Tips for Chronic Pain Control

Have you ever noticed how pain can affect the quality of your life, stress also can affect the quality of your life, and, generally people who are about to undergo surgery experience not only the pain that the surgery is attempting to remove but also the mental and physical stress associated with an upcoming surgery and the post surgery healing process.

There a many types of treatment available to counteract any pain that you may have such as, medications, acupuncture , exercise and Hypnotherapy to name a few.

In general pain is an alarm from your injury to your brain that something is wrong and needs to be looked at by a trained physician and the warnings sent by the pain should not be ignored and should be attended to. In most cases a Medical Doctor will be able to determine the cause of the pain and offer a medical or pharmaceutical remedy. But, what happens when the body and the mind are no longer responding to your medications?

In fact your body has developed a tolerance to the medication, which usually leaves the sufferer with two choices, one is to continually increase the pain medication and the second is to develop techniques to eliminate the pain and to eliminate the medication.

In a survey conducted by Jon Kabat-Zinn PhD as mentioned in his book “Full Catastrophe Living” he used a test group that continued with pain medication in ever increasing doses, with another group using relaxation techniques and Hypnotherapy.

The result of the survey was surprising. Five years into the survey he found that those continuing with the medication suffered no reduction in their pain levels even as their pain medication dosage was increased, while those using Hypnotherapy and relaxation techniques had a significant pain reduction.

How is this possible?

Pain causes our whole muscular system to tighten, which adds further stress to an already pained and stressed body. The mind continues to focus on the pain and sees only, that the medication will assist the body in reducing the pain. Our bodies contain enough of the pain fighting chemicals to allow us to produce them when necessary as long as the mind is willing to accept that it has the ability to create those chemicals by just thinking about producing them.

Hypnotherapy and relaxation are, without a doubt the most effective way of dealing with pain and in Hypnotherapy there are several techniques available to reduce or eliminate pain.

It is extremely important to learn, understand and use relaxation techniques. These include gentle stretching exercises and mental imagery to focus on and eliminate the pain.

These techniques are also highly effective in assisting to relax a patient prior to and also after any surgery. Doctors have found that those patients who have had Hypnotherapy sessions prior to surgery are more relaxed and, have an almost 70% drop in the usual blood loss associated with the surgery. They have also found that those patients also heal far more quickly and have a much more positive attitude to the final outcome.

Some of the Hypnotherapy techniques used would be relaxation, moving your pain, mentally heating or icing your pain and also “blowing” it out of your body.

Relaxing your body is the simplest. Find a quiet space and sit down, or, if more comfortable lay down but, keep you’re head raised. Breathe in and out deeply for two to three breaths telling yourself breathe in relaxation, exhale tension, and then start to relax your body bit by bit, starting with your toes, ankles, calf muscles, knees, thighs, all the way to your head, including your cheeks, nose, lips and jaw.

TIPS FOR CHRONIC PAIN CONTROL

Notice how in this state of relaxation that you are still aware of any sounds occurring and also the heightening of all your senses. Next mentally visualize your area of pain and start to mentally change its color from a black to a blue, for cooling, orange for heat and gold for healing.

In some cases a glove anesthesia may be used. To accomplish that, it requires you to visualize your hand becoming extremely cold, and then touching the area of pain and transferring this cold feeling to area of pain creating an anesthetic effect.

Another technique is to keep yourself mentally busy, so that your focus is now away from the pain. It is amazing how when doing that, the pain simply disappears until you stop what you are doing and the pain then returns as your focus is no longer distracted. This distraction proves that you have the ability to mentally shut off your pain.

Remember that you have an amazing ability to do anything that you set your mind to and reducing pain is one of the things that anyone with the right training may accomplish.If you are suffering chronic pain Hypnotherapy helps. Feel free to contact me for any assistance.