Not all pain is the same, and knowing the difference is the first step to easing the pain that no longer serves you.
One of the things hypnotherapy can help with is reducing, and sometimes eliminating, pain that is no longer useful or necessary, particularly some forms of chronic pain. We teach all of our students how to do this, and it is something many of our hypnotherapy clients seek our help with.
Of course, appropriate and competent medical and physical evaluation should always be undertaken before trying to relieve pain, because pain can be a signal that something is wrong.
Before attempting to relieve your own pain, or another person's, ask whether that pain is of any use to you. Ask whether, if you were free of the pain, that would be detrimental to you in any way. If the answer is no, you may wish to engage in strategies that help relieve or reduce it. Complete elimination is not always realistic, and outcomes vary from person to person.
That process begins by better understanding pain. This post explains the key difference between acute and chronic pain. To go further, see our companion posts, Science Supports Hypnosis for Pain Control for the evidence base, and How big of a problem is Chronic Pain? for a sense of the scale of the issue.
The problem of chronic pain
Chronic pain, whether physical or emotional, remains a significant burden for both individuals and society.
Standard medical treatment for chronic pain is often inadequate, and it is common for frustrated patients to seek costly treatments from multiple health care professionals, often without significant relief. Growing awareness of the limitations of currently available pain treatments makes suggestion-based techniques and self-hypnosis an attractive component of a wider pain-management plan.
The empirical support for hypnosis in chronic pain management has grown over the past two decades: clinical trials show that hypnosis, including self-hypnosis, can reduce chronic pain on average, although outcomes vary considerably between individuals (Jensen and Patterson, 2014). Findings from this research also suggest hypnotic treatments can have positive effects beyond pain control, such as improved sleep, mood and sense of wellbeing, for at least some patients (Jensen and Patterson, 2014).
In some clinical settings, hypnosis used alongside sedation has been associated with lower procedural costs compared with sedation alone, though this evidence comes from a specific medical-procedure context, interventional radiology, rather than chronic pain treatment generally (Lang and Rosen, 2002).
Despite this, many hypnotherapists, as well as practitioners of other therapeutic approaches, do not have a clear, structured approach to stubborn pain conditions. We want to help change that. It is likely that at some point each of us will either be in pain or be in a position where we would like to help someone else who is suffering. We believe it is within the range of human experience to reduce some of that suffering. You just need to know how.
The techniques that can help are simple. Even if you are a complete beginner, that is not a disadvantage: they are easy to learn and apply, and you do not need to be a hypnotherapist to use them.
What is pain?
We all have some sense of what pain is. However, if we are to help alleviate it, it helps to first describe pain clearly. That lets us examine what makes it up and target our approach accordingly. The clinical psychologist Dr Bruce Eimer, who has written extensively on self-hypnosis for pain, describes it this way in his book on the subject (Eimer, 2008):
Pain is a subjective experience, that normally feels unpleasant, like something in the body has been, or is being, damaged or destroyed; that feels like a threat to, or interference with, one's ongoing functionality and health; and that is associated with negative emotions, such as fear, anxiety, anger or depression.
This description acknowledges that pain contains several elements:
- A bodily sensation, with qualities like those experienced during or after tissue-damaging stimulation.
- An experienced threat or interference with functioning associated with that sensation.
- A feeling of unpleasantness, or other negative emotions.
In other words, pain has a sensory or physical component and an affective or emotional component. The two are often intertwined within the experience of pain.
One of the keys often used in pain-relief work is to help a person disentangle these two components: the sensory or physical from the affective or emotional.
Pain may often be unavoidable, but suffering, or some portion of it, seems in many cases more open to change. When the emotional element is reduced, what is left of the sensation can hurt less. This way of describing pain does not require you, or anyone else, to objectively demonstrate it. It gives weight to the felt experience of the person in pain.
It does not require a link to be shown between the unpleasant sensation and tissue damage. Your experience of pain is your own, and does not need external proof, even in the absence of visible tissue damage. That is what makes 'emotional pain' a useful idea.
It also does not rule out the possibility that the pain is due to tissue damage. It does not over-emphasise physical factors at the expense of psychological ones. Pain is neither all in one's head nor all in one's body.
The important thing to understand is that our experience of pain has a significant subjective component, and this is often the part we can learn to influence. The next step is to understand the difference between acute pain and chronic pain.
What is acute pain?
This is pain of recent origin. The immediate pain when you stub your toe or burn yourself is acute. The new pain from a recent injury is acute. With appropriate care and treatment, acute pain is expected to subside.
Acute pain helps protect us from further harm: it is useful pain. When pain lasts well beyond the time needed for that protective purpose, and beyond the expected healing period, it is generally considered chronic pain.
What is chronic pain?
This is persistent pain that has outlived much of its original usefulness. It has lasted past the point of needing to alert us to a danger, threat or injury that requires attention, correction or escape.
It is often pain that has not responded fully to appropriate medical care. It can be unrelenting and unremitting, and is sometimes out of proportion to its apparent cause in terms of intensity and disruption.
In this sense it is frequently pain with little remaining protective purpose, and it is this kind of pain that hypnotherapy techniques aim to help reduce, and in some cases eliminate, always alongside appropriate medical oversight.
One of the strategies we share at The Jacquin Hypnosis Academy is The Arrow Technique. You can learn how to use it by watching our in-depth video training inside our hypnosis training platform.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between acute and chronic pain?
Acute pain is recent pain that follows injury or harm and usually subsides with appropriate care. It is useful, because it warns us and helps protect us from further harm. Chronic pain is pain that persists well beyond that usefulness and beyond the expected healing period, with little remaining protective purpose. It is this kind of pain that hypnotherapy techniques aim to help reduce, always alongside appropriate medical oversight.
Can hypnosis really help with chronic pain?
Clinical trials indicate that hypnosis and self-hypnosis can reduce chronic pain on average, though outcomes vary considerably between individuals (Jensen and Patterson, 2014). See Science Supports Hypnosis for Pain Control for the evidence. Always seek appropriate medical assessment first, since pain can signal something that needs treatment.
Is it safe to reduce pain with hypnosis?
Reducing pain is appropriate only once competent medical evaluation has ruled out, or is addressing, any underlying problem, because pain can be an important signal. Once the pain has little remaining protective purpose, working to ease it is reasonable, and hypnotic techniques are non-invasive and can be self-applied.
Do I need to be a hypnotherapist to use these techniques?
No. The core techniques are simple to learn and apply, and you do not need to be a hypnotherapist to use them on your own pain. Learning them through a structured programme helps you apply them well.
Ease the pain that no longer serves you
At Jacquin Hypnosis Academy we teach practical techniques for easing pain that is no longer useful, including The Arrow Technique. You can trial our training platform free for 14 days, which is more than enough time to start learning this technique. To understand the evidence and the scale of the problem, read Science Supports Hypnosis for Pain Control and How big of a problem is Chronic Pain?.
References
Eimer, B. N. (2008). Hypnotize Yourself Out of Pain Now! (2nd ed.). Crown House Publishing. https://www.crownhousepublishing.com/hypnotize-yourself-out-of-pain-now-second-edition (first published in 2002 by New Harbinger Publications)
Jensen, M. P., & Patterson, D. R. (2014). Hypnotic approaches for chronic pain management: Clinical implications of recent research findings. American Psychologist, 69(2), 167-177. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0035644
Lang, E. V., & Rosen, M. P. (2002). Cost analysis of adjunct hypnosis with sedation during outpatient interventional radiologic procedures. Radiology, 222(2), 375-382. https://doi.org/10.1148/radiol.2222010528
Patterson, D. R., & Jensen, M. P. (2003). Hypnosis and clinical pain. Psychological Bulletin, 129(4), 495-521. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.129.4.495 (background reading)