Descartes has a lot to answer for. His idea that the mind is somehow separate from the body has proved remarkably persistent. This way of thinking sees human beings as something like a Star Wars AT-AS Walker carrying around a magic ghost – a two-legged machine driven by a disconnected intelligence.

As beliefs go, it’s limiting, to say the least, and increasingly discredited. These days we understand a little bit more about the role of neurotransmitters and the constant flow of information around our bodies. In many ways, it seems that consciousness is something that’s distributed throughout the entire body, right down to cellular level.

Hypnotherapists have long had an intuitive understanding of this. We often use hypnosis to talk to the unconscious mind, with a view to producing changes in the body. Perhaps the most dramatic example of this is in the realm of pain control.

The late Kay Thompson was a student of Milton Erickson, and a brilliantly gifted pioneer in the use of hypnosis for pain control. Her view of pain was that it’s a warning signal, and nothing else. When everything’s been done that can be done – when the warning’s been heeded, in other words – there’s no further need for the signal.

This is quite a radical reframe. Under the old Descartes model, chronic pain is a maddening conundrum. Many in the medical profession will have encountered people suffering from chronic pain for no apparent reason. In the Thompson model, chronic pain is simply obsolete. It’s like somebody keeping their thumb on your doorbell after you’ve opened the door to let them in.

It also brings pain into the realm of communication, which is what hypnotherapy is all about. As a practising therapist, I’m fascinated by the idea of “pain as communication”. You need to be alert for the language and the message.

The first thing to listen out for is the client’s own understanding of their pain. People can be very eloquent, even poetic, in their description of it.

“Scratchy, and dry.”
“Black and cold – very cold, and heavy too.”
“Like animal claws.”
“A sort of red sensation.”

These are just some of the things I’ve heard from clients, and I’m sure other therapists have heard similar things. Vivid, sensory metaphors like these are gifts for hypnotic work, of course, since they can be transformed. Scratchy and dry can be changed to smooth and lush. Red sensations can become calming green sensations and so on.

Pain can also be symbolic, and surprisingly literal. A colleague of mine treated a patient for lower back pain, who felt unsupported in their work. The therapist Pat Williams talks about working with a woman with a frozen shoulder, whose problems started when her parents went through some marital difficulties and had less time for their daughter – she’d literally been given the cold shoulder!

This fits in with the idea of consciousness being distributed throughout the body. We can begin to understand chronic pain as the body’s way of trying to tell us something, which is often emotional.

A recent experiment at Bangor University in the UK, brought these strands together and suggests a useful technique for pain control. In the experiment, forty-two rheumatoid arthritis sufferers were asked to visualise their pain in the form of a person, before thanking that person for letting them know something was wrong. They then politely but firmly asked that person to leave, visualising them walking off into the distance and eventually out of sight. The participants reported that this technique brought significant pain relief.

All of this offers us a more useful and effective way of helping people with chronic pain. Instead of subjecting them to endless and increasingly futile tests, or continually upping their dosage of painkillers, we need to ask – what is this pain trying to say, and how is trying to say it? Like so much else in life, it comes down to really listening.

About The Author

Ian Sherred is a freelance writer and a professional hypnotherapist. He is a partner in Tadpole Hypnotherapy, a Southampton, UK based hypnotherapy practice specializing in emotional and physical wellbeing. He believes that the more practical the therapy, the more successful it is!

www.tadpolehypnotherapy.com
www.totalstresscontrol.co.uk

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