Maybe what I did was similar-- not sure. I think the mental work is very useful, and in a pain crisis it can add to your confidence, cuz you know you have something to help get you thru. I took self-hypnosis 1 in a community class ---recliners and all, lol, and I appreciated it and took self hypnosis 2. I liked it very much, and it is a skill that can get you deep inside your mind, yet seperate from your body. Hard to explain. It's not just being deeply relaxed and really
open to the suggestions you make to yourself. There was something more there.
I got really good at "going deep" very quickly, and at that point the process becomes more convenient, also.
Then 8-9 yrs later I was in a pain clinic and did a bit more hypnosis work. The head doctor encouraged me to try it in public settings, I had done it once before with my eyes
open, and sitting upright, and I did find it helpful for something like a headache just starting up at a baseball game. At one point, because of my med sensitivities, my doc didn't want me using certain painkilling meds. I used self hypnosis for dental drilling. I wasn't great at it, but I managed. I don't really care to do it again...but that's a significant pain challenge, and I did it.
When I entered the pain clinic I was having my trapezius muscles do a visible, hard contraction --about
every 30 seconds on the right side, and day and night. It was just under control with anti-seizure meds and relaxers. Within a few weeks, with hypnosis and using imagery, imagining myself using scissors to cut the nerve to the muscle, I got it under better control and was able to stop the med at some point.
Occasionally (rarely) it wants to start up again, and with some relatively brief work I can successfully do this imagery again.
I've done other mental exercises as well, like biofeedback, other imagery. These various mind exercises, relaxation techniques, remind me of sport. If you slack off, you get rusty, and it becomes more time consuming to get to that receptive/relaxed state. It's a discipline you learn, and you can kind of unlearn it, lose the focus, concentration. You still have the skill tho, even tho it might take a bit longer, and in times of need it's good to have it to fall back on. It probably would have been better had i stayed mentally conditioned, because when it takes you longer to get to the right mental state, then you tend to begin not doing it.
But I did use the relaxation techniques for many more years, and no doubt back then it helped with other things like settling my mind for sleep.
Post Edited (Rockon) : 5/25/2014 12:04:55 PM (GMT-6)