Living with fibromyalgia can be exhausting.
Persistent pain, disturbed sleep, fatigue and the emotional strain of dealing with symptoms day after day can have an enormous impact on quality of life. And when you have been living with pain for a long time, it can begin to affect far more than your body. It can influence how you sleep, how you feel, what you do and even how safe you feel doing everyday activities.
So where might hypnotherapy fit in?
The first thing to make clear is that fibromyalgia is a genuine physical condition. Hypnotherapy isn't about telling someone that their pain is imaginary or that it is simply "all in their head".
Nor should hypnotherapy replace appropriate medical care.
Instead, hypnotherapy can be used as a complementary approach, working with some of the ways we experience and respond to chronic pain, including the effects of stress, sleep, emotions and anticipation.
Pain is there for a reason
Pain normally has a useful purpose.
If you put your hand too close to something hot, pain makes you move it. If you injure yourself, pain can encourage you to rest and protect the affected area.
The difficulty with chronic pain is that the relationship between the original problem, the nervous system and our ongoing experience of pain can become much more complicated.
That is why my approach isn't simply to tell someone in hypnosis:
"Turn the pain off."
Pain may still contain information that the person needs.
Instead, we can explore whether there are aspects of the pain experience that no longer need to be as intense, intrusive or distressing while allowing the body to retain any genuinely useful protective signals.
The connection between stress and pain
Another important area to explore is stress.
Many people living with chronic conditions notice that their symptoms aren't identical every day. There may be better periods and more difficult periods.
- So I am interested in questions such as:
- What was happening during the better periods?
- What was different during the more difficult periods?
- Does stress make a difference?
- What about sleep?
- Does worry about the pain itself increase tension or discomfort?
These questions don't imply that stress causes fibromyalgia. They help us understand the individual person's experience and identify areas where therapeutic work might be useful.
Changing your relationship with chronic pain
When somebody has experienced pain for months or years, understandably, a great deal of attention can become focused upon it.
You may begin anticipating it before doing something.
"If I do that, I'm going to hurt later."
You may become anxious when symptoms change.
You may find yourself constantly checking how your body feels.
And the condition can gradually affect confidence, activity, relationships and your sense of yourself.
This is one of the areas where hypnotherapy can be particularly interesting.
Rather than fighting with the body, we can work with the subconscious processes involved in the your experience of pain, helping you to develop a different response to sensations, stress and the anticipation of discomfort.
What about diet?
Diet may also be worth considering as part of the wider picture.
That doesn't mean there is one particular "fibromyalgia diet" that will be right for everybody, nor does it mean that changing your diet will cure fibromyalgia. However, some people may find it useful to consider whether diet and eating patterns have any relationship with how they feel.
This might include noticing whether particular foods or eating habits seem to coincide with better or more difficult periods, or following dietary advice that has been recommended by an appropriately qualified healthcare professional.
There can also be a role for hypnotherapy where someone has already decided to make appropriate changes but finds that habits, cravings, comfort eating or emotional eating make those changes difficult to maintain.
The important point is to look at the whole person. Pain, stress, sleep, emotional wellbeing, activity and diet don't necessarily exist independently of one another.
Fibromyalgia can be complex, which is why understanding the individual person and their particular experience matters.
Any significant dietary or nutritional changes relating to a medical condition should be discussed with an appropriately qualified healthcare or nutrition professional.
Hypnotherapy for fibromyalgia isn't about pretending the pain isn't there
Good pain-management work should be individual.
For one person, stress may be particularly significant. For another, sleep may be a major problem. Someone else may have developed considerable fear around movement or particular situations because they anticipate an increase in pain.
There can also be emotional experiences associated with living with chronic pain: frustration, fear, anger, loss and sometimes a feeling that life has become organised around the condition.
That means I wouldn't approach every person with fibromyalgia using an identical script or technique.
The important question is:
What is happening for this particular person, and what would they like to be different?
What might we work on?
Depending upon the individual, hypnotherapy may focus on areas such as:
Managing the subjective experience of chronic pain
Reducing unnecessary tension and stress
Improving relaxation
Changing unhelpful anticipation around pain
Working with emotional responses associated with living with a chronic condition
Supporting relaxation and addressing some of the thoughts or behaviours that may be getting in the way of sleep
Building confidence in what the person can do
Helping the condition occupy less psychological space in everyday life
The objective isn't to promise a cure.
It is to discover whether we can help you experience greater comfort, control and quality of life while continuing to respect what your body genuinely needs.
A complementary approach
If you have fibromyalgia, you should remain under the appropriate care of your GP, consultant or other healthcare professional.
Hypnotherapy should complement that care rather than replace it. I will also want to understand your medical history, medication and how your condition currently affects you before deciding whether hypnotherapy is appropriate.
Living with chronic pain can make your world smaller.
The therapeutic goal isn't to tell you that the pain isn't real.
It's to explore whether your experience of it can change, whether some of the stress surrounding it can reduce, and whether you can begin putting more of your attention back onto living your life rather than continually managing your condition.
Interested in finding out whether hypnotherapy could help?
If you're living with fibromyalgia or another chronic pain condition and would like to discuss whether hypnotherapy may be appropriate for you, get in touch to arrange an initial conversation.
There are no promises of a miracle cure. Just an opportunity to understand what's happening for you and explore whether there is a useful way forward.
Every person's experience of fibromyalgia is different, so any therapeutic approach needs to begin with the individual rather than the diagnosis.
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