A few years ago, I was in and out of A&E every month. I had to reduce my hours at work because of the pain I was experiencing. I had ultrasounds, blood samples, saw different specialists. And no one could find any cause of the pain I was experiencing. I couldn’t walk without pain, yet I was told it was all in my head.

Then, my mum sent me a newspaper article about how hypnotherapy can be very effective for chronic pain. I knew nothing about hypnosis or hypnotherapy at this point, but I was willing to try anything so booked a session with a hypnotherapist.

The pain went away.

It wasn’t magic – it took effort and change from me, as well as open-mindedness and trust in the process. But it worked, where nothing else had.

My experience is what led me to specialise in hypnosis for chronic pain, and ultimately to work with para-athletes, for whom chronic and recurrent pain is a particular barrier to consistent training and performance.

Pain is generated by the brain as a protective fear response to a real or perceived threat — we touch something hot, for example, and the brain creates pain to warn us of danger. This is called nociceptive pain – pain that comes from nociceptors.

We also have neuropathic pain, or pain due to nerve damage. This works in much the same way: we have nerve damage, which causes a fear response in the brain, creating pain in response to this fear.

The type of pain I was experiencing back in 2021 was nociplastic pain. There was nothing wrong with my tissues, muscles or bones – nothing that should be causing the pain I was experiencing. My brain was creating this pain as a fear response to the stress I was experiencing in work and life. As I became hyper-vigilant to the pain, the fear response increased and so did the pain, in a vicious cycle.

Phantom limb pain, where neural pathways fire pain signals even though the nerve endings are no longer there, is one of the most striking examples of nociplastic pain, and one that hypnosis has a strong evidence base for treating.

Pain exists on a continuum: from nociceptive and neuropathic pain to nociplastic pain. This means that hypnosis is a great complement to medical care, physiotherapy and other support – working on both sides of the continuum at the same time to manage both the pain and its cause.

Hypnosis works for pain management no matter which type of pain we are experiencing, because all pain is created in the brain, as a fear response. In hypnosis, we can therefore use the brain as a tool to change, reduce or, in some cases, eradicate pain. We can also intercept the fear responses and use nervous system regulation – through hypnosis and somatics – to prove to the body that it is safe; reducing the fear response.

One previous para-athlete I worked with, who experienced near-constant pain due to her disability, found pain-control hypnosis life-changing.

She said it was “like a cocktail of drugs without the hangover”.

Working on pain control through hypnosis and on nervous-system regulation through somatics and mindfulness allowed her to reduce her pain level day-to-day, control flare-ups as they happened, and significantly reduce reliance on pain control medications. This allowed her to return to training feeling safe, confident and in control, and recover more effectively afterwards.

Hypnosis is also highly effective for many of the other symptoms that come hand-in-hand with pain. It can be very effective in improving sleep and reducing symptoms of fatigue, for example. Somatic tracking and interoception support healthy training habits, while habit building and mental rehearsal can reinforce these.

Specific, fear-inducing situations – like hospital visits or stressful commutes – can be dealt with through CBT and hypnosis, managing both the situation and your emotional response to it.

The best part of this is that you don’t need a hypnotherapist to access it. Once you have worked with someone and learned self-hypnosis, you can practice it on your own, whenever you need. So those flare-ups are manageable in real-time, restoring a sense of agency and helping you feel less controlled by pain and more in partnership with your body.

During the Paralympics I am doing a special offer: book a free session with me here.

In the near future I will also be creating a short course on hypnosis for phantom limb pain. If this is something that you’re interested in, be the first to find out about the course by signing up to my mailing list here.