Pain Management is a very complex issue. Have you ever had a headache, and then made it worse by being angry that you had a headache?
Yes, you can make pain worse by being angry at the pain. As a Licensed Psychotherapist, I became Board Certified in Clinical Hypnosis. One of the techniques I used to help people to reduce or eliminate their headache was to place them in a relaxed, light trance state, and ask them to describe the pain. For example, someone would say, “I have a headache in my forehead, on the right”. I would ask, “Does it have a color?” Often, a person would say “Yes”, and then describe the color. I would then ask for the shape, the texture, or other unexpected questions regarding the visual analysis of a person’s headache. This would be repeated 3 or 4 times as the visual impression of their headache would shift and change.
If someone was not able to visualize their headache, I would ask them to describe the feeling of the headache more specifically.
Prior to this, I would do a pre-test, asking a person to rate the pain on a 1-10 scale. Throughout the session, I would ask people to rate the pain, and it would always reduce. Let’s say that a person’s pain was an 8 out of 10 to begin, mid way through the process, their pain would often reduce to a 4 or 5. By the end of the session, the pain was often gone.
If it was not completely gone, I would give them a hypnotic suggestion that within a half hour of opening their eyes, they would be at a “zero”, completely pain free. This is a technique you can do for yourself!
When we get angry about a pain, it tends to make it worse. Paradoxically, when we feel the pain completely, stop resisting what is, and visualize it while it keeps changing and shifting, the pain level drastically reduces.
This works for most types of common headaches. Obviously, a serious headache from a stroke is something that requires calling 911 and going to the hospital.
I would encourage the readers to try this technique on their pain, and write in the comment section below to let me know how it works.