Pain can also often be associated with distress and anxiety, and sometimes with fear. People vary considerably in their pain threshold – the level of discomfort that they can endure. Also a person’s response to pain is modified by their past experience. Factors such as insomnia, anxiety, and depression will equally lower tolerance to pain.

Many descriptions are used for pain, such as throbbing, penetrating, gnawing, aching, burning and gripping.

Pain relief

The usual treatment of pain is with drugs, with analgesics being used for mild or moderate pain. Severe pain may require narcotic drugs, such morphine or pethidine. Chronic or recurrent pain may also be relieved by acupuncture or hypnosis.

Hypnosis and Pain

Hypnosis has been used to alleviate pain for a very long time – probably over thousands of years. More recently, there have been several televised programmes of surgery where no anaesthesia was used. The only means of eliminating the pain had been hypnosis.

The patient was fully aware of the surgery, being awake throughout the operation, yet in that lovely state of focused relaxation - we call hypnosis - he experienced no discomfort. In fact, when asked what it felt like when the surgeon made an incision, he replied his only sensation was a slight tingling feeling!

Certainly, the surgeon was very impressed as the patient just walked away immediately after the operation. There were no after-effects from more conventional anaesthetics! So, hypnosis is a very powerful and effective means of dulling major pain.