Vulvodynia: What to do to be free of pain

Suffering from pain near or in your vagina is incredibly annoying. It affects your relationships and it can cause tension because it can be awkward with sex. The frustration is real and this can have an awful lot of consequences, making it difficult to enter into a relationship, for example, or making it difficult to maintain. This is a shame, because no one wants to be alone and sex is often an important part of a relationship. In addition, you do not have to be asexual yourself and that only causes more frustration, also for yourself.

To explore how best to deal with vulvodynia and what to do about it, I discuss this condition in this blog

What is vulvodynia?

With vulvodynia, you experience (burning) pain or discomfort on or near your vulva or vagina for no apparent reason. Physically and neurologically there is then nothing to be found. The classification of vulvodynia depends on whether the pain is concentrated in 1 spot or is more general and what causes it[1].

This pain can just be there (in 1 in 4 women), or come when you are touched there (in 3 in 4 women with this condition).

About 16% of all women suffer from this condition, which is1 in 8 women who suffer from it[2].

It's very unpleasant because this can also affect sexual relationships, which in turn often affects how you view yourself.

What are the causes of vulvodynia?

The causes of vulvodynia are still unknown. Abnormal development as an embryo, genetic factors, hormonal factors, inflammation, infections, the immune system, neurological changes have already been examined.

It probably depends on several things whether you get vulvodynia or not. In any case, researchers cannot find 1 specific cause. Usually, you don't develop symptoms until you are over 30 years old.

A correlation has also been found between having fibromyalgia and irritable bowel syndrome and getting vulvodynia.

A quarter of the women also indicated that they thought stress was the cause of the condition and nearly 30% said they thought a fungal infection was the cause of their condition. The rest did not know or gave other reasons that the rest of the women did not indicate.

Women were also less active because of symptoms.

What are the consequences of vulvodynia?

Because vulvodynia occurs at or in the vaginal area of the body, it affects the sexual relationships you have. Many women with this condition also turn to help in the form of sexual therapy and other therapies, such as psychotherapy.

Because it affects sexual relationships so much, it can also affect how you see yourself and how much confidence you have in yourself to make a relationship last. So you have not only the direct irritation and pain, but also indirect consequences of vulvodynia.

Research (2) shows that women who suffer from this condition themselves feel that they have a lower quality of life, little control over their lives and little control over their bodies. They also indicate that it has a major impact on their sexual life and almost all women reported that sex was painful because of this condition.

How is vulvodynia treated?

For the treatment of vulvodynia, multiple options such as:

care of the vulva
TOPICAL TREATMENTS
Medicine
Biofeedback
Physical Therapy
Steroid injections
Surgical procedures

Care of the vulva involves using cotton underwear, how to clean it and other tips for during sex. Topical treatments involve ointments, medications involve medications you take. Biofeedback and physical therapy are more about moving around with this condition, because that can also be difficult for some women. Then you also have procedures that really try to do something with the nerves like the injections or surgical procedures. That of course goes incredibly far, but it also shows how desperate you can get from this.

How can hypnosis help?

Hypnosis can help in multiple ways. For example, hypnosis helps with pain management and with stress that can be caused by vulvodynia because of how you think you should be.

Hypnosis Against Pain

So hypnosis can be used very well in pain management. There are 2 ways to do this. First, you can look at the beliefs you have about pain, and second, visualizations can help reduce pain.

Pain has obvious drawbacks. It causes you to move less, and that can even cause you to get out and about less, which means fewer social interactions. To reduce this risk, it is important to examine your beliefs about pain and the impact pain has on your life.

Your beliefs are your way of seeing the world and how you think it works and how you can function in it. There are several ways to look at and figure out your beliefs about pain. The most logical way is through a Socratic conversation in which the why question is repeated several times. With this technique you initially get to the core of your beliefs, but often you also realize that those beliefs are not based on anything. This realization gives you the opportunity to incorporate helpful beliefs in the form of hypnotic suggestions.

Should this technique not work, a hypnosis expert can also help you with regression.

Then these non-helpful beliefs are pitted against helping beliefs. This is done with hypnotic suggestions. You can often listen to these at home during self-hypnosis to enhance the effects, such as:

"Your friends understand when you keep sitting through the pain," he says.

"Pain is not a definition of who you are."

"Take a look at what you can still do."

"Pain is not visible to bystanders."

These are just examples. Depending on your symptoms, a hypnosis expert may give you other suggestions to help you suffer less.

The second technique that can help against pain is guided visualization. You can even get 2 types of visualizations a guided one that functions mainly for relaxation and where the hypnosis expert uses important symbols for you so that you can relax properly and feel the pain dissolve. These types of visualizations are also often given to you on an mp3 so you can listen to them at home.

Another type of visualization aims precisely to make you feel more in control of the pain. The visualization begins with a relaxation exercise. You breathe through your belly, relax your muscles and close your eyes. When you are well relaxed you are instructed to imagine a slider, elevator knob or dial. With that knob you control your pain. Each time you may lower that knob a little and relax and each time visualize how the pain in your body becomes less. This exercise is often used for chronic pain and to give you a sense of control. It is also effective for many people.

In addition, there are other techniques by which hypnosis can help you combat the symptoms and secondary complaints that occur with vulvodynia. Cognitive behavioral therapy can also help with this[3]. The great thing about cognitive behavioral therapy is that it is reinforced by hypnosis.

Vulvodynia is an incredibly annoying condition that affects 1 in 8 women. In some people it is chronic pain, but in the majority there is pain mainly when the vulva or vagina is touched or just when you move. This can cause many problems, such as relationship problems or embarrassment and difficulty maintaining social relationships because in some cases moving can be difficult. There are an awful lot of treatments available from vaginal care classes to surgical procedures. In addition, hypnosis can help with reducing pain and dealing with secondary symptoms.

Want to learn more about how hypnosis helps and how you can help yourself or others with hypnosis? Then come to a hypnosis playshop where you can learn the basics of hypnosis. Also, check out the Hypnosis Institute Netherlands courses or ask about online options if this suits you better.

[1] https://journals.lww.com/jlgtd/Fulltext/2005/01000/The_Vulvodynia_Guideline.9.aspx

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1431685/

[3] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1743-6109.2007.00679.x#b48