Chronic Pain/Illness

The Impact of Living With A Chronic Health Condition

When working with clients with chronic pain and illness we are looking beyond the symptoms. Instead we are looking holistically at the person, their work, relationships, hobbies and their family and support network, as chronic health issues can affect all of these areas. Then drawing up a treatment plan that will ensure their internal environment is in the best place possible to deal with the extra demands on it.

Acupuncture and Nutritional Therapy alongside psychological therapy are some of the evidence based therapies that have been proven to make lasting beneficial changes to the way our bodies function. These therapies can be used to support organ function, hormone balance, nervous system activity, sleep, digestion and symptom control.

We also take into account whether the client has slowly developed their condition or suddenly become unwell through accident, stroke or disease, will also have a bearing on the impact the illness is having on them practically and emotionally.

Sudden illness can carry with it trauma, fear, uncertainty, along with the need to make unexpected adjustments to how they live their lives. whereas with long standing illness the client has often developed a sense of identity around the condition that can manifest as maladaptive behaviours, unhelpful beliefs around their abilities, depression or anxiety. Psychological support through counselling, coaching, hypnotherapy, ACT, CBT and the highly effective IEMT is therefore immensely valuable when helping the client achieve their best potential outcome.

Understanding Chronic Pain

You may be surprised to learn that pain is made in the brain, not as you may expect, in the part of the body where you are feeling the pain. So it is not surprising then that there is a direct correlation between the state of someone’s emotions and their level of pain.

The processes and pathways that make up our experience that we call pain can become over sensitised and disrupted by trauma, stress and even by our own thoughts, fears and imaginations, causing our bodies to get stuck in a self-perpetuating cycle of a defence system response and the habit of pain.

Hypnotherapy, NLP, Mindfulness and even happiness training, because they all work directly on brain activity, have all been found to not only lessen pain but also greatly increase a person’s quality of life and level of optimism. This means that even when pain still exists the impact emotionally and physically is greatly reduced.

The Healthful Mind Programme for Chronic Pain & Illness

Developed by our clinic owner Alexa Warner, who spent 30 years crippled by chronic pain and illness that left her unable to work, anxious, registered disabled and on crutches for 6 years. It was by chance that an NLP evening class began what became her recovery journey and consequently training in the numerous therapies and practices she now uses with her clients.

Since then she has spent the past 12 years studying and working with clients to put together a practical and effective programme called The Healthful Mind. It takes clients through a process of internal rebalancing and emotional healing using proven techniques from hypnosis, NLP, CBT, ACT, Mindfulness and more. The programme not only addresses the symptoms and the causes of anxiety, pain and illness, but also as discussed in this page it addresses the wider impact, giving clients back control of their body, mind and lives.

The Healthful Mind programme is available one to one and in group, both in clinic and online. To find out more please contact Alexa at the clinic to book a free introductory consultation.

You might also like to watch this Understanding and resolving pain Masterclass video above.

You can find out more about how acupuncture can help with chronic pain and illness HERE

If you would also like to consider Nutritional Therapy or functional Health Testing, then please take a look at our page HERE