When is Chronic Pain Too Much? 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: when does chronic pain become too much? Now, before I answer that question, I want to make it abundantly clear that the information I’m 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 receiving medical treatment who might need additional care. When does chronic pain become too much? Part of the answer to that question is that chronic pain becomes too much in simply being chronic pain, or rather, more specifically, neuroplastic pain. Now, if you have not heard the term neuroplastic pain before, it’s when pain persists beyond the time it would ordinarily take the body to heal upon a physical injury or structural causation. If the body has had the time it needs ordinarily to heal upon a physical injury or structural causation, and yet, the pain, again, as I said before, persists, it leads one to suspect that there are other factors at play. Now, the primary factor that pushes pain beyond a tolerable threshold and allows the pain to persists beyond, again, the time it would take the body to ordinarily heal upon a physical injury or structural causation is fear.
Now, I use the term fear as an umbrella term to describe maladaptive psycho- emotional responses to pain where one looks at one’s current condition and assumes or fears that it is just as bad, if not worse, than it was starting out. Based on that assumption or fear one concludes that the pain will get worse going into the future. This brings with it all types of emotional stress. When emotional stress is brought in, it makes pain more apparent. When pain becomes more apparent, it increases and amplifies and brings with it further emotional stress. Therefore making the pain again more apparent, and so forth, and so forth. It becomes a vicious cycle. So how does one effectively break out of this vicious cycle? Through a branch of science known as psychoneuroimmunology which studies how one’s mind, one’s 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, such as hypnotherapy, 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, helping 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 consciously 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 discomfort, the problem you are experiencing, again, right now, it would only be reasonable to assume that you would consciously decide to do so, would you not? If you could have not consciously taken on the problem, the pain, the discomfort at all, again, it would only be fair to assume that you would consciously have decided to do so already, right? So the problem, the pain, 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 in order 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.