Pain can be described as Acute and Chronic, depending on its duration. Acute pain is of short duration and normally resolves when the body heals itself, for instance after injuries or operations. Pain can become chronic or long-lasting, this may persist after the body has healed so is often not a useful sensation. However, when pain serves no useful purpose and becomes chronic and persistent, it becomes exhausting and can affect you physically and emotionally, often leading to stress, insomnia and anxiety. Daily activities become difficult and overwhelming and you’re unable to enjoy life as you used to.
Symptoms
As well as the discomfort you experience in the affected areas, chronic pain can also cause symptoms such as depression, anxiety, fatigue and poor sleep, irritability, inability to work or enjoy life, and unhelpful coping mechanisms such as drinking too much or overeating.
How can Solution Focused Hypnotherapy help?
Solution Focused Hypnotherapy can help reduce your general levels of anxiety. We won’t dwell on past problems, but instead focus on how you want things to be in your future. When we are stressed, we have high levels of cortisol, which can accentuate any pain signals. As you begin to think and express yourself more positively, it will help reduce your anxiety, and as you feel calmer and less anxious, it can help alter the brain’s perception of the pain message. After solution focused discussions and helping to identify small steps you’d like to take, sessions are consolidated with hypnosis, which helps bring about therapeutic change at a subconscious level. This helps turn down the pain intensity and enable the body’s natural pain control mechanism to activate.