On Pain
Welcome to On Pain.
Pain that will not go away takes up an enormous amount of room. It eats your energy, your plans and quite often your patience with people who mean well.
This is a small, practical place. Nothing here promises to cure you. Everything here is something I use myself.
About Barbara
My hypnotherapy practice expanded to specialise in pain management and stress reduction. I share techniques that I use every day.
Behind the scenes I draw upon over thirty four years of experience in hypnotherapy, coaching, NLP, CBT, meditation, mindfulness and stress management.
I was injured in a workplace accident many moons ago and, after a surgeon pushed a surgical screw into my l5 nerve root, I was left with footdrop, retrolisthesis, chronic secondary pain + neuropathy 🎻 and am an ambulatory wheelchair user as a result. Rather than let it define me, I rolled with it (ha).
After becoming disabled, I faced life's challenges head-on (eventually, after sulking, flouncing and doing the self-ableism work)(still working on the self-ableism, that is not pretty), using my experiences to deepen my understanding of healing and well-being.
I use the techniques I teach and share in my own life, every day. When I say a hypnotic-meditation helps with pain, I mean it helps with my pain.
“Pain is whatever the experiencing person says it is, existing whenever and wherever the person says it does.”
Margo McCaffery, 1968
What pain actually is
Pain is not a message sent up from the damaged part of you. It is produced by your brain, every time, after it has weighed up everything it knows about the situation.
How much you hurt and how much damage you have are two different numbers. They are often nowhere near each other.
Chronic pain carries on long after tissue has healed, and sometimes with nothing to point at on any scan. It is still entirely real.
Scans find frightening things in people who feel nothing at all. They find nothing in people who can barely stand up.
Made by your brain does not mean made up. Your brain makes your eyesight too, and nobody tells you the wall is imaginary.
Somewhere along the line you were probably told it was stress, or anxiety, or that you were not coping. You were not making it up then either.
Being believed once does not change much. Having something to do when it is loud does.
A gift, before anything else
ABC 123 Breathing Technique ~ 3 minutes to calm
Download itYours to keep. Put it on your phone so it is there on a bad day.
The Pain Management Toolkit
When pain is loud, decisions can be hard. You know there are things that help. You cannot always remember what they are or find the energy to think.
The toolkit opens with a Wayfinder. What you want or need ~ and it points you straight to the right thing. Tells you what to click.
What you get
Three audio tracks, forty-five minutes in all.
Download them and play whenever you want
Your pain journal, on your device of choice
Save it to your home screen once and it opens with a tap, like any other app. Everything you can write on paper you can record there wherever you are.
Your entries stay on your own device. There are buttons to save a backup, to restore it if you change phone and to print a record to take to appointments.
Printables
A daily tracker page covering pain levels morning and evening, sleep, mood, energy, self-care, triggers, coping, food and drink, medications, and the small good things.
Print it, or duplicate it in GoodNotes, Notability or Xodo and build up your record digitally.
There is a Notes page too ~ free writing, no rules, nothing to fill in ~ for whatever will not fit in a box.
What is inside
- 1Start Here ~ your Wayfinder, plus a plain list version
- 2About Your Toolkit ~ what everything is, and a guide to every section of the tracker
- 3Daily Pain + Comfort Tracker ~ your daily page, print or digital
- 4Pacing Tips ~ ten reminders for spending your energy well
- 5Pain Soothing Mind-Loop ~ audio, 5 minutes
- 6Healing Colours Meditation ~ audio, 20 minutes
- 7Relaxing Music ~ audio, 20 minutes
- 8Your Pain Journal App ~ the address, your passcode, and how to save it to your home screen
- 9Notes ~ free writing, no rules, “do you”
Plus an all-in-one file with every printable together, for GoodNotes, Notability or Xodo.
Delivered as a single zip file, straight after checkout. All printables are A4 and print cleanly in black and white.
If you want a little more
The toolkit is built to work on its own. Sometimes you want it shaped around your situation rather than everybody's.
One session, online or by phone, camera optional. We go through what is happening with your pain, what you have already tried and what is worth your energy next. You keep the toolkit and use it differently afterwards.
For people who already have the toolkit.
Put session in the subject box or it falls into the spam grinder.
Questions
Do I need a referral?
No, though I do accept referrals. If you are having treatment, check with your GP or whoever is caring for you. I am happy to write to your doctor.
Can I claim it on medical insurance?
It is up to you to check whether your policy lets you self-refer. I issue receipts.
Will this replace my treatment?
No. Nothing here is medical advice and nothing here asks you to stop anything. Keep working with your medical team.
Do I need to have tried hypnosis before?
No. Nothing in the toolkit assumes you have done any of this before.
Lastly
This audio is intended as a self-help tool. It is not a substitute for medical care or professional treatment.
Please listen to the audio only when it is safe to do so (for example, not while driving or operating machinery).