Pain

Some of you responded to a poll I ran recently on pain. The final result indicated roughly half of you reported experiencing some degree of persistent or chronic pain.

Believe it or not, chronic pain is manageable with hypnosis and other similar techniques. In fact, the evidence shows it often works pretty well when nothing else does. This includes prescriptions for the hardest physiologically destructive drugs on the market. Which, even after providing some relief, often fail in the long term.

Other than the quite detailed literature that exists on the effectiveness of hypnosis for pain, I have personally witnessed hypnosis work surprisingly effectively for pain management first-hand. Now on many occasions. This includes some quite severe cases of chronic pain where drugs were causing side effects worse than the injury itself, or simply not working any longer. This was all despite my initially strong scepticism.

What I found interesting in these cases is that, as with any other psycho-physiological phenomenon, there is always a cognitive element that contributes to the intensity of the experience.

There are often co-morbid problems or processes running alongside the experience of pain. Strong anxiety, for example, is quite common. For obvious reasons.

There are specific cognitive issues that can intensify pain. The first might be that we become hyper-focused and hyper-vigilant; that is, we expect it will turn up or get worse, and become anxious about our expectations of it.

We also might have difficulty ignoring the sensation itself. Lacking any control to take our focus away from it, to put it away somewhere else. And that’s quite understandable, don’t get me wrong. But it can be done. Many people have done and do it, with very severe cases of chronic pain.

So far, praise Lord Saturn, my experience of pain has been limited to specific short-term events. Nevertheless, I recall many times in Zazen being wracked with pain, where suddenly, on shifting focus, and sometimes aiming it right at the source of the sensation, the experience of pain abated in a split second.

How does that happen?

We might also habitually focus on the suffering of the pain, not just the pain itself. Thereby making it a stable thing in our lives for our own psychological reasons. Or simply out of habit. We might say, “I always suffer from this, I’ve tried everything, I’m a pain sufferer, how can I possibly manage this?”

While pain exists and is pretty horrible, there are still many inaccuracies in the statement above that will intensify the unpleasantness of the experience.

The claim of “always”, the noun of “sufferer”, the implied lack of agency or control, and the helplessness of “how can I possibly”. Such a statement betrays many of the cognitive errors I’ve presented here before for other issues.

Finally, many people who suffer from pain become addicted to powerful drugs and sedatives. Maybe self-medicating in other ways. The problem with many of these interventions is that they tend to feed back into the intensity - eventually. Such drugs also may have other psychological and physical impacts that can lead to the initial problem morphing into something much, much worse and systemic. I know people, and I’m sure you do too, whose lives have been completely destroyed by such interventions. I’m not suggesting you don’t go down this path.

In a strange way, then, we are often - at least to some degree - contributing to our own suffering. It may sound cruel to some to imply that they are contributing to their chronic pain in some way. I get it. No one asked for it. And most people have genuinely tried almost everything.

Like the prior weeks, I still ask you this - why should it sound cruel to say that we actually may have some agency to turn to dial down on our pain with our minds?

As with all the grave cruelties I cruelly inflict upon the readership regularly - the innocent, loving people - there is a more important flip-side of everything I do. That is my true intention, a great benevolence toward you. As with all these problems, if you’re doing it to yourself to some degree, that is actually a good thing. It means you also have the capacity to manage pain to some degree. You always have some power if you choose to have it.

You don’t need to take my word for it. Milton Erickson, the father of modern hypnosis, often referred back to his own profound pain and physical limitations as the thing that allowed him to profoundly understand the suffering of others.

He had a rougher trot than most - at age 17, he contracted a severe case of polio. He fell into a coma and was expected to die in short order. Having barely survived those first rough days and nights, he awoke almost completely paralysed. Able to move only his eyes and barely speak. Doctors offered little hope of recovery, as they often do. Thanks for the offer. Stubbornly, he went on anyway.

During a year of near-total immobility, by his own account, Erickson turned inward. I guess what other choice did he have? Using a kind of auto-hypnosis and intense mental focus, he gradually learned to regain control of his body. He relearned to speak, use his arms, and walk with a cane. He even completed a solo 1,000-mile canoe trip to rebuild his strength.

It didn’t end here, however. In his fifties, a second bout led to a severe case of post-polio syndrome. This left him with chronic pain. He was largely wheelchair-bound for the rest of his life. He managed his pain through self-hypnosis techniques, particularly sensory alteration techniques. Some of which you will find used in the patterns in the recording below.

Every time I’m focusing on my hurt fee-fees about some load of tosh, I like to remember Erikson. Erickson’s lifelong struggles deepened his concern for human suffering. His understanding of it. Making him highly effective at helping patients overcome pain, anxiety, and other challenges - those same techniques we’re all benefiting from here today. In a very real way, Erikson became Chiron, the wounded healer:

“Life will bring you pain all by itself. Your responsibility is to create joy.”