THREE WAYS TO WORK WITH CHRONIC PAIN IN SERIOUS ILLNESS
Today I want to share with you three ideas about pain management in chronic illness that came from Betty Alice Erickson, the daughter of Milton Erickson, the well-known hypnotist and hypnotherapist. Betty Alice was also a hypnotherapist who taught many of her patients with chronic pain how to manage it through self-hypnosis.
The first important idea is how to lengthen the period of time to alleviate the pain before having to go to the next step–chemical pain management. To lengthen this time period, we need to understand pain better. Pain has two purposes. It warns us of the illness or injury and we are lucky when we have it, because some serious illnesses and ailments don’t allow us to feel the pain, so we don’t know we need to take action. We don’t even know we are in trouble. Pain also functions as a monitor of what is going on. It monitors the healing of an itchy scab on the knee that has covered over the injury; it also monitors deterioration, so that we can know more about what next steps we need to take.
A second way is to understand that all pain has fear in it. It’s not necessarily a fear of death but rather a fear of incapacitation. Nobody desires to lose independence. We need to learn how to put our fear over to the side, right next to us, so it is not right in front of us, getting in the way of where we want to go. The wise part of our unconscious can move the fear. Self-hypnosis and meditation can be learned and used by our wise unconscious to disconnect the fear, so it does not amplify the problem.
A third way is to learn how to forget to notice the pain or notice it only dimly as a form of discomfort. The wise part of our unconscious can learn ways to do it.
Here is an example of a true story told by Betty Alice, who grew up in a time and place when our culture had very different ideas about risk than we do now.
“When my brother and I were 14 and 15 years of age, we went to Meteor Crater in Northern Arizona and it was winter and snowing. We walked to the bottom of the Crater, when you could still do that; we’re in the middle of a snowstorm, in just shirt sleeves, arranging rocks at the bottom to make our initials. But we had to make the initials big enough so they could be seen from the top of the Crater. So here we are lugging these giant boulders. I said to my brother, ‘Allen, if daddy told us to go out in a snow storm, in our shirt sleeves, and move boulders, we’d be really mad.’ But because we defined it differently, it was great.”
Our unconscious already has learned to manage physical and emotional pain to a great extent since every culture has ideas that pain is acceptable to endure for some very important purpose. These purposes range from what is fashionable to what is deeply serious. We can all remember uncomfortable clothes and shoes that we wore all day, taking it for granted, and only noticing how good it felt to take them off. We remember neckties, starched shirts, high heels, curlers, all of them important for work or to make us more attractive to attract a life partner. We bought into some of this, so we already have had some practice in learning to dissociate. More serious issues, often involved in the workplace, brought about both emotional and physical pain that we endured to stay employed.
Getting a chronic illness with serious pain causes us to feel betrayed and angry. We don’t get to choose what we get. Learning all about how to manage that illness can provide a focus that can distract and dissociate from the pain itself. Our wise unconscious can help us learn how to use practical tasks to manage physical pain, our emotions in relationships, in our spiritual practices and our relationship to the universe. Our wise unconscious can help us learn how to accept this journey. We want to take action when we need to and then rest and save our energy for whatever step is coming next. As soon as we begin to feel curious, we have reduced our problems; they are not quite as bad.
THE END
