WHY PAIN GETS WORSE WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT IT
About 15 years ago I had a very bad bout of gastric flu while I was living and working abroad. The problems that it caused – burning pain in my chest, nausea, gas – basically stayed with me for three years. So for three years I went to see doctor after doctor, had test after test performed, was given drug after drug – all with little to no result. The doctors told me there was nothing wrong with me. “So why am I still in pain?” I demanded to know. They treated me like a silly, complaining woman who had nothing to worry about. Yet I was still suffering, and the worst thing about it was that I didn’t know what was wrong with me or what to do about it.
I had always been skeptical about alternative medicines up to that point, but I was getting so desperate I was prepared to try anything. So I had acupuncture and shiatsu and saw a nutritionist, and achieved a certain amount of relief. One evening when I just felt I couldn’t stand it any more I contacted a spiritual healer, a lady who came to my house and asked simply for a donation. She didn’t even touch me, just allowed me to relax using a sort of combination of reiki and hypnosis. And suddenly, as if by magic, the pain just wasn’t there any more.
It was at this point I realized that, while there certainly was a physical cause for the initial onset of the pain, it was mostly my stress and anxiety over having the mysterious pain that was causing it to hang around so long.
I believe the same things were happening when a recent client of mine was able to let go of pain she had held in her body for 20 years, after experiencing only two hypnotherapy sessions and being given some techniques to calm her mind.
The subconscious mind is an incredibly powerful tool, and if we can learn how to harness this power, we can take back control over our own bodies. Of course, pain is a warning signal from the body that something is wrong. I made changes to my diet based on my symptoms, and my chest pains have never returned. But we don’t need to have the alarm bells clanging 24/7 and ruining our lives, in order to make the lifestyle changes we know we need to make. Control over pain is possible, using hypnotherapy.
