HYPNOTHERAPY AND PAIN CONTROL

Hypnotherapy can be an effective way to manage chronic pain, tension-related pain, and stress-related physical discomfort. By combining relaxation, guided imagery, and suggestion, hypnosis can help people change how pain is experienced and responded to. This article explains how hypnotherapy can help with pain control and the techniques that may be used in sessions.

Pain is an unpleasant sensory or emotional experience which is linked with actual or potential tissue damage or is described in terms of such damage.

Pain behaviour is the extent to which people will behave as if the pain is still there even after the tissue damage has healed.

Pain is a relative concept. One person’s pain is another person’s inconvenience.

For example, some people have such a fear of the amount of pain they will experience at the dentist that they have even been known to pull a tooth out at home in a much more painful way.

Clearly then it is the context that is important here rather than the amount of pain.

An individual’s previous experience, personality, pain behaviours, coping strategies and social environment are all important in determining how pain is experienced and reported.

Thus to assess fully the extent of pain experienced not only physiological factors should be considered but also psychosocial and behaviourial expressions of pain.

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