If you are experiencing chronic pain, you may have recovered from any original injury but the pain remains. Or you might have a condition like arthritis where the pain comes and goes. Chronic pain can affect your life to such a degree that you cannot think about anything else, negatively impacting your work and social life. You might find that you also suffer from anxiety or depression and struggle to sleep at night. There are numerous pain medications on the market, but you may worry about becoming reliant on them or they don’t seem to work anyway.
Hypnotherapy has been shown to be very effective for people who suffer from chronic or persistent pain. You experience a sense of relaxation and calm during the hypnosis. You might find that the sensation of pain reduces along with any anxiety-related symptoms.
One meta-analysis compared hypnosis with standard care and psychological interventions. The findings were that hypnosis was moderately better than standard care and had a moderately superior effect compared to other psychological treatments.
Most hypnotherapy sessions are split into two distinct parts: ‘the talky bit’ and hypnosis. The talking bit, which could be either counselling or psychotherapy, will help you understand why you feel as you do and to understand what can be done. The length of your hypnotherapy session could vary between 30 – 90 minutes.
An initial consultation will generally be held, prior to your hypnotherapy sessions. This is to agree the aims and goals of your treatment, to discuss your symptoms and to give you a guide of the number of sessions required. This will vary from client to client due to the severity of symptoms and the length of time you have suffered with chronic pain. As a rough guide, for long term results most pain conditions will be alleviated with around 8 hypnotherapy sessions.
It is useful to understand the difference between acute pain and chronic pain.
Acute Pain
Acute pain is usually sharp, short-lived and felt over a small, targeted area of the body. If you were to burn your hand, the acute pain is a signal for you to remove your hand quickly from the flame.
Chronic Pain
With chronic pain you are more likely to feel a dull, achy pain over a relatively broad area of your body. The pain would persist long after your body has healed, therefore chronic pain is often no longer useful to your body. Often the level of pain will have no bearing on the injury or damage to your body.
With chronic pain, you will probably struggle to sleep properly and this can contribute to symptoms of depression. It is thought that between 35% and 45% of people with chronic pain also experience depression.
It is important to consult your GP if you are experiencing any type of chronic pain, so they can find the underlying cause. However, if together with your GP you’ve done all you can, then hypnotherapy can help you to cope better with the pain.
If you suffer from pain that either comes and goes or is fairly constant for a period of more than three months, it is likely you are suffering from chronic pain. You might have had an injury or operation that has healed, or you might suffer from a long-term condition like arthritis, fibromyalgia or migraines. The pain can start to severely limit your life, stopping you from doing many of the things you used to do.
Unfortunately, the longer you experience pain and the more painful it is, the more your brain will consider you to be in a dangerous situation. If your brain then encourages the release of stress hormones in an attempt to keep you safe, your pain threshold will lower and the pain you’re experiencing will feel worse than before. This can become like a vicious circle, where the more pain you experience, the more your brain releases stress hormones into your system and the more pain you feel.
Hypnotherapy can help to relax your body, reducing stress hormones levels, raising your pain threshold and helping you to manage your pain more effectively.
Hypnotherapy is a very relaxing therapy. Once you relax, your body no longer feels in danger. This causes a drop in your level of cortisol – a stress hormone. Cortisol and tension will both cause you to experience more pain, so lowering these allows your pain threshold to increase and you will feel less pain.
When you are in a trance state, you will be in a state of focused attention. Different brain waves become more prevalent and you will be able to see things from a different perspective, altering your perception of pain. The change in brain waves will also make it easier for you to take on new ideas and new ways of thinking. Most hypnotherapists use an element of talking therapy. This supports the trance session by helping you to evaluate your current behaviour and the way you think.
Hypnotherapy has been shown to be a very effective treatment for chronic pain and help you to get your life back. Hypnosis is more effective when combined with a psychological element rather than just hypnosis alone. However, it is not possible to guarantee a cure with any condition.
It is always important to contact your GP about chronic pain before seeing a hypnotherapist. This is because sometimes the chronic pain might be caused by a serious medical condition.
Hypnotherapy works in two ways. Most hypnotherapy approaches use a blend of talking therapy plus trance. The talking element of the session will help you to look at your chronic pain from a different perspective. You might explore your current behaviours or thought patterns that are getting in the way. The talking element might be some form of Counselling, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) or a Solution Focused (SF) approach. The aim is to help give you a better understanding of how to get better. This will then be followed by a trance session where the therapist will use hypnosis to relax you into a trance state. While in the trance state, which is a natural state of focused attention, you will be able to let go of any tension and relax fully. This allows your brain to move from flight and flight mode into a state of deep relaxation where your pain threshold can rise and pain feels better. When you are in a trance state the predominant brain waves change from Beta to Alpha and Theta, these allow you to change the way you think and to problem solve more effectively.
Even before lockdown many hypnotherapists were running online hypnotherapy sessions for chronic pain. The good news is that there is now evidence to support the effectiveness of online hypnotherapy sessions for a range of conditions. All you would need to take part in an online hypnotherapy session would be a laptop, tablet or smartphone, access to the internet and somewhere quiet where you can relax.
You can expect to see some slight improvement in your pain after the first hypnotherapy session. However, everyone is different and much will depend on the severity of your symptoms and your commitment to the hypnotherapy process. You might feel more relaxed and have more energy. Your sleep pattern might improve a little, particularly if listening to an MP3 download every night. However, you’ll probably need a few sessions before your friends and family start to notice any changes. After around 8 sessions, you should see a consistent change in symptoms, feeling calmer and more relaxed. You will probably notice a significant reduction in your chronic pain.
As hypnotherapy is considered to be a complementary therapy in the UK, we are not allowed to publish success rates for IBS. Your commitment to the hypnotherapy process is also very important. If you engage with your hypnotherapist and follow their advice, such as listening to an MP3 download every night, then your treatment will be more effective than if you don’t. However, all that said, a number of research studies have shown hypnotherapy to be effective for significantly reducing chronic pain.
The number of sessions you will need for chronic pain will vary from person to person. The questions that your hypnotherapist will ask to help them calculate the number of sessions you might need might include: “How long have you had the condition or symptoms?” or “How severe are the symptoms?” Another factor to consider might be the level of your commitment. You might be expected to listen to an MP3 download every night or to perform some other task between sessions. You will see results much more quickly if you do the things your hypnotherapist suggests.
The cost of hypnotherapy for chronic pain can vary from one therapist to another. This will depend on your location and the qualifications and experience your hypnotherapist has. To give you a rough guide prices can vary from £40- £150 per hour.
Unfortunately, you will probably be unable to access hypnotherapy for chronic pain through the NHS. This is despite the British Medical Association’s assertion, in their submission of evidence to the House of Lords Select Committee on science and technology in the year 2000, that ‘Hypnotherapy and Counselling may be considered as orthodox treatments’. However, your GP might suggest hypnotherapy as an option for chronic pain, but it will be up to you to source and fund your treatment.
Self-hypnosis can help with chronic pain as all hypnosis is technically self-hypnosis. This is because it is your brain doing the work, with the hypnotherapist as the facilitator. However, it can be difficult to achieve on your own and therefore finding a qualified hypnotherapist to help you initially can be the best solution. Once you have experienced going into a trance state a few times with their help, you will find it much easier to go into that same state on your own. It is worth pointing out that the counselling or psychotherapy element of the hypnotherapy session would be missing from any self-help approach and research has suggested that hypnosis is more effective alongside it.
Yes, a systematic review looked at studies of children with chronic pain caused by cancer and concluded that hypnotherapy should play a vital part in treating chronic pain in children with cancer. In fact children often find it much easier to go into a trance state than their adult counterparts. This is thought to be because children are more open about trying new things than many adults. Thankfully, the science to support this continues to grow.
The side effects from hypnotherapy are generally positive. However, you might feel very dozy when coming out of a trance state, but a walk in the fresh air will soon bring you back to normal. This is because the trance state is a natural state that we all go into everyday whenever we are focusing on something and lose awareness of the outside world, we are in a trance state.
Start out with the basics, Search for “hypnotherapy for pain” in Google or Bing. The results will contain a map with local hypnotherapy businesses. Start looking through their reviews either in the search engine or on their social (Facebook) pages.
The best hypnotherapists will be registered with a professional association and with organisations that are accredited by the professional standards authority. There are only two in the UK and they are the Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council (CNHC) and the National Hypnotherapy Society.
Related Articles
