Can Hypnosis Help With Pain?
Can clinical hypnotherapy help with pain management?
Hypnosis has been described as a state of very highly focused attention. There is a dissociation from things that would normally draw your attention. It is in a way an altered state of mind one that is effective at changing how the brain responds to pain.
How does hypnosis help with pain?
When discussing pain there is a bottom up pathway (from the injured or pain site to the brain) and a top down pathway (from the brain to the site of injury) Hypnosis is thought to primarily influence the top down pathway, starting in the brain.
There have been studies conducted at Stanford university headed by Dr. David Spiegel with subjects being placed in an MRI and then put into a hypnotised state. They found some interesting happenings in the brain in relation to pain:
#1 There was a turning down of the pain circuits in the brain.
#2 The Insula a deep part of the brain involved in the brain body control and
the perception of pain and anxiety was turned down.
#3 Parts of the brain associated with self reflection was also turned down by hypnosis
allowing people to get on with tasks and shift their focus avoiding rumination.
There is a misunderstanding that hypnosis is the therapist taking control of your body but
this just isn’t so, in actual fact we’re supporting clients and empowering them to take control of their own bodies and find new pathways in their brain so that they can better cope with pain.
The benefit of hypnosis is that you can take yourself into a hypnotic state at any time you need it and the recordings I give all my clients that are made during one to one sessions have been reported to help a lot.
In his talk Dr. David Spiegel discusses the application of hypnosis in pain management he mentions the importance of using hypnosis to help combat the opioid addictions that we’re seeing at the moment world wide. With research showing that the use of opioids for pain management for just 3 consecutive days can result in a significant increases in the incidence of addiction.
How much can hypnosis help with pain?
So if you have back pain you might ask what type of improvements can you expect to see from hypnotherapy?
This is not a simple straightforward question to answer, it’s different for everyone, in addition to that pain is not universally the same for everyone.
An interesting thing to note here is that pain is the body’s way of communicating with you so even when there is the option to remove it entirely an experienced therapist won’t because this may lead to further damage or misuse of the injured, painful area.
So the goal in therapy is to reduce the pain to a manageable level, where you are able to continue on with your daily functional tasks.
A review article published in 2019 looked at 85 previous studies on hypnosis for pain and it’s effectiveness, the researchers found that there was a 42% reduction in pain for certain groups who were suggestible to hypnosis and a 29% reduction in people who were less suggestible to hypnosis.
Both results supporting the application of hypnotherapy in chronic pain. For some people it may even lead to reducing the amount of pharmaceutical medications needed to manage their pain.
What types of pain can hypnotherapy help with?
Now there are many conditions that lead to pain, in fact pain is a component of the inflammatory response in the body, the use of hypnosis has been extensively documented in both chronic and acute pain.
A research study conducted by Dr. David Spiegel on chronic pain in women with advanced forms of breast cancer, he taught the participants self hypnosis and tracked them over a year long period which included a control group, he discovered both initially and after a year of intervention:
#1 The hypnosis group had half the pain as the control.
#2 The hypnosis group were on lower amounts of pain medication than the control group.
Upon a longer term check up, some 18 months after the study started, they found that all subjects in the control group had passed away from cancer while a third of the hypnosis group were still alive. While this wasn’t a central part of the study I think it’s worth a mention here as evidence of how powerful the mind is in our experience of our day to day life.
Hypnosis for other painful conditions
Hypnosis is used in childbirth, involuntary tremors or movements as seen in Parkinson’s.
For many years it’s also been applied in pre and post operative management of pain. Including in dental treatments.
Clinical hypnotherapy has been found useful in nerve pain as well as joint pain and spasms.
There have been some studies looking at the application of hypnosis in chronic back pain where it has been found to be useful. It seems that the best results are often seen when hypnotherapy is used in conjunction with other treatments to support healing like acupuncture or manual therapies.
Fibromyalgia and similar conditions associated with systemic pain that is characterised by flare-ups and remissions in pain.
Hypnosis for the reduction of stress and anxiety associated with the pain response.
Think about when you’ve experienced ongoing pain, maybe from a chronic condition. You’ll most likely find that there was a link to some emotional or psychological stress- anxiety and your levels of pain.
When you’re stressed your pain levels go up.
This is an area where hypnosis is very useful in helping people to better manage their stress and anxiety, and in doing so can help to reduce the pain associated.
On a final note I’d like to mention here that chronic pain is exhausting and long term has been linked to the development of depression, where there is a real sense of helplessness and hopelessness. If you’re struggling with pain don’t leave it, get onto managing it as soon as you can.
If you’d like to jump on a complimentary 20 minute call to see if hypnotherapy can help with your pain you can schedule that down below.
You deserve to wake up every morning feeling happy, healthy and confident to face whatever the day has to throw at you, and managing your pain is key!