unusual pain hypnosis session

First, is it psychosomatic? Try taking her under and asking what's causing this pain. Maybe the headache is a result of stress or something like that, and the reason you can't get rid of it is that you're treating the symptom, not the actual illness.

If it's not psychosomatic, it still might be a symptom. I believe that brain tumors cause headaches, as well as a number of other serious maladies. If she hasn't seen a doctor about this yet, you should recommend that she do so.

Second, look for reference experiences. Most people try painkillers before they try hypnosis. If this is the case with her, she already has that reference experience in her mind of feeling that pain go away. Try giving that to her again. Have her describe what it feels like to take painkillers, and then feed that experience back to her. Then tell her that all of the power of these painkillers is becoming focused on the areas where she gets these headaches. This is for two reasons: 1. it makes it stronger where she needs it, and 2. it makes it weaker where she doesn't -- we don't want her to accidentally cook the skin off her hand because she couldn't feel the pain of a hot stove burner.

Third, consider that the pain may have become a core belief by now. What I mean is, some people will tell you "I smoke an occasional cigarette" while other people will tell you "I am a smoker." In the latter case, the people are defining themselves by their smoking. We don't have a neat little word in English for a person to define herself by her headaches, but if she's experienced it nearly constantly for two years, she may well be defining her life with the pain. If this is the case, you may have to treat her belief that she can't be without pain in roughly the way you'd treat a chronic smoker.

Thanks salad,

I'm of the belief that all illness is psychosomatic, so yes. (I understand I may be wrong). I have asked her what negative emotion the pain represents and she said 'frustration', so I'll try something with that next time. Any suggestions there would be appreciated!

She's been to specialists, been hospitalized, been scanned head to toe etc etc, so there's no concern in that sense. No drugs has ever made any difference, including infusions of various anti-migraine, steroids etc. She's only ever had moderate strength pain killers, which is good in the sense that I don't have to battle addiction to opiates.

I do think that there may be some secondary gain issues. Maybe I could ask what will happen if the pain goes away??

I don't know about this woman but I want to share my believes, I believe that the ALERTED state of the mind is what brings lots of side-effects. When an ANIMAL become ALERT ( for example a dog ) he only stands alerted for a short time but than he relax again



so the dog on this picture he is doing his best to understand whats happening an earthquake or whatsoever but when he is done with that he relaxes , he opens mouth, he breaths deeper maybe something like this



the problem I would say is that we humans find it difficult to relax maybe we don't see it as an option we can choose, we stand in ALERTED mode most of the times, we are never done, and this sure creates different side-effects

Yeah, I think you're right. Look for secondary gains. I don't think a reference experience of being without pain is going to help here. It sounds like it's completely psychosomatic, so secondary gains are the way to go.

Have you tried just asking her unconscious mind what is causing the pain? I've never had it happen with someone with chronic pain like this, but I have had instances where subjects were able to tell me exactly what was causing headaches, and once I addressed that issue, it was very easy to stop the headache itself.

Thanks again salad.

I will do that - maybe as a dynamic imagery exercise.