Are you saying this pain is all in my mind?

When I first trained to be a clinical hypnotherapist I was determined I wasn’t going to go anywhere near pain issues. Nothing shouts snake-oil charlatan to me more than non-medical professionals claiming to ‘cure’ or ‘heal’ physical issues. I needed to pass the whole course so I attended those units with a plan. Keep quiet, learn the content, never use it.

So it amuses me that dealing with chronic pain issues is some of my favourite work. It doesn’t work for everyone, I work on the basis that 80% of people can reduce or address their pain through mind management work. That’s why my first pain session is a short one; we need to determine if you’re in the 80% before committing to a full session.

Pain is often there to tell us to get professional help. This acute pain shouldn’t be ignored, and no hypnotherapist should remove it. But the chronic pain that the doctors can no longer help with - fibromyalgia, arthritis, plantar fasciitis among others may very well be managed with hypnosis.

One of the biggest barriers to this work is the inner dialogue that a client has. The suggestion that mind management can be used to address physical pain often leads them to ask “do you think this is all in my head then?” or worse, “are you saying I’m making this up?” My answer is simple. No-one would suggest that child birth is ‘all in the head’ or ‘made up’. But hypnobirthing has been used for years to manage the pain experienced in delivery. With chronic pain, brain scans have shown that hypnotic suggestions are able to change activity in the anterior cingulate cortex (which handles the emotional unpleasantness of pain) and the somatosensory cortices (which process pain intensity). Hypnosis can also interrupt how the mind interprets pain signals.

So no, it’s not all in your head. But if the doctors have said you’ll just have to learn to live with a chronic pain, it may be time to find out if you’re in the 80% who can manage pain a different way.