Hypnotherapy for Pain Management

(This blog was originally posted on March 18, 2015)

Image courtesy of Microsoft/Bing

Hypnotherapy and therapeutic guided imagery are fabulous modalities to help manage pain. There are two categories of pain: acute, which is characterized by sudden onset (occurrence) and is the result of an event that has just happened. Conversely, chronic pain has been present for some period of time after a causative event (e.g., car crash), develops over time due to a causative factor (e.g., repetitive stress injury) or disease. Hypnosis and guided imagery are effective tools in the following ways:

• They enable your subconscious mind to release from the physical sensations of chronic pain by changing the way your mind perceives pain by shutting off pain receptors during hypnosis. (e.g., breathing exercises, visualization);

• They can help you learn to change your physical reactions to painful sensations associated with your chronic pain (e.g., “glove anesthesia”; “transfer of pain” to a more tolerable part of the body to facilitate more control; remodel pain sensations to a more acceptable/tolerable level);

• They can help you reduce anxiety about experiencing pain by permitting the physical body to relax (release muscle tension) and the brain to release the body’s natural pain killers, serotonin and endorphins (e.g., “special place” imagery)

• They can help you re-establish your perception of being able to control your pain through self-hypnosis (e.g.: “control room”; “imaginative transformation” of the context of the pain).

California law allows me to provide hypnotherapy as a complementary or alternative treatment to help you manage/control pain as a way to achieve vocational and avocational self-improvement goals (Business and Professions Code 2908). However, I must receive a referral from a licensed medical doctor or mental-health professional in order to work with you on this issue. I would also need a medical referral if your pain gets worse or your condition changes during the therapy, or if your wakes you from sleep.

For more information about how hypnotherapy can help you manage pain, I invite you to read my previous blog titled What You Can (and Cannot) Expect From Hypnotherapy.

Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. For more information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy® and to set up an appointment, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.

© 2017

The Addictive Curve

(This blog was originally posted on May 24, 2016)

Photo by Rick Hustead

The “addictive curve” is a model to describe the formation and perpetuation of addictions. For example, a person takes heroin and gets a “rush.” He then starts coming down, going lower than the state where he started, which creates a new “bottom.” Most people shoot up again as soon as they start to come down, which triggers the addiction. However, if the person waits to take the drug until just before reaching the level he normally should be, he will get even “higher” with this dose and then come back to normal.

A person can take any substance that has an addictive property—including coffee—and never become addicted to it if the individual doesn’t fall into the addictive curve. “What makes a heroin addict a heroin ‘addict’ is the feeling of coming back down,” Hypnosis Motivation Institute founder John Kappas, Ph.D., explained. If you avoid the addictive curve (usually 12 hours) and wait to take the drug until you are back at that normal level, you won’t become addicted to it, he added.

Dr. Kappas demonstrated how he would help a client overcome a heroin addiction during one of his clinical case history sessions. The process entailed taking the individual off the drug “cold turkey,” then having him experience all the symptoms of withdrawal very quickly during hypnosis. Meanwhile, the hypnotherapist had the client release the feelings and go back to homeostasis while giving the hypnotic suggestion that the person did not need heroin. Dr. Kappas’s complete hypnotherapy-treatment strategy entailed taking the client from the homeostatic state back to an artificial high, then bringing him back down to experience withdrawal symptoms again, for 14 days.

“We can duplicate in hypnosis any feeling you can get from any kind of drug, from heroin, marijuana, cocaine, etc. many times we duplicate that feeling artificially so we can get the client down here to create artificial withdrawals,” he said. After the therapy program described above, however, “there’s no feeling (addiction) for heroin at all.”

A caveat: while alcohol addiction follows a similar pattern in terms of the addictive curve, hypnotherapists do not deal with alcohol addictions. “The alcoholic is much harder to deal with than the drug addict because alcohol is an accessible social drug, and there’s too many ways to cheat on alcohol. It’s a way of life,” Dr. Kappas said. The physical dependency on alcohol also tends to be stronger than the physical dependency on drugs, he added.

As I have explained in previous essays, the Business and Professions Code 2908 limits the scope of hypnotherapists’ professional practice to helping people achieve vocational and avocational self-improvement goals. Hypnotherapists must also seek a referral from licensed mental-health and/or licensed medical professionals when there may be a physiological or psychological origin of the client’s discomfort, which is outside of the scope of hypnotherapy. Hypnosis and hypnotherapy are great tools to help a person follow Alcoholics Anonymous/Narcotics Anonymous, etc. guidelines during rehabilitation from a substance addiction. However, when I work with an individual to help break this addictive curve I usually ask that the person continues to receive support from a sponsor and/or 12-step program during this process.

Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. For more information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy® and to set up an appointment, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.

© 2017

The Abreaction

(This blog was originally posted on January 27, 2015)

Photo by Rick Hustead

Hypnosis is often one of the last—if not the last—therapeutic modalities that people tend to seek to achieve a self-improvement goal. Having said that, hypnotherapy is typically very successful to help a client change an unwanted belief or behavior such as quit smoking, drop excess weight, increase self-confidence and more. But even when the individual’s conscious mind is completely, 100-percent convinced that the hypnosis and guided imagery program will work, the subconscious mind might take a little longer to get on board with this plan.

The subconscious mind manifests its wariness to relinquish a familiar, comfortable long-held belief or behavior (known) by abreacting: i.e., physically responding to a suggestion during hypnosis. An abreaction occurs when the critical area of the person’s mind has rejected the information communicated via the hypnotic suggestion to enter the subconscious mind. The physical responses can be the involuntary jerking or twitching of a limb, noncompliance with the hypnotic suggestion, an emotional outburst or even spontaneously coming “awake” during the session. 

Remember: The subconscious mind will not accept any hypnotic suggestions that contradict the person’s values and beliefs. Abreactions simply indicate that the client’s subconscious mind is resisting the hypnotic suggestion to make that consciously-desired change. And that is okay. Not only does this response indicate that the person may require more and stronger suggestions to desensitize against a negative association; it also reveals where he or she is more self-protective or even defensive in the therapeutic process. In many instances, it identifies and indicates where the heart of the client’s issue lies and facilitates more effective achievement of his or her self-improvement goals through hypnotherapy.

       

Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a certified hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with honors from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. For more information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy® and to set up an appointment, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.

© 2017