Burns: Hypnosis helps against pain and more
Burns are incredibly annoying, it hurts and creates distinct scars that can drastically change your appearance. In addition, some muscles may be permanently shorter due to a severe burn which can cause painful problems. This is usually corrected with surgery.
Do you suffer from burns or help people who have burns? Then this blog is something for you to read. This blog takes a closer look at the role hypnosis can have in helping you suffer less from burns
Burns
With burns, many people think you can only get them from fire, but unfortunately nothing could be further from the truth. Of course, fire is common in burns, but you can also get them from chemical substances.
Immediately after or while suffering a burn, your body faces changes. Because you may lose some of your skin, you immediately have a problem regulating your body temperature, causing you to use more energy.
In the process, your immune system function is reduced.
A negative outcome from a burn is greater when you are a woman or of older age.
Gradations of burns
There are five grades of burns, but they are generally thought of as four because the second grade is divided into A and B grades.
1st-degree burn: A first-degree burn involves primarily a piece of the epidermis of the skin that has been burned. This can be seen by red skin. Only the top layer of the skin is damaged as a result. You suffer from pain because of this and your skin may swell.
2nd-degree burn: With a second-degree burn, you also get blisters because the dermis is also damaged, the layer below the epidermis. Depending on how deeply the dermis is damaged, it is either the A or B version. With the B version, the skin also turns pale.
3rd-degree burn: In a third-degree burn, the skin dies. You then get necrosis, the skin turns black, so to speak, because it is dying. The skin is also gone down to the subcutaneous layer.
4th-degree burn: In a fourth-degree burn, the skin may be burned off even to the bone. The skin is then even converted to carbon and this can continue down to the bone.
Burn care
If someone suffers from burns, it is useful for the first 20 to 30 minutes to cool the burns with preferably running water, after that it is no longer useful. Especially if someone is taken to the emergency room because of large burns, you may think you need to cool the burns the whole way, but if this lasts longer than 30 minutes you run the risk of letting the body temperature drop too far.
Long-term burn symptoms
Severe burns can leave you with a variety of long-term symptoms. These include physical symptoms and psychological ones.
No more sweating
In severe burns, the sweat glands stop working. This is an important skin function to regulate your body temperature. This is why it is important to pay attention to what kind of exercise you have, because exercising too fanatically will cause your body temperature to be too high. The climate you live in can then also cause problems, such as heat with lots of humidity.
No hydration
To keep the skin supple, there are also certain skin functions that often stop working when you suffer from burns. This is why it is important for many burn victims to moisturize the skin daily with lotion.
Other Color
Skin often has a different color after a burn. Over time, the color can return to normal, but then you will still see this in the summer when healthy skin gets browner from the sun.
Different Feeling
The skin is incredibly important to all your sensations. Heat and cold, sharp and blunt objects or the sensation of light touch can be difficult or imperceptible. Because of this, it is important to inspect your skin regularly to detect wounds that you need to take care of.
What is odd is that people with burns do tend to be more sensitive to a drop in temperature.
Trauma
Suffering a burn usually occurs during a traumatic event, so in addition to the discomfort of the burns, there is also trauma and possible anxiety that need to be addressed.
Hypnosis also helps people cope better with trauma. For PTSD and anxiety, hypnosis is a technique that helps people manage these conditions more effectively. This is because hypnosis reinforces cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).
CBT is generally used to process trauma. This can help you, for example, experience fewer nightmares or flashbacks.
Identity Problems
Your face and appearance are often part of your identity. Especially if your functioning and/or appearance have been altered by burns, this can cause problems with your self-image, self-confidence, and self-esteem.
Hypnosis helps with this, too. There are several techniques that a hypnosis expert can use to improve self-image and shift the focus from the outer to the inner for defining your identity.
This can be done, for example, with hypnotic suggestions that you repeat during self-hypnosis. You practice this first with the hypnosis expert before working with the suggestions at home during self-hypnosis.
These suggestions may include:
"My behavior shows who I am."
"People who only care about appearance are not worth my time."
"My scars tell me I am a survivor."
These are just examples of hypnotic suggestions that can be used. Depending on your issues with burns and beliefs about your identity, a hypnosis expert may give you other suggestions to repeat during self-hypnosis.
When plastic surgery or surgery to improve limb function is performed, hypnosis can also help reduce anxiety about the procedure.
Depression
Because sometimes the body can no longer do everything it could do before and as a result, in some cases, lifestyle changes have to be dire, this can trigger depression. For example, if you have always been an incredibly active person and now can no longer sweat, this can cause you to take a break from life.
Hypnosis then also helps support depression treatment.
Hypnosis and Burns
Hypnosis is also being tested during hospital stays for burn injuries. The 2001 study “Psychological approaches during dressing changes of burned patients: a prospective randomized study comparing hypnosis against stress-reducing strategies” shows that using hypnosis before and during a stressful treatment can reduce anxiety about the treatment; unfortunately, the pain remains the same as with treatment using sedative medication.
However, in treatments involving the removal of necrotic skin, hypnosis does help alleviate pain. This was demonstrated in a study (“A randomized controlled trial of hypnosis for burn wound care,” 2007) involving 46 people with burns who received hypnosis for pain relief during the procedure to remove necrotic skin. Not all the pain went away, but the experience of pain was significantly reduced.
To reduce pain, a guided visualization of a pleasant place in which the patient can relax is often used. Because this is difficult for some people to perform as hypnosis experts have even tested whether VR glasses combined with hypnosis can help reduce pain during painful treatments. The 2007 study Hypnosis Delivered Through Immersive Virtual Reality for Burn Pain: A Clinical Case Series found that it helped reduce anxiety and pain. The use of painkillers was even cut in half.
Guided visualization of a pleasant place
For a guided visualization of a pleasant place to experience less pain and anxiety, a hypnosis expert will first ask you in a conversation what places you have had pleasant experiences, or where you can see yourself relaxing. This can be a place in the world, or a place in your imagination, as in floating on the clouds.
With this information, a hypnosis expert can help you with a guided visualization for relaxation and for reducing pain.
A guided visualization for relaxation can go as follows:
"You are at your favorite vacation destination by the sea. You walk across the dunes and enjoy the refreshing breeze with the salty sea air. You can just smell it. The weather is nice and the sun warms your skin. The sand is also nice and warm and you take off your flip-flops to walk barefoot toward the sea. The sand tickles your feet a little and it's nice, especially when the sand gets a little wetter. Then it cools you extra. You walk into the nice warm sea and the deeper you walk, the lighter you become. You let the water lift you up and you float wonderfully in the sea. The water is calm and allows you to relax your muscles properly. Each minigolf makes your muscles relax more."
This is just an example of a guided visualization. Depending on your favorite vacation spot or issue, you may get a different visualization.
Would you like to learn more about how hypnosis works and how you can use it to help yourself or others? Then come to an event or check out our training programs.
Sources:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2770215/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305417901000353
http://psycnet.apa.org/buy/2007-12188-001
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00207140500528182