Hypnotherapy and Pain...
Bruce N. Eimer PhD, ABPP:
'One of the things that I have discovered as a result of my personal and professional experiences is that every person must ultimately take responsibility for his or her own behaviour, feelings, thoughts and experience. Pain is a behaviour, a feeling, a thought, and an experience. Taking responsibility for how you cope with your pain constitutes a conscious choice. It is your choice - it's up to you how you handle it. Nobody but you can cope with your pain.
(Hypnosis and) Self-Hypnosis is one of the best non-drug tools we have for coping with persistent pain.
Pain may be mandatory, but suffering is optional. Pure pain as a pure sensation, by itself, is not so persistently wrathful, punishing or extremely bothersome as pure pain plus emotional suffering.'
Pain is a drain on your energy. It is a combination of physical or sensory and emotional/mental or psychological experience. It is always an individual experience, nobody else knows how your pain feels however well you describe it. Using hypnosis it is possible to help alleviate the intensity of the emotional/mental/psychological aspects of pain, or more simply put, the distress. These feelings intensify the experience of pain.
On a personal note, and one of the reasons I find Hypnotherapy so helpful, has been in alleviating the intensity and frequency of migraines which I have from suffered since I was nine years old. I still have them from time to time, but they are less severe and far less distressing. Naturally I wish I had either encountered hypnotherapy or trained as a Hynotherapist many years earlier!
Acute Pain may be intense, but it passes. For Chronic Pain sufferers it is a different matter because the pain is persistent, but all Chronic Pain is not the same. Each individual experience requires an individual approach to achieve the best possible relief.
Your mind creates your beliefs and it can learn to believe different things