Feeling Helpless in the Face of Pain?

Here Are 4 Ways That Visualization May Be Able to Ease You Back into Control

Using visualizations to reduce pain may be unlike anything else you've tried. It not only gives you the chance to feel better, but does so in a way that may be able to relieve your sense of helplessness.

When you have back pain or pain in the neck or other extremities, arthritis pain, fibromyalgia pain, or neuropathic pain (nerve pain), it can seem like everything around you robs you of control:

• The pain has a life and a schedule of its own. It comes and goes when it pleases, and you're almost powerless to affect it.

• Your doctor and her staff have absolute control over your comfort yet they may seem indifferent to your urgency to get your Rx refilled.

• Your pharmacist seems to think you're becoming an addict and sometimes embarrasses you in front of other patrons with condescending remarks.

• Your family won't let you drive because your meds make you groggy.

• Your spouse may not understand the level of pain you feel, and is angry at how much the pain prevents you from pulling your load in the relationship.

If any of these concerns apply to you, take heart. Virtually everyone who's tried using visualization statements to program their subconscious has reported benefits that go beyond simple pain relief to include feeling more powerful. Even if the reduction in discomfort is minimal, they still feel like they're gaining back psychological control of their lives.

Programming the Subconscious

Visualization statements represent the specific language that your subconscious wants you to read back to it to help ease your pain. They’re simple and are targeted directly at the main factors that could bring you relief.

You can obtain these statements by learning how to communicate directly with your own subconscious mind. The process is straightforward and can be done at home by working with a facilitator over the telephone. You you need no special skills and no previous experience in working with the subconscious.

Here are some important ways in which visualization statements can help you reduce feelings of helplessness:

1. Talking Down the Pain

Visualizations allow you to directly address your pain. For example, depending on what your subconscious indicates, you may visualize things such as your muscles being relaxed and free of pain, or pain signals being weakened before they reach your brain.

You'll soon find that it can be exhilarating to make those statements. They're a declaration of your birthright to be free of pain. And they're a specific set of instructions to your subconscious to get busy and fix the problem.

Best of all they're proactive, taking you out of the passive stance that you have when you're feeling helpless. Instead of being at the effect of your pain, you can begin to feel like you're directly taking responsibility for relieving it.

2. Giving Yourself Your Own Natural Pain Meds

Most sets of pain relief visualization statements include highly detailed instructions from the subconscious on brain and body chemistry. For example, instead of relying solely on drugs to lower glutamate, substance P, and the other pain amplifiers, you're working to reduce your own supply naturally.

And instead of depending exclusively on an Rx to increase the action of endorphins or serotonin, you're directly instructing your subconscious to produce more on its own. Even if the reduction in pain is only slight, you may feel like you've gained a victory over doctors, nurses and pharmacists. You're seemingly dispensing your own pain meds without having to worry about refills or side effects.

3. Reasserting Yourself In the Family

If due to your condition you're not being given respect by your loved ones, visualizations can help you stand up for yourself.

Even if relief hasn't kicked in, and even if it does so with only slight benefit, the visualization process can have a healthy impact on your self-esteem. For example, negative emotions such as anger, confusion and shame can directly be addressed. You may find that they lessen in impact as the days go by.

And at the same time, positive emotions such as eagerness, happiness and strength can be visualized. You may feel them grow in influence as time passes.

Even if your pain circumstances don't change much, your experience of them may shift as your emotions are worked on by the subconscious. This may give you more confidence when dealing with well-meaning but sometimes overbearing family members.

4. Cutting Helplessness Off At the Source

Ultimately visualizations help you deal with helplessness by giving you the very real experience of being the expert. You, not your doctor, pharmacist or family now have expertise regarding your own pain, because you've accessed your subconscious and found out what it thinks is needed to ease your pain.

The statements you derive from it and feed back to it will probably cover a wide range of body systems and functions--brain chemistry, body structure, the immune system, hormones, emotions, food, and sleep. The mix will be entirely unique to you, and will represent the opposite of helplessness--a powerful tool aimed at programming your subconscious to provide relief

Programming the Subconscious

The subconscious is quite powerful. When programmed through the very visualizations that it suggests, it may be able to turn episodes of uncontrolled pain and helplessness into events over which you have a degree of control.

Ben Plumb is CEO and President of The Visualization Group, Inc. The company’s service is delivered by people like himself who personally suffered from years of chronic pain, and used the visualization method described in this article to obtain relief when nothing else worked. For more information, please visit http://www.thevisualizationgroup.com.

(c) 2005 The Visualization Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved. The methodology and program disclosed in this article are Patent Pending.

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