Alternative Ways to Manage Pain Using Hypnosis: Hypnosis Makes It on Most Mainstream Pain Management Options Lists

Thanks to the trend away from prescription medications as the only way to treat illness and manage pain, hypnosis is making it on to the lists of top ways to heal and treat a large number of ailments. Even the most scientific and medically minded sources are beginning to embrace the viability of alternative ways to treat patients. Hypnosis is most often found under the general headings of complimentary or alternative medicine and is recognized for its ability to control pain.

One example of the way hypnosis is being viewed can be found in health sections of the top Internet search engines. Type in hypnosis and you will see it appears on many pain management websites for everything from managing labor pain to dealing with pain of cancer and chemotherapy.

Some of the other top pain management uses for hypnosis include:

- Child birth
- Non-cardiac chest pain
- Headaches, including migraines
- Female pelvic pain
- Toothaches
- Healing from an injury
- And more

Pain has an important job and when a pain pill is used to quiet the nagging of pain, we are ignoring the body’s own signaling process. Pain is often a symptom of something wrong with the body. A toothache may mean a cavity needs to be filled. A chest pain could be a signal of heart trouble or simply indigestion. It is important that we listen to the pain as if it were a voice saying, “Hey, check out this headache, because I may need glasses or a new way to reduce stress.”

Hypnosis is used in pain management once the source and reason for the pain is understood. For example, in a cancer patient, if the pain were simply covered up, a tumor could grow and the cancer could spread until it was untreatable. Once, however, the source of the pain is known, the pain does not necessarily go away. This is where hypnosis becomes beneficial and is not just a way to cover up pain like medications do.

Hypnosis used for pain management has the ability to redirect the focus. Pain has a way of screaming for and getting our attention! When you redirect the conscious mind’s attention away from the pain, then the patient gets relief from feeling the pain. This type of respite from consciously feeling the pain can speed the healing process.

In childbirth, the pain is from a very obvious source. As women who have had children come to realize quickly, the pain is short-lived and the reward is a new baby. Pain is forgotten very quickly once that baby is placed in her arms. Traditional methods of managing the pain of labor and delivery have used a form of hypnosis for decades. The woman who employs the Lamaze method is trained to focus on an object and on breathing techniques that take the mind off the pain. Consciously placing ones thoughts on something other than the pain i.e. counting, breathing in a specific pattern, or focusing on an object is a form of hypnosis. It induces a state of relaxation and replaces thoughts of pain with something else. This is a similar technique used in hypnotherapy and is the reason hypnosis is so effective in managing all types of pain.

Steve G. Jones, Clinical Hypnotherapist
http://www.betterlivingwithhypnosis.com/