Calm Insight

Psychotherapy & Hypnosis

Tel: 0121 427 3137

Home - Addiction - Smoking - Weight Loss - Pain - Depression - IBS - Scientific Evidence - Contact us

Chronic and acute pain management
You know pain as a physical sensation that causes bodily suffering and distress. However, pain is only a signal, a neurophysiologic event that must be noticed and interpreted cognitively before it turns into suffering e.g. “Ouch, I’ve stubbed my toe!” Thus, pain control involves either learning to not notice the signal at all or learning to interpret it in a different way. Learning to not notice a pain signal really amounts to learning to notice something else instead. When a person’s attention is fully focused on something other than the pain signal the pain will not be noticed and, consequently, it will not generate any suffering. When considering pain’s impact and intensity it is necessary to examine four other factors: your emotions, your previous experiences or associations with pain, your characteristics, and your perception of what the pain signifies to you. Pain sensations may come from a wide range of causes – from chronic condition to debilitating disease – but the path the pain takes is still the same, as are the basic physiological reactions to it e.g. anxiety, depression, loss of appetite, extreme fatigue, insomnia. The psychological component of pain is tremendously important. It is because of this fact that techniques that are psychologically oriented, such as hypnosis, can be employed with substantial success.

Hypnosis can enable you to release natural pain-blockers called encaphalins and endorphins into your body that lessen or eliminate suffering.

Hypnosis has been successfully used in the management of chronic pain, arthritis patients, victims of back injury, cancer victims, Irritable Bowel Syndrome and fibromyalgia patients. It has also been used to dramatically lower the acute pain of childbirth and surgical procedures.

Hypnosis Reduces Pain and Speeds up Recovery from Surgery
“Since 1992, we have used hypnosis routinely in more than 1400 patients undergoing surgery. We found that hypnosis used in patients as an adjunct to conscious sedation and local anesthesia was associated with improved intraoperative patient comfort, and with reduced anxiety, pain, intraoperative requirements for anxiolytic and analgesic drugs, optimal surgical conditions and a faster recovery of the patient. We reported our clinical experience and our fundamental research.”
Faymonville ME, Defechereux T, Joris J, Adant JP, Hamoir E, Meurisse M.
Service d’Anesthesie-Reanimation, Universite de Liege. Rev Med Liege. 1998 Jul;53(7):414-8.

Hypnosis Has a Reliable and Significant Impact on Acute and Chronic Pain
”Hypnosis has been demonstrated to reduce analogue pain, and studies on the mechanisms of laboratory pain reduction have provided useful applications to clinical populations. Studies showing central nervous system activity during hypnotic procedures offer preliminary information concerning possible physiological mechanisms of hypnotic analgesia. Randomized controlled studies with clinical populations indicate that hypnosis has a reliable and significant impact on acute procedural pain and chronic pain conditions. Methodological issues of this body of research are discussed, as are methods to better integrate hypnosis into comprehensive pain treatment.”
Hypnosis and clinical pain. Patterson DR, Jensen MP.
Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle 98104 Psychol Bull. 2003 Jul;129(4):495-521.