Clinical indications for hypnosis

Who might benefit from learning hypnosis – and when might you suggest it? I’m a person who doesn’t really try changing my own pain intensity very often, and most of the people I’ve worked with in therapy are also in the stage of wanting to learn how to live alongside their pain. However, there are some times when modulating pain intensity can be a really helpful part of even this phase of learning to live well with pain. I haven’t found any clinical guidelines suggesting when it might be good to introduce hypnosis, so this is my own clinical reasoning. Remember I work with a particular group of people, and I have my unique approach and practice in pain management, so this reasoning may not resonate with you! Hypnosis, for those who respond well, offers effective pain reduction (up to 40% for some, and on average, around 27 – 30% reduction), but it also offers effects other than reduced pain. Depending on the suggestions made during hypnosis, a person might feel pain as less distressing or intrusive, so that while pain is still intense it doesn’t bother them as much (see Jensen, 2011). In my experience, hypnosis is great for pain reduction if the pain is likely to be short-term, or if the pain reduction from hypnosis doesn’t need to be long-lasting. The pragmatic reason for these suggestions is that hypnosis does take some effort both to learn, and to sustain. When thinking about reducing distress and the intrusive q...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - Category: Anesthesiology Authors: Tags: Chronic pain Coping Skills Coping strategies Resilience/Health Science in practice Clinical reasoning hypnosis Occupational therapy self-hypnosis Source Type: blogs