How Does Pain Change You? Hello, this is James Lowery with James Lowery Hypnotherapy where I, with the help of a medical provider, aid adults suffering with immune disorders in relieving the emotional stress surrounding their discomfort in order to achieve a better quality of life in as little as just one session. Today’s frequently asked question is: how does pain change you? Now, before I answer that question, I want to make it abundantly clear that the information I am presenting is not to serve as a substitute for medical advice.
My role as a hypnotherapist is to serve as an effective adjunct to those already receiving medical treatment who might need additional care. How does pain change you? Pain can affect an individual in terms of their physical and mental health, as well as their social and financial functioning. In terms of physical health, it can cause sleep disruptions. It can lead to muscle weakness, muscle tension, muscle deconditioning, and immobility. All these things bring with it certain amounts of emotional stress, and when emotional stress is brought on, it makes the pain more apparent. When pain becomes more apparent, it increases and amplifies, and, in turn, leads to further emotional stress, which then, again, makes the pain more apparent, and so forth, and so forth. Pain can affect one’s mental health in terms of leading to such things as anxiety, PTSD, and depression; mood disorders that, in turn, make pain more apparent because they lead to, or bring in with them, emotional stress. As I said before, when pain becomes more apparent, it increases and amplifies and brings with it further emotional stress, which, in turn, makes the pain even more apparent.
It becomes another vicious cycle. Pain can also affect one’s social and financial functioning such as one’s ability to engage in daily activities, hobbies, social interactions, perhaps even romantic relationships, and it can affect one financially in terms of one’s ability to work. All of these things again bring with them emotional stress which makes pain more apparent and when pain becomes more apparent it increases and amplifies, and you get the picture by now. All of these things are vicious cycles that feed upon themselves. So how does one effectively break out of these vicious cycles, as they are? Through a branch of science known as psychoneuroimmunology which studies how the mind, the psyche, one’s neurology, and one’s nervous and immune systems all interact with and affect one another. At the core of psychoneuroimmunology, and its applications in the form of mind-body therapies, is looking at where attention is placed, the degree to which that attention is gathered and maintained, and the overall emotional quality or flavor of that attention. Mind-body therapies, such as hypnotherapy, aim to therapeutically affect attention in this way in order to help individuals break out of these vicious cycles and reestablish a healthy communication between their mind and their nervous and immune systems. Now you might be thinking to yourself, “But James, I’ve tried talk therapies before and it didn’t work for me. How is this different?”
Most therapies aim to alter or bolster your conscious perception of the problem. But let me ask you something. If you could consciously decide right now not to have the pain, the problem, the discomfort you are experiencing, again, right now. It would only be fair to assume that you would consciously decide to do so, would you not? If you could have consciously decided not to have taken on the pain, the discomfort, the problem at all, again, it would only be fair to assume that you would consciously have decided to do so already, right? So the pain, the problem, the discomfort and the maladaptive psycho-emotional responses that surround them do not effectively exist in the conscious mind. Rather, they are most predominant in the unconscious part of the mind. So if you’re looking to adopt this kind of therapy in such a way that, with the help of a medical provider, aids you in relieving the emotional stress surrounding your discomfort and helps you to achieve a better quality of life in as little as just one session, then give me a call or book a free consultation at James Lowery Hypnotherapy. I’m always happy to help.