Resolving unexplained pain: you can do more than you think
Pain resolution is interesting when you think about it, though. For example, one wonders if it is still a signal.
Is it a signal of something old or something new?
Is it functional or non-functional?
Should you research this first or solve it
Investigate the pain first: see a doctor
With pain, it is always important to investigate anyway. See a doctor and find out where it's coming from and what the signal is. Sometimes it's obvious, but sometimes it's not. Like appendicitis, it just needs to come out. You can then take hypnotherapy to mask the pain, but that's not going to solve the problem. Then hypnosis is useless.
This makes sense, of course, and it is very important.
Imagine you are fully examined and your pain is unexplained. Nothing can be seen that could be causing you pain. Then hypnosis offers a solution, because you can make that pain go away in one session.
That’s certainly very interesting, especially if you’re dealing with unexplained pain.
Hypnosis principles against pain
Today, for example, we had people with shoulder and neck pain. Of course you have to investigate this and that was done. Then you start working with it. We did some techniques and with this we work with three principles, namely:
1 Dissociate
This is a natural principle of not feeling pain. For example, people notice this in traumatic events, such as a car accident. Then they get the feeling that they are no longer in their body to not feel the pain.
2 Symbols
We then turn pain into a symbol and work with that. What does your pain look like? Then you get to work with the image of the pain.
3 Presuppositions
That something pulls away goes away, heals or heals. This is the cement of such a session. We throw that in every time. That the pain goes away and that something heals, so you don't feel the pain anymore.
We use this a lot.
Then we get to work with the pain. From these above principles flow dozens of hypnosis techniques that can help people process pain. I'm not going to cover all of them in this blog.
What matters most is that you understand these principles. Indeed, when you do, you can devise your own techniques to combat pain. This works especially if you have already taken the basic training, then it is easier to think from those principles.
Really listening to your body
Usually, we mask the pain by pushing through or by taking painkillers. When you actually pay attention to the pain signal—for example, by applying techniques to it and looking at it from a different perspective—amazing things can happen.
The body can then finally work to heal the pain. It can then resolve it. After twenty to thirty minutes, you can then see the following effects: someone becomes warm, it pulls away, someone starts to cry or just laugh.
I suspect this is because you then take the signal seriously. That you are finally exploring for yourself what exactly this is and letting your body go. That you finally give the body a chance to heal it.
I find this principle very interesting and I think we do it far too little. Very few people really listen to their bodies. I have not been doing this for very long either, but I am getting better at it now.
Signals I understand better and I can do more with them.
Many people have completely lost this ability. Often, you receive all kinds of signals before symptoms appear, and pain is the final signal your subconscious can give you to force you to address the issue.
Despite this, most people often continue or mask it with medication, booze or something similar.
Sometimes you actually do explore, but how? What to do, how do you go about doing something? We are not taught to look at certain methods to properly explore for yourself.
What questions are you asking yourself?
Sometimes just visualizing pain can be a staggering revelation.
How do you actually dissociate? What techniques are available to help you get rid of unexplained pain?
There are so many possibilities. You’ll learn about them in the basic training course, and even in the 2.0 course, more than a day is devoted to this topic.
If people were already learning this in elementary school, we could solve so many more things. This can sometimes frustrate me, but it also fascinates me. The question of why we don't do this.
Sometimes I also give demonstrations. People respond very well to them. My ego absolutely loves that, too.
But I simply follow a procedure that anyone can master. Then if you apply it as I do often, you too will become good at it.
So if you learn this as a child, suddenly everyone becomes a genius.
I find it very special that this is not applied in education or - indeed - in healthcare. We don't do this preventively in education, but neither do we do it afterwards. If you have everything of you examined pain and the doctors can't find anything, then healthcare should teach this to people as a last resort.
Only the people who dare to think alternative, who look for other ways themselves, they find out that this is also a solution.
So I find this frustrating and fascinating at the same time. Because if everyone knew about it, that would be just great!
Also listen to this podcast:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/195236/1308373-pijnbestrijding-en-het-wonder-wat-jij-bent
Science on pain management with hypnosis
Now it may sound very strange that you can combat unexplained pain with hypnosis, but this was already known in 1959[1]. That's more than 60 years ago! Thereby, this study cited experiments that were already conducted in 1932. So already almost 100 years ago they knew, through observations, that hypnosis can numb pain. That it can prevent you from feeling pain at least.
So why all the pills?
The clearest evidence that hypnosis helps with pain is seen during childbirth. For example, many women don’t want anesthesia because they’re unsure whether it will remain solely in their bodies or if it might still reach the baby through the placenta.
But yes, giving birth is painful and that's not fun either. Hypnosis is therefore often used with women who want to give birth 100% naturally to still be less bothered by the pain. In 2004 it was investigated whether women then actually use less narcotic medication. This turned out to be the case. Thereby, women who had used hypnosis described childbirth as less painful than women who had natural childbirth without hypnosis[2].
And this is in explainable pain, you have to consider what it can do in unexplained pain.
In 2019, the effectiveness of hypnosis for pain relief was re-examined. People who were moderately and highly suggestible experienced a clinical reduction in pain of 29 percent and 42 percent, respectively. This study focused primarily on people suffering from chronic pain[3].
In 2017, a study was conducted to determine whether hypnosis helps alleviate the chronic pain of fibromyalgia and the pain of chronic migraine. In particular, participants in the chronic migraine group benefited significantly from hypnosis in this study, experiencing reduced pain and fewer side effects associated with chronic pain. After hypnosis therapy, women with fibromyalgia experienced fewer depressive symptoms and less anxiety[4].
You work with the three principles mentioned above during such a hypnosis session. Thereby, the induction of hypnosis can also already make a lot of difference in the pain experience, for example when it is caused by muscle tension. For example, depending on how the person you are helping is, you can perform an induction with progressive muscle relaxation. This means you help the person relax the entire body.
The second principle of symbols, helping someone turn pain into a thing, is often done with some sort of guided visualization. This was also used in the last study mentioned.
In addition, you also address the thoughts people have about pain. Such as that people let go of their obsessive thoughts about pain, when they are dealing with it all day long.
Would you like to know how this works? Then you can attend a hypnosis workshop to master the basics of hypnosis. The workshops are held in Wormerveer and Zwolle.
Would you like to see how hypnotherapy is applied and learn how you can help people feel better using hypnosis? Then come to a seminar.
Would you like to learn more about hypnosis right away—whether to help yourself or others? Then sign up for one of the training courses. The courses are offered in Wormerveer, Zwolle, and online.
[1] https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1960-08230-001
[2] https://academic.oup.com/bja/article/93/4/505/304478
[3] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0149763418304913
[4] https://www.fleni.org.ar/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/hypnosis-for-chronic-pain-management.pdf