You’re tired of pain running your life.
If you have chronic pain, you know what it’s like to search continually for something that will relieve the pain.
You’ve probably tried pretty much everything to make the pain go away, including massage, chiropractic, acupuncture, Chinese herbal medicine, physical therapy, injections, medications, or even surgery. I know – I’ve done it, too. It’s exhausting.
These methods were helpful in their own ways, even the pungent, but effective, traditional Chinese tea made of bark. But until I changed the way I related to my pain, I was still stuck, and my pain affected my life in ways I did not like.
Psychotherapy for chronic pain is a game-changer.
Psychotherapy for chronic pain is one way to change how you relate to your pain and open yourself up to the best opportunity for healing.
You think, “But won’t this mean that the pain is all in my head?”
Maybe you think that seeing a psychotherapist for chronic pain is like admitting that your physical symptoms are “all in your head.” We could say that your pain is all in your head but not in a “you’re crazy” kind of way.
The way we experience pain has everything to do with our brains. The International Association for the Study of Pain defines pain as “An unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage or described in terms of such damage.”
What is pain anyway?
First off, pain is an experience; it does not exist outside of ourselves.
Pain is also “sensory and emotional,” meaning that it happens due to input from our physical body to our brains and our emotions.
Pain is not just emotional for some people.
This definition doesn’t say that pain is a sensory experience, and for only a few weak-willed people, pain is an emotional experience.
Pain always has something to do with emotions. The “actual or potential” part is also interesting – that means there doesn’t need to be anything mechanically wrong with you for there to be pain.
We experience pain through the interaction of sensory input from the body and how our brain processes that information. In other words, “no brain, no pain.”
Where do you feel your emotions?
When we think of our emotional life, we think of what happens in our heads. We often overlook the fact that we feel emotions in our bodies.
For instance, think of the last time you felt stressed – maybe you were stuck in traffic and late for a necessary appointment. Can you recall what it felt like in your body? Perhaps you started to sweat or feel your face get warm, your muscles tightened up in your body, or you gritted your teeth.
So, where did you feel that emotion? – in your body, of course.
Therefore, is it any surprise that your body would respond to chronic stress and that your emotional life might have a lot to do with what you experience in your body?
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) changes your pain.
If you have dealt with pain for a long time, you know how it affects your mood, activity level, and life. You develop thinking patterns that are not very helpful, and you may find that you have gotten into patterns of activity or inactivity that are worsening your pain.
When we use CBT for chronic pain, we work on cognitive (thinking) and the behavioral (activity) aspects of pain. We’ll examine how you think about your pain, the predictions you make about what it will affect, and how what you think about your pain affects your life.
We’ll also look at how you respond behaviorally to your pain – how you pace (or don’t) your activity, whether you avoid things related to your pain, and how you interact with others related to your pain.
We’ll look at what’s working and what’s not and develop a plan to change what’s not working.
Clinical hypnosis for pain control harnesses your healing potential.
First, forget what you have seen in the movies. Clinical hypnosis has much more in common with guided meditation than mind control. At the heart of hypnosis is the power of words to influence our reality.
Imagine a lemon – really imagine it. Now imagine taking a bite of that lemon. If you’re like most people, thinking about taking a bite of the lemon causes you to salivate in response. There is no lemon here, but you still experienced something in your body.
Imagine the difference in how you will feel when we focus specifically on your needs and use hypnosis to help you change your relationship to pain. When we use this power with chronic pain, you’ll connect to the sensation in your body in a less fearful, more open way. You’ll be able to experience your pain differently and can reassess how threatening it is.
Most of the time, we can change these sensations to be much more tolerable and less intrusive. Over time, while working with clinical hypnosis in psychotherapy for chronic pain, people find their pain far less bothersome.
Gain tolerance and control of chronic pain.
Don’t let chronic pain continue to run your life. With the proper support, you can learn how to gain control of your chronic pain.
If you are ready to change the way you relate to your pain so that you can experience a better quality of life, fill out the contact form below to talk about starting psychotherapy for chronic pain.