What Chronic Conditions Can Hypnosis Help to Heal?
Whether you are dealing with chronic pain from an injury, or live with an invisible yet chronic condition such as fibromyalgia, chronic pain is complicated and is often hard to treat. Lotions, potions, and other therapies might work in conjunction with one another, but the effects wear off quickly.
Living with chronic health conditions means your activities are restricted, your sleep is affected, your energy levels are low, and you might find yourself feeling affected mentally as well as physically.
The mind and body are viewed often as separate. However, mental and physical health is intertwined, with good mental health positively affecting physical health and vice versa.
Everyone experiences pain at higher levels at some point in their lives. I’m referring to physical and/or emotional distress caused by an illness or injury or disturbing event. Of course, many of us would prefer to avoid it, however pain serves a purpose as a “protection.” When we experience pain, our brain signals us to stop doing what it was that caused the pain, which prevents further harm to the body.
Having said that, pain is not meant to last a long time. Pain typically lasting less than 3-6 months is acute pain, which is what most people experience. For some, pain can be ongoing or go away and then return, which would last beyond the usual 6 months and negatively affect a person’s well-being. This is called chronic or persistent pain–pain that continues when it should not.
Is this type of pain affecting your life? Have you gone through a medical procedure recently and are dealing with the trauma from that? Are you anxious about how your health is affecting your daily life?
Hypnotherapy can assist in helping to ease the symptoms of pain from living with chronic conditions and also to heal the mental conditions that can be associated with these conditions such as anxiety, depression, and PTSD.
Let’s go over how hypnotherapy addresses pain and mental health when it comes to living with chronic conditions.
Examples of Chronic Conditions and Illnesses that Cause Pain
Arthritis
It is inflammation and stiffening of the joints, which means the severity can dictate the pain, mild or severe, typically worsens with age. Most common are osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis.
Osteoarthritis causes cartilage, the hard, slippery tissue that covers the ends of your bones where they form the joint, to break down. Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disease where the immune system attacks the lining of the joints.
Cancer
Changes in your nerves can be due to the cancer pressing on your nerves or the chemicals created by a tumor. Cancer treatment can also cause nerve changes. Chronic pain will continue long after injury or treatment is over and ranges from mild to severe.
Cluster headaches and migraines
Cluster headaches are a neurological disorder that is characterized by recurrent severe headaches on one side of the head, usually around the eye, lasting from 15 minutes to 3 hours, are sudden sharp pain in the head, happening in clusters. On the affected side there will often be accompanying eye watering, nasal congestion, or swelling around the eye.
Migraines are throbbing headaches with an assortment of sensory symptoms such as vision symptoms, called aura. Silent migraines are an aura of sensitivities to light and sound but without the throbbing pain of a typical migraine.
Migraines can cause a sensitivity to light and sound, severe enough to cause vomiting. They cause throbbing pain or pulsing, usually on one side of the head, often accompanied with nausea, vomiting, and extreme sensitivity to light and sound, lasting from a few hours to days and pain can be severe enough to interfere with daily activities.
Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS)
Sometimes referred to by the hyponyms Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy or Reflex Neurovascular Dystrophy, CRPS is a rare and severe form of neuroinflammatory and dysautonomia disorder which causes chronic pain, neurovascular, and neuropathic symptoms. It develops after an injury, is ongoing, and tends to be excessive to the original injury.
Endometriosis
A gynecological condition, which happens when cells that are like those in the womb are found in other parts of the body. Many suffer with pelvic pain, severe period pain, and pain during/after sex.
Fibromyalgia
A disorder expressed by widespread musculoskeletal pain of unknown cause, with symptoms including stiff feeling muscles and rampant aches accompanied by issues with memory, sleep, mood, and fatigue.
Multiple Sclerosis (MS)
An unpredictable chronic disease of the central nervous system which affects the brain, nerves, and spinal cord. Pain tends to be musculoskeletal caused by pressure on muscles/joints or neuropathic, a burning/stabbing feeling where there are damaged nerve fibers.
Sciatica and Back Pain
The sciatic nerve becomes irritated (often after a slipped disc), causing aches down the leg. Other forms of back pain can be caused by overuse of muscles and previous injury. It means experiencing mild to severe pain anywhere with nerves connecting to the sciatic nerve. Symptoms affect your lower back, hips, backside, or legs, and may extend as far as your feet and toes, depending on the specific nerve(s) affected.
Living with these chronic conditions can be traumatic, bringing out big emotions, causing isolation and severe anxiety and stress.
The Connection Between Mental Health and Chronic Conditions
As I mentioned before, living with a chronic condition can affect you physically and mentally. Coping with these long-term conditions leads to elevated levels of stress, trauma, anxiety, and depression.
Three main mental health conditions that accompany chronic conditions are as follows:
Anxiety
When you are anxious, your perception of pain as your stress level rises can increase and you can become focused on the feeling.
There is “health anxiety,” in which the feelings of anxiety are specifically about your health, marked by anxiety that sticks around or gets more intense over the long term. Symptoms of fear, dread, or other distressing emotions; thoughts of danger; and heightened stress levels. It can be severe and chronic, or mild and come and go.
When you’re already extra cautious about your health because you have a health condition, you can be especially susceptible to anxiety. When you have a chronic condition, symptoms of your condition can make you worry, which is perfectly normal. You’re coping with real life health issues, and these are unpredictable.
Health anxiety is a normal response to a chronic condition that presents a real threat to your health and well-being, according to some researchers. Those with chronic conditions will often report feeling concerned their illness or symptoms will return or become worse.
Learning how to cope with stress and bring down your anxiety levels is crucial.
Depression
Though any illness can trigger depressed feelings, risk of chronic illness and depression becomes higher with the severity of the illness and the level of life interference it causes. Depression caused by chronic disease will often make the condition worse, especially if the illness is accompanied by pain and fatigue or limiting interaction with others leading towards isolation. Depression can also intensify pain, fatigue, and sluggishness. The combination of chronic illness and depression can lead towards isolating, likely to make depression even worse.
Those battling depression with chronic conditions are treated the same way as someone without chronic conditions. Being diagnosed and treated early eases distress and risk of complications and self-destruction. Your doctor can adjust or change your treatment if your depressive symptoms are being caused by your physical illness or the side effects of the medication. When depression is a separate issue, it can be treated on its own.
Chronic conditions can bring on depression which in turn can shove itself in the way of successful treatment of the disease.
Living with a chronic condition is a challenge, and it’s completely normal to have feelings of grief and sadness as you come to terms with your condition and its implications. If these feelings linger, or you have issues sleeping, eating, or you lose interest in your favourite activities, it’s time to seek help.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
When we encounter trauma as part of a medical experience, we may not recognize that this is what is happening.
People will sometimes believe their traumatic experiences were necessary parts of their medical healthcare providers doing their jobs. Even if healthcare providers did everything right, medical experiences can be traumatizing.
Signs you may have experienced medical trauma include:
- Feeling nervous, especially before a medical appointment
- Feeling depleted, numb, or emotionally distressed after doctors’ visits (even if they went well)
- Flashbacks to times of hospitalization or medical procedures
- Questioning if your pain is bad enough to go to the doctor due to having your pain dismissed in the past
- Feeling the need to plan extensively for every medical visit in case something goes wrong
- Worrying that your symptoms are escalating or that you will need emergency treatment
- Dreading an upcoming doctor’s appointment visit or not feeling safe visiting the doctor alone
Medical trauma, especially for those with chronic conditions, is the person may feel the traumatic events may reoccur due to their medical needs and concerns. Medical trauma is real and can be a devastating and difficult issue to live with, impacting and affecting people mentally, emotionally, and sometimes even physically.
It can be validating to know that what people are experiencing is a form of trauma. Understanding that your feelings come from past trauma can help you process and better understand your symptoms.
Consider Hypnotherapy for Chronic Conditions
Easing symptoms and healing from these mental health conditions do not have to be a challenge. Hypnotherapy is here for you not only for your chronic conditions to ease your pain, but also to help in healing your mind too.
Those who live daily with chronic pain due to chronic conditions are recommended therapies that address the mind-body link. As we know, stress, anxiety, depression, are side effects of pain and can make the sensation of pain feel worse. The mind responds to pain can be linked to the awareness of physical sensations.
Reducing stress and changing your thought patterns related to pain can make a significant difference to perceiving pain. Hypnotherapy is a great tool in this regard. Those who are open to suggestions while under hypnosis will see improvements in their pain relief.
Hypnotherapy for chronic pain focuses on accepting your chronic condition, aiming to reduce the fear and anxiety around it. Our feelings of pain can influence our levels and how we manage it. When we’re fearful, it can lead to avoiding situations we feel might make our pain worse, aka fear avoidance. Over time, this can worsen our pain symptoms. Hypnotherapy can help to replace feelings of self-doubt and helplessness with those of confidence and empowerment.
I can guide you through visualizing situations you usually find difficult and pain triggering, for example. Replacing your expectation of pain and feeling you cannot do anything about it, with the feeling of pain free and having control of the situation.
Hypnotherapy helps to relax you and redirect your attention away from the feeling of your pain. After being instructed to focus on your breath, you may be asked to imagine your “happy place” somewhere pleasant, and to describe each detail, to refocus your attention from negative emotional triggers to something that activates positive emotions, like a sunset at the beach, for example.
When your mind is in your “happy place,” like imagining the breeze off the water, your feet in the sand, sun setting in the distance, you are less focused on your pain. This prepares you to receive the suggestion of how to respond to your pain in future.
Hypnotherapy is not a single session’s worth when it comes to pain management. It tends to be more effective in 4-6 sessions. The goal is to teach you strategies and techniques to use on your own when your pain is triggered.
Some respond to hypnotherapy better than others, however if you are open and willing to hypnosis, there is no harm in trying it. There are no side effects and if you feel it is not for you, you can stop at any time. Many have reported a significant alleviation in pain, and you can gain a great tool to use any time to ease symptoms.
At Healing Soul Hypnosis, I will work with the root cause of your chronic pain, and tailor your sessions based on your individual needs. If your life is being affected by the symptoms of your chronic condition, whether it’s physical or mental, hypnotherapy may be what you are looking for.
If you have any questions, and want to know more about how I can assist you in reaching your well-being goals, book a free 20-minute no-obligation consultation with me.
If you are curious or have questions about what hypnosis or hypnotherapy can do for you, check out 20 Things Hypnosis Can Genuinely Help You With.
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