Pain, primarily chronic pain, can be significantly reduced using hypnosis. A study by the University of Göttingen proves that up to 75 percent of medication can be saved thanks to learnable self-hypnosis. Even chronic irritable bowel syndrome can be treated with hypnosis. Hypnosis has a long tradition as a therapeutic method. For thousands of years, suggestions and trance rituals have been important components of healing processes. Their importance in modern psychotherapy, medicine and dentistry is increasingly being recognized again.
Less medication thanks to self-hypnosis
A state of deepest relaxation, accompanied by pleasant images, warmth, a sense of well-being, and forgetting the torment caused by years of back pain, migraine attacks or rheumatism: this is possible with hypnosis and self-hypnosis. Dr. Stefan Jacobs of the Georg-Elias-Müller Institute for Psychology at Göttingen University has investigated this with 28 pain patients. The patients learn to put themselves into a state of deep relaxation when pain attacks occur, thereby reducing the pain. As a result, they can permanently do without 60 to 75 percent of their medication. According to the scientist, the dose of painkillers could be reduced by 60 percent, antidepressants by 63 percent and opiates by as much as 75 percent. The improvements remained stable for most of them over several weeks, as a follow-up examination after three months showed. Overall, the subjects were much better, able to work and socialize again. There has also been success with hypnosis in psychotherapy, for example, for anxiety that is otherwise treated with medication.
Hypnosis for irritable bowel syndrome
Hypnosis works, this has shown a study with more than 200 patients, very successfully against irritable bowel syndrome. Scientists in Manchester treated patients with twelve one-hour hypnosis sessions. 71 percent subsequently spoke of a lasting improvement. The effect lasted up to six years. Irritable bowel syndrome is a widespread condition whose cause is unclear. Those affected suffer mainly from pain in the gastrointestinal tract, irregular bowel movements and flatulence.
Hypnosis for everyone?
Ten sessions with a trained therapist are needed to learn self-hypnosis. During these sessions, an individually discussed audio cassette helps them to enter deep relaxation. Very few patients actually have experience with hypnosis; many wonder if they can be hypnotized at all. And surprisingly high is the number of those for whom such a trance state can be achieved:
- So ten percent of people are very well hypnotizable
- With 80 percent it works well to satisfactorily
- Only with the remaining ten percent it does not go
Hypnosis got a rather bad image, which put it in the vicinity of hocus-pocus, through the show hypnosis on television, which makes patients seemingly will-less beings. But what happens? Well-researched physiological changes occur in trance: Muscle tension, heart rate and blood pressure become lower, breathing steady and slow, stress hormone levels lower.
Hypnosis – the individual phases
The hypnosis state is characterized by three phases:
- In the induction phase, the therapist directs the patient’s attention from the outside to the inside; a state of deep relaxation is suggested. This lasts five to ten minutes, for particularly deep trance states, it may take more time.
- In the treatment phase, attitudes, experience and behavior of the patient are redirected with the help of targeted suggestions and with the help of trance scenes and symbols. Here, the patient’s own, usually hidden forces are awakened. The treatment phase can last from a few minutes (rapid hypnosis) to several hours (for example, surgical procedures), depending on the therapy goal.
- Carefully, in the reorientation phase, the trance is thoroughly withdrawn again by directing the patient’s perception from the inside to the outside again. This also takes a few minutes.
Cost absorption for hypnotherapy
According to the German Society for Hypnosis, hypnotherapy is covered by public health insurance companies only in exceptional cases on application. For private insurance companies, the cost coverage regulations are very different. Before starting therapy, the patient should inform himself about the possibilities of cost coverage at his health insurance.
