What is Pain? Pain is a message that our body sends to our brain, informing us that something wrong has occurred inside our body. Pain results due to many reasons. It can be both external and internal. External pain will disappear within a few days, but internal pain does not go away so fast and may turn into a nagging pain and remain with us forever. Not long ago, tips on pain management were provided to patients to help them accept pain, live with pain, manage pain and learn to deal with it.
But now, with many new discoveries happening, pain management has resulted in pain reduction. Now patients are provided with various therapies that help reduce pain. There are two types of pain, the chronic pain which is the result of migraines, cancer and back pain, while the short term pain includes anything caused by hormonal imbalance and by the delivery of a baby or birthing experience.
What is Hypnosis?
When we hear the word hypnosis, the image that flashes across our minds is one where a magician swings a watch across our face as the eyes closely follow its movements. Hypnosis is much more than this; it leads to an altered state of mind or awareness used to treat many psychological problems and other physical problems.
When a person is subjected to hypnosis, the person goes into a relaxation mode and focuses on relaxing as the conscious part of their brain goes to sleep temporarily and frivolous thoughts are sent out. When the brain is more focused any suggestions provided will be effective. The hypnotherapist then gives specific powerful suggestions that will be registered in their sub conscious mind. In pain reduction management, the hypnotherapist will suggest that the patient experiences no pain at all. In post pain reduction sessions, the patient is provided with reinforced suggestions of no pain.
Hypnosis can last anywhere between an hour long session or half hour long session and it is often followed by hypnosis sessions that last between ten to fifteen minutes. Researchers at Mount Sinai Scholl of Medicine in New York studied eighteen case studies that involved the use of hypnosis to reduce pain and found many supporting results that proved that hypnosis techniques were indeed helpful in pain reduction.
Hypnosis as a Pain Reduction Technique
Often medications alone remain insufficient to help patients from pain and may not be the best choice. Hypnosis as a pain reduction technique can be used:
- When pain medication remains ineffective and provides no relief
- When the patient is abusing the medication
- When the patient develops a tolerance for the medication
- When pain becomes unmanageable
- For the patients who forget or refuse to take pain medications
- For the patients who prefer to limit their intake of pain killers for various reasons
These are patients who will respond well to other pain reduction techniques like Hypnosis, meditation and relaxation techniques. Stress and pain are closely related and stress actually increases pain. Hypnosis, relaxation techniques and meditation prove beneficial to help remove stress from body and elevate pain.
Benefits of Hypnosis as a Pain Reduction Technique
Many scientific studies have proven that hypnosis is very efficient in pain reduction and management.
- According to a study published in International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, the frequency and intensity of migraines can be greatly reduced.
- The pain caused by surgery is reduced and recovery time from surgery is shortened according to a study by Universite de Liege.
- The Journal of Pain and Symptom Management opines that pain intensity is greatly reduced because of hypnosis.
- According to the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology says that burn victims experienced less pain after post treatment when hypnosis was used.
- A study by the University of Washington in Seattle concludes that acute and chronic pain can be effectively dealt with by hypnosis.
Hypnosis is thus a drug free effective way to manage pain reduction and a qualified hypnotherapist will be able to do the job effectively.
A well trained hypnotherapist should be sought through the help of your doctor to help you get relieve from pain. Self hypnosis is also possible through the use of recorded tapes available in the market. However it’s advisable that instead of resorting to self hypnosis, it makes more sense to seek the services of a trained hypnotherapist as they would be able to help you better as they know their job. Medications alone will not help elevate or get rid of pain and most medications being pain killers are harmful to health. To solve this problem of pain once and for all, hypnosis is the best means of pain reduction.
It makes more sense to seek help and rid your pain once and for all, rather than suffer with it silently for life.
