blocking or even eliminating the pain signals that are sent to the brain. An anesthesiologist at the University of Iowa suggests that hypnosis can be 65-70% effective in reducing or eliminating pain.
There are several ways that this can be done. One is by reducing or eliminating the pain signals that are received by the brain. This is done by a technique called “glove anesthesia”. Using imagery, a client might imagine one hand resting in a bucket of ice water. As the hand rests in the “ice water”, a numbing effect takes place until that hand feels no pain when pinched (the hand will, however, usually still feel pressure sensations). Under hypnosis, placing the numbed hand onto another part of the body which is experiencing pain can “transfer” that numbing effect to the affected part of the body. This results in the pain being reduced or eliminated from the affected area.
Another method by which hypnosis works is by changing one’s focus (again using imagery) to something else, rather than the source of the pain. In another study, where a person experiencing pain, say in their hand, looked at their hand through a lens that made their hand appear smaller, reported that the level of pain experienced was less. This clearly demonstrates that our thinking can change the pain being experienced.
Hypnosis is all about harnessing our thinking. Learning how to use self hypnosis to manage chronic pain is a drug free technique that can have far reaching benefits for improving your quality of life.
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