Pain Management

Living with persistent pain changes everything. It affects your sleep, your mood, your ability to work and enjoy life. When pain becomes chronic, it's not just a physical sensation — it becomes a central part of how you experience the world. Medication helps, but it often doesn't eliminate the pain entirely, and it comes with its own side effects and concerns.

Hypnotherapy won't cure the underlying condition that causes your pain. I want to be straightforward about that from the start. But it can significantly change how you experience and respond to pain, and for many people, that change is transformative.

How Pain Works

Pain is processed in the brain. This doesn't mean it's "all in your head" — the physical cause is real. But the brain plays a crucial role in interpreting and amplifying pain signals. When pain becomes chronic, the nervous system can become sensitised, maintaining pain levels even after the original injury has healed. Anxiety about pain increases pain. Poor sleep worsens pain. The brain's attention to pain amplifies it.

All of these factors are within the scope of hypnotherapy.

How Hypnotherapy Helps with Pain

Pain Perception Modulation

During hypnosis, it's possible to alter how the brain processes pain signals. Techniques include turning down the "volume" of pain, changing its quality (from sharp to dull, for instance), or creating a sense of numbness in affected areas. These changes, practised in hypnosis, can extend into your daily experience with regular self-hypnosis practice.

Breaking the Pain-Anxiety Cycle

Chronic pain and anxiety often feed each other. Pain causes anxiety about the future. Anxiety increases muscle tension and sensitises the nervous system, which increases pain. Hypnotherapy is highly effective at reducing anxiety, which often produces a corresponding reduction in pain levels.

Improving Sleep

Pain disrupts sleep, and poor sleep lowers pain tolerance. Hypnotherapy can improve sleep quality, which in turn helps with pain management. The self-hypnosis techniques taught during treatment are particularly useful at bedtime.

Shifting Focus

When pain dominates your attention, it feels more intense. Hypnotherapy techniques help redirect your brain's focus, reducing the prominence of pain in your conscious experience. This isn't about ignoring pain — it's about not being consumed by it.

Conditions I Work With

• Chronic back pain
• Fibromyalgia
• Arthritis-related pain
• Migraine and tension headaches
• Neuropathic pain
• Post-surgical pain
• IBS-related pain
• Chronic pain syndrome

Important: Medical Clearance

Pain is your body's warning system, and it's important that the cause of your pain has been properly investigated and diagnosed by a medical professional before we begin treatment. Hypnotherapy for pain management should complement your existing medical care, not replace it.

If your consultant, GP or pain specialist has suggested trying hypnotherapy, that's an excellent starting point. I'm happy to communicate with your medical team if helpful.

What Treatment Involves

Pain management typically requires four to six sessions. The first session is spent understanding your pain history, its impact on your life and what you've tried before. Subsequent sessions combine pain management techniques under hypnosis with self-hypnosis training.

The self-hypnosis element is particularly important for pain management, as regular daily practice tends to produce the most significant results. I provide personalised audio recordings to support your home practice.

Evidence

The evidence base for hypnotherapy in pain management is strong. A comprehensive review published in the International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis concluded that hypnotic interventions consistently produce significant decreases in pain. The NHS lists pain management as one of the conditions for which hypnotherapy is used.

Research from Stanford University using brain imaging has shown that hypnosis genuinely alters the way the brain processes pain signals — this is not placebo or imagination.

Realistic Expectations

Complete pain elimination is rarely a realistic goal. What most clients experience is a significant reduction in pain intensity, better coping strategies, improved sleep, reduced reliance on medication (in consultation with their GP) and a better overall quality of life. For many people, that's a life-changing shift.

To discuss whether hypnotherapy might help with your pain, book a free telephone consultation. See the fees page for session costs and package options.