Where Does Chronic Pain Come From? 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 one session. Today’s frequently asked question is: where does chronic pain come from? 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 already receiving medical treatment who might need additional care. Where does chronic pain come from? Ordinarily, chronic pain is characterized as pain that is persistent beyond three months. Now, if there is still an ongoing degree of structural damage taking place, it makes sense why the pain would still persist to some degree. But, let’s say that the body has had the appropriate amount of time to heal itself to the best of its ability upon an initial physical injury, and there is not, to anyone’s best knowledge, ongoing structural damage, and yet the pain still persists, that leads one to suspect that there are other conditions or factors at play beyond a physical, structural causation. At that point, pain can more appropriately be labeled as neuroplastic pain, which is, again, as I said before, when the body has had enough time to heal upon a physical injury, there is no ongoing structural damage to anyone’s knowledge, and yet the pain still persists. So where does this type of pain come from?
Well, what pushes pain beyond a tolerable threshold despite there being no ongoing structural damage is fear. I use fear as an umbrella term to describe more generally maladaptive psycho-emotional responses to pain where one assesses one’s current condition, one’s current discomfort, and assumes or fears that it is just as bad, if not worse, than when it started out. Based on that assumption or conclusion one then assumes or fears that it is going to get worse going into the future. These type of assumptions or fears make pain more apparent. When pain becomes more apparent, it increases or amplifies. When it increases or amplifies, it brings with it further emotional stress, which then, in turn, makes the pain more apparent, and so forth, and so forth. So how does one get out of this vicious cycle and remove the fear that is pushing the pain beyond the tolerable threshold? 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 application in the form of mind-body therapies such as hypnotherapy, is looking at where attention is placed, the degree to which attention is gathered and maintained, and the overall emotional flavor or quality of that attention. Mind-body therapies such as hypnotherapy aim to therapeutically affect attention in this way so that individuals break out of these 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. Let me ask you something. If you could consciously decide right now not to have the pain, the discomfort, the problem you are experiencing, it would only be reasonable to assume that you would consciously do so, would you not? If you could have consciously decided not to have taken on the problem, the pain, the discomfort at all, again, it would only be fair to say that you would consciously have decided to do so by now. So, 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 one session, then give me a call or book a free consultation at James Lowery Hypnotherapy.