Dealing with Chronic Pain, Part One
Part One – How Does the Brain Do It?
Chronic pain seems to be epidemic in today’s world. We all know someone who suffers daily from anything from aches and pains to all out severe debilitating pain. It seems that the longer some people heal from an injury or trauma, the worse the pain becomes. Others seems to heal without any lasting problems. Why?
Some researchers have been saying in the last few years that eighty percent or more of chronic pain can be emotional. If you could do away with the emotional component of pain, could you live with the remaining twenty percent? I think you could.
In this post, I’m going to tell you how the brain takes in the pain stimuli and processes it. Then we will have a better understanding of how to eliminate chronic pain.
How the Brain Processes Pain
A study was conducted at the TUM School of Medicine, Munich. The team wanted to find the answer to the question, how does the duration of pain affect activities in the brain? They wanted to see into the brain and find out which parts responded to pain in the body. What they found was incredible!
Test subjects had painful heat applied to one hand over ten minutes. The heat varied. It was light for a time and stronger for a time. At first, the sensory part of the brain reacted to the pain. This is where your brain senses quick pain like pinching a finger in the door. This is what researchers expected to see. But then everything changed!
After just a few minutes, the pain stimuli moved to the frontal cortex, where emotions are stored. It only took a short time for persistent pain to add emotion to the mix.
Frontal Cortex, so what?
What does this mean for us? Why should we care about where the brain reacts to pain? Because when emotions are tied into pain, the signal for pain can continue long after there is no physical reason to feel it. The brain just keeps that loop going and going and the pain is real, and you’re feeling it, but you have physically healed from the original injury or trauma.
Is It Normal to Feel Pain Forever?
So, is it normal to feel pain for months or even years after your original injuries? Yes, it is normal. It doesn’t happen to everyone but it does happen to a lot of people. So many, in fact, that I’ll bet you all know someone who suffers from chronic pain. In fact, you might be one of them!
This is not the only way pain is delivered to the body but we’ll cover some other discussions in later posts. For today, just understand that science is confirming what many of us have known for a long time. You can heal but you can’t always eliminate the ongoing pain with surgery or medications. The good news is that there are many ways to break that Pain Roller Coaster you’re on. You know, that ride that goes round and round and up and down, leaving you breathless?? You know the one I mean!
Can Hypnosis help chronic pain?
Hypnosis is very effective in changing and controlling pain. You can eliminate pain with hypnosis but that isn’t smart to do and a responsible practitioner will not agree to that. Pain is necessary. It is our bodies warning system that’s something’s wrong.
Here at Indiana Hypnosis Center, I use hypnosis to address your chronic pain and take that emotional component out. You don’t have to live with a high level of chronic pain.
In Summary
There is more to the discussion of pain and methods to deal with it and we will address that in later posts. For today, let’s recap what we learned:
- Pain can be chronic and debilitating.
- After a few short minutes of pain, the brain allows an emotional component to be a big part of ongoing pain.
- Since so much of chronic pain is emotional, treatment of the emotions like hypnosis can alleviate most of many long, term pain problems.
Your Turn
How do you deal with chronic pain? I shared this information help you to understand the way the brain handles pain and how hypnotherapy can help you. Send me a comment below. I’ll answer you and you can tell me what other hypnosis topics you’d like to know about.
Here is a session I recorded live with Lysa for her Chronic Pain. We started out slowly, then watch what happened!
About the Author Angie J. Hernandez, C.Ht.
A graduate of the Hypnosis Motivation Institute, Angie J. Hernandez, C.Ht., has her private practice in Milford, Indiana. She is certified in hypnotherapy by the Hypnotherapist's Union Local 472. Angie is the author of "Weight Loss Epiphany: The Workbook", "Charlie's Cuddly Animals for Little Geniuses" and "Weight Loss Hypnosis: Lose Weight with Hypnosis Scripts & Recordings". You can find out more about Angie and how to schedule private sessions by calling (574) 658-4686.
