When I think of hypnosis, I think of a person on a stage made to appear to have no control over their actions or a person swinging a pocket watch putting you under a spell. It looks like a magician-like trick. This is stage hypnotism, the only form of hypnotism I thought to exist. Well, I guess that’s not true; I had heard of hypnotism being used to help people stop smoking or lose weight. I was talking with my therapist when he suggested I look into it, that there had been studies showing it helped with pain management. I shrugged this off for a long time. I was beyond skeptical about hypnosis, let alone self-hypnosis. At this point, I couldn’t even use my right arm to brush my teeth; how was I qualified to hypnotize myself? I also didn’t want to be walking around in an altered state where I wouldn’t remember what I did. Yet, I still couldn’t use my arm.

I looked into the benefits of self-hypnosis and found a difference between self-hypnosis, self-directed hypnosis, stage hypnosis, and clinical hypnosis. Self-hypnosis is administered by a trained clinical hypnotherapist who helps direct your attention to specific areas through autosuggestion. This can be done in person or through a recording. One of the benefits of self-hypnosis is to help aid in the control and relief of chronic pain. I didn’t believe this for a second, but I was willing to give it a try. When I say I am going to try something, I don’t mean just once or twice, and when it doesn’t work, I say, “that doesn’t work for me.” No, to give anything a fair chance and promote a change, you need to keep at it for a few months. What have you done the first time, were great at it, and were able to repeat that same result? Have you ever been able to learn something new and be great at it on the first chance? Self-hypnosis has been shown to help:

• Chronic pain

• Acute pain

• Nausea

• Decrease analgesics use

• Increase physiological stability

• Improve sleep

• Help anxiety

A study in 2000 showed that hypnotic techniques for acute pain relief were superior to standard care. Dr. David Patterson and Dr. Mark Jensen state that chronic pain, which continues beyond the usual time to recover from an injury, usually involves inter-related psychosocial factors and requires more complex treatment than acute pain. The following are chronic pain conditions that have improved through hypnosis: 

• Headache

• Backache

• Fibromyalgia

• Carcinoma-related pain

• Complex Regional Pain Syndrome

• Temporal Mandibular Disorder pain 

• Mixed chronic pain

Hypnosis can relieve the sensory and/or emotional components of a pain experience, which may be all it takes to relieve acute pain. However, chronic conditions require a thorough plan that targets other aspects besides the pain experience. 

If you don’t have a clinical hypnotherapist near you (I didn’t) or want to try it on your own, follow these steps:

1. Find a comfortable place to sit or lie down

2. Put your device in airplane mode

Choose a self-hypnosis session from the playlist