For those who suffer from chronic pain, life can be a daily struggle. Not knowing what each day will be like can be mentally, as well as physically draining.

Research estimates that there are over 1.5 billion people worldwide who suffer from chronic pain. Currently doctors tend to prescribe painkillers that can have a detrimental effect if used long term and often stop working well after prolonged use. There is no currently cure for chronic pain.

However, Hypnosis offers safe, side-effect free therapy that is clinically proven to reduce pain by around 30% - 40%.

A study conducted by Greenwich University in 2020 concluded that “hypnotic intervention can deliver meaningful pain relief for most people and therefore may be an effective and safe alternative to pharmaceutical intervention”.

According to the Arthritis Foundation:

“Hypnosis may be a helpful non-drug therapy to reduce pain in chronic conditions like arthritis and fibromyalgia. Studies show that more than 75% of people with arthritis and related diseases experience significant pain relief using hypnosis”.

Do You Experience Any of the Following?

• Aching joints

• Trouble sleeping

• Extreme tiredness

• Depression & Anxiety

• Itchy body/ scalp

• Stiffness all over body

• Heightened sensitivity - sight, smell, touch etc.

• Brain fog (trouble with memory/losing words etc)

• Digestive issues

• Pain in jaw (TMJ)

• Numbness or tingling in hands and feet

If you recognise any of these symptoms, you could be suffering from a chronic disease like Fibromyalgia or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

These illnesses are very difficult for doctors to diagnose and often a number of tests will be carried out until other possible problems are eliminated.

There is currently no medical cure and research is quite limited, which means the 2.5 or so million diagnosed people suffering from Fibromyalgia in the UK alone, are given only pain reducing medicines, which often cause stomach problems and offer very little long-term help.

How Does Hypnosis Help?

Hypnotherapy offers sometimes instant relief from pain by learning to control your mind and body.

In the 1960s Ronald Melzack and Patrick Wall introduced a new theory, the Gate Control Theory of Pain.

The Gate Control Theory proposes that pain perception is a complex interplay between the Central Nervous System (CNS – spinal cord and brain) and the Peripheral Nervous system (PNS – nerves outside the brain and spinal cord, including nerves branching out to the extremities). When injury is incurred, pain messages are sent from the nerves in the damaged tissue, along the PNS and into the spinal cord and brain. Before the pain messages can reach the brain (and therefore be interpreted as pain), they encounter a ‘gate’ in the spinal cord, which opens to allow the pain message through, or closes to prevent the pain message from being passed to the brain.

In this theory concerning chronic pain, the gate is never closed and so it allows all manner of non-painful sensory signals to get through, thus causing ongoing pain.

One way that hypnosis works is by preventing these ‘fake pains’ from getting through the gate.

Additionally, hypnosis enables the client to understand their body and mind more effectively and learn that they can control the intensity and responses towards how they feel.

Alongside actual pain relief, hypnosis helps with anxiety, depression and sleep disorders that can result from chronic pain and also help find lasting ways of implementing lifestyle and diet changes (sugar and fatty foods are known to intensify some chronic pain conditions), all in a safe environment.

What to Expect

• You will receive a pain diary. Learn to understand your pain and the triggers associated

• Tailored sessions to suit your personal needs

• Learn how to manage pain through the mind

• Pain management/reduction relaxation techniques

• Reduce sugar & fatty foods to help combat pain (diet is linked to many chronic pain issues)

• Changing mindset to enable self-control of body and mind

You can achieve anything that you set out to do.

Get in touch for a FREE initial 15 minute phone call to determine how Mind Work can help you.