The Man Who Learned to Turn Down His Pain Like a Volume Dial

How Hypnosis Can Change the Brain’s Interpretation of Chronic Pain

Years ago, a young man had surgery at Delnor Hospital for a shoulder that kept dislocating.

Nothing unusual about that. What happened afterward was.

Instead of depending heavily on pain medication after surgery, he came to our office to learn how to use self-hypnosis.

Later, because he worked at that hospital, he looked at his own medical chart. One of the residents had noticed how little pain medication he was using and jokingly suggested that maybe the surgeons had not cut many nerves.

But he knew better.

He had the incision to prove it.

What fascinated him was that the surgery had not changed.

His experience of the pain had.

He and his physician were studying what actually happens inside the brain when someone enters a hypnotic state.

And this is where chronic pain gets really interesting.

Because pain is not simply a message traveling from your knee, back, shoulder, or hip straight into your consciousness.

Your brain gets involved. A lot.

Your Brain Has a Say in How Loud Pain Feels

Let me be clear about something.

If you hurt, the pain is real.

Hypnosis does not mean you are imagining it or someone is going to tell you, “The pain is all in your head.”

I can’t stand that phrase.

Pain involves the body and the brain.

The International Association for the Study of Pain describes pain as both a sensory and emotional experience. In other words, tissue and nerves may send the signal, but your brain helps decide what that signal means and how much attention it gets.

Imagine having a volume knob connected to your nervous system.

For some people with chronic pain, that knob seems to get stuck on 8, 9, or 10.

You wake up and check the pain.

You walk across the room and notice the pain.

You wonder whether something will make it worse.

Then you start anticipating the next painful movement before you’ve even made it.

The brain becomes very good at watching for danger.

Unfortunately, that can also make pain harder to ignore.

So What Does Hypnosis Actually Do?

Clinical hypnosis creates a state of focused attention in which therapeutic suggestions may have more impact.

That sounds complicated.

Here’s an easier way to picture it.

Have you ever been so involved in a movie that you temporarily forgot about the room around you?

Or driven somewhere familiar and suddenly realized, “Wow, I’m already here”?

Your attention narrowed.

Hypnosis uses focused attention deliberately.

Stanford brain-imaging research has shown changes during hypnosis in areas involved with attention, awareness, and control. Researchers have found that brain regions involved in deciding what deserves our attention behave differently during hypnosis.

That matters when you’re dealing with pain.

Someone might learn to imagine a burning sensation becoming cooler.

A tight sensation might become loose.

A sharp pain might become duller or seem farther away.

And yes, some people actually picture a volume dial.

Instead of demanding that the pain disappear, they practice turning it from an 8 to a 6.

Then maybe from a 6 to a 4.

That is a very different conversation with the brain than “Make this stop!”

Hypnosis Isn’t About Ignoring Your Body

This part is important.

New, severe, or unexplained pain needs medical evaluation. You don’t want to hypnotize yourself into ignoring a warning sign that needs attention.

But when pain has already been evaluated and becomes chronic, hypnosis may be one tool used alongside medical treatment, rehabilitation, movement, better sleep, and stress management.

Research continues, but evidence suggests hypnosis can reduce pain for some people and may improve the way they cope with it.

I find that fascinating.

Because you may not always have control over the first signal your nervous system sends.

But you may have more influence over what happens next than you realized.

Remember my patient?

He didn’t hypnotize his shoulder back to health or pretend surgery didn’t hurt.

He learned that the brain could change its relationship with the pain.

And that may be the more useful question for someone living with chronic discomfort:

Not simply, “How do I make the pain disappear?”

But:

“Can I teach my brain to respond to it differently?”

At Medvesta Hypnosis Healthcare, we can explore that together.

If chronic pain is affecting your sleep, movement, mood, or quality of life, schedule a screening or assessment with Medvesta Hypnosis Healthcare to determine whether hypnosis may be an appropriate addition to your current care.

You may not be able to completely unplug the pain signal.

But you might be surprised at what happens when you learn how to reach the volume dial.