I have always found Solution Focused Hypnotherapy fascinating but never more so than when I am using it to deal with chronic pain.
Now, chronic pain is not the pain we feel when we touch a hot cooker, or hammer a nail into our finger. Chronic pain, now more commonly referred to as persistent pain, is long-lasting as the name suggests, and is always there. To understand what it is all about, and how Solution Focused hypnotherapy can help, we need first to understand a bit more about pain itself, how it arises in the body and what its function is.
The Painful Truth
Our body contains many pain receptors, or nociceptors, and their job is to warn the body when there is danger or damage to the body through the detection of pressure, heat or other stimulus. These pain receptors are dotted all over our body, but there are large concentrations of them in places where we may need them most often, such as the fingertips and the lips – just in case that cuppa is too hot, or there are nettles in the flowerbed! When a pain receptor is stimulated it sends a message immediately to the brain, and it is the brain that decides what kind of pain it is, and how severe the danger to the body. It then tells the body how to respond, sending a flood of inflammation to the site of pain to prevent further damage, to act as cushioning and protection, as well as sending reaction signals to the extremities, perhaps to snatch our hand away from the nettles or jump backwards away from further danger. So it’s true – all pain starts in the head!
Acute pain, the sharp, localised kind, should resolve with time, as the wound heals or as we move away from the source of danger. Sometimes, however the mind can be so shocked by the acute pain we have experienced that it becomes hypervigilant, checking all the time for further pain, preoccupied with the persistence of any pain so much that it cannot relax, cannot feel healthy. The pain persists and changes from being sharp and localised to being more dull, spread out and coming from deeper within the body.
When this happens the nervous system’s automatic stress response kicks in. We BRACE our bodies in fear and concern against further pain or a worsening of the existing pain, and so the brain responds by making sure that constant inflammation is sent to the site of the original pain and also peripheral areas too, in an effort to protect against further damage. Of course, instead this causes an increase in discomfort and pain to the sufferer. The inflammation prompts the body to feel pain, the individual becomes hyper-aware of the pain but without a solution, as the original stimulus is now long gone, and a vicious cycle ensues. The body is now in sympathetic mode – the full fight or flight stress response- fearful that it is in mortal danger, and unable to relax, rest fully or let go of the possibility that further or increasing pain is on the way. When in this condition, we feel existing pain even more sharply, and the body’s natural self-healing systems cannot activate. Inflammation continues, and self-healing is on pause.
Of course, while in fight or flight mode, the body becomes increasingly stressed, and the individual begins to lose control of other areas of their lives as a result. The damage to emotional and social aspects of our lives when suffering from chronic pain is well known, as is often the impact on our financial and psychological well being as the situation continues.
Solution Focused Hypnotherapy can help
An effective treatment which addresses a wide range of issues – emotional, social, psychological, environmental and relational- solution focused hypnotherapy model looks forward – helping clients to take a broad view of the issue rather than focusing backwards on the original cause of the pain, which is frequently long-gone anyway. Hypnotherapy allows clients to regain the control they have lost as the persistent pain developed. Hypnotic trance loosens and frees the focus on pain and so promotes the body’s natural self-healing state to return via the relaxation state or parasympathetic state, so that genuine healing can begin and the vicious cycle of bracing and inflammation can be addressed.
The Toll Gate of Pain
Now, not all pain travels at the same speed. We have different nerve fibres for pain which try to prioritise what we feel so that sudden, sharp and localised pain gets to the brain first, allowing us to take action that can save us from damage, sometimes even saving our lives. These urgent acute pain signals travel along A+ fibres. If our spinal cords were motorways, the A+ fibres are the sports cars, super-fast and speedy. Chronic pain, however, travels along C fibres that are more like trucks, those great big lorries that carry messages from a wide area, from deeper within the body, that don’t get anywhere very fast and don’t get out of the way very easily.
But the spinal cord has the equivalent of a Toll Gate along its length, which lets only one kind of pain through at a time. If you imagine the chronic or persistent pain as a string of long, heavy articulated lorries constantly moving through the toll gates, you get an idea of how unrelenting and life-changing this kind of pain can be. However, fascinatingly, the body can prioritise the kind of pain that gets through, so that if a sudden acute pain should arise in the pain receptors of the skin, such as a burn or an impact, the stream of heavy trucks is stopped, and the sharp pain whizzes through the Toll Gate like a sports car, bringing its message of danger and damage to the brain without delay.
Additionally, we have an even faster vehicle on the spinal motorway, and this is serotonin, the pain relief hormone, which is like a motorbike, capable of super speeds. This can reach the brain faster than pain, and helps to aid our tolerance of it, and even sometimes prevents our feeling it altogether. When we are locked into Sympathetic mode, the flight or flight anxiety mode, the production of serotonin is very low. Our body does not want to relax in case of danger, and so we cut back on the production of serotonin. This means of course that we feel the pain even more sharply, as we are without the natural pain relief our body developed to help us cope.
Solution Focused Hypnotherapy works to re-establish the production of lots and lots of lovely serotonin, by re-establishing our parasympathetic or healing bodily system through trance, relaxation and the significant changes in our thinking. In this way, the natural pain relief levels rise significantly and we feel less chronic pain. When we feel less chronic pain we brace less against the possibility of it worsening, and inflammation reduces. When inflammation reduces, pain reduces. When the brain sense less pain, it relaxes more. When the brain relaxes more, more serotonin can be produced. In this way, the wonderful self-healing cycle of the body is restored, and effective relief from chronic pain ensues.
Why not get in touch and start your journey to self-healing today?