We understand pain as a physical sensation which causes discomfort and suffering and if you should happen to lift a heavy weight awkwardly, for example, and injure your back you will probably be able to point exactly to the place on you back where the pain is felt.

When you injure yourself, however, the actual sequence of events is as follows:

1.	Injury happens
2.	Chemicals transmit the pain message to your spinal cord
3.	Message transmits to the brain where the location is deciphered and your response occurs...

So we could say that pain is felt in your brain rather than your body.

(I have described pain from an injury in this example but the sequence of events is the same whatever the source of the pain, whether it be chronic pain or pain from surgery/illness etc.)

People’s experience of pain and intensity of experience are very variable and research has shown this depends on a number of things:

1.	Your personal characteristics
2.	Your emotional state
3.	Your previous experience or association with pain
4.	Your perception of what the pain is going to mean to you

These four things are very much inter-related. For example a lot of research has been done on soldiers in battle and it has been discovered that soldiers with fairly severe injuries need much less medication than civilians with the same type of injury – the difference being that the soldiers connect a severe injury with being sent home and removed from their situation of fear and stress on the battle field – so there is a positive outcome from the pain. The civilian, however, has been caused fear and stress by his injury and there is no positive outcome for him so he feels the pain more strongly even though the extent of the injury may be very similar.

The same goes for people who suffer chronic pain which is very debilitating and often results in anxiety, depression, fatigue and insomnia. The dread of continuing pain leads to a cycle of despair and unhappiness which causes the sufferer to focus on their situation and so increase the chronic pain in the same way as the civilian above because there seems no end or positive result available to them.

Personality traits also make a difference here because these can contribute to the way that pain is felt. A person with low motivation who has become passive and dependent on others may perceive that they have no control over their lives and therefore no control over their pain.


So research shows:

	Fear, stress and lack of control = increased pain
	and
	Positive attitude, perceived benefits and feeling in control = less pain

This only makes sense if it is the brain that controls the intensity of the pain rather than the injury that initiated it - and understanding this is the first step towards using hypnotherapy to control pain of any type.

Most pain sufferers can acknowledge that their pain varies throughout the day. If something takes their attention then the pain may feel less and most people feel their discomfort to be worse at night when everyone else is asleep and they are left to focus fully on their distress.

Hypnotherapy can teach a pain sufferer to use his or her mind to reduce pain at will and direct their attention away from it. Your brain is an amazing resource – don’t waste it!