PAIN CONTROL
Psychologists have a lot of tools that can be helpful in managing pain. Your psychologist, working together with your physician, can find an approach that may help. Hypnosis, while not for everyone, can be quite useful. Milton Erickson developed a number of interventions using basic hypnotic phenomena like dissociation, time distortion, positive and negative hallucinations, and amnesia to apply to pain management. Be sure to get a hypnotist that is trained not only in hypnosis but in psychology, social work or psychiatry, and who has specialized training in both hypnosis and pain control. Dr. Berndt can help you find a hypno-therapist if that is appropriate, and he does some pain control when the situation warrants it. Dr Berndt also has hypnosis tapes available on a number of topics. When hypnosis is done by a trained psychologist, it is usually reimbursed by your insurance as well.
More and more people are turning to alternative health care for pain control. According to a recent study in the American Medical Association, more people are turning to alternative and complimentary medicine than to their family doctors. Acupuncture, herbs and essences like rescue remedy and Kava kava, are becoming as well known as aspirin. Polarity therapy is one of the more interesting and comprehensive systems, derived from the Ayurvedic (Indian) medical tradition. Another alternative is the kind of story telling that medicine men and shamans have used in the Americas and elsewhere for thousands of years. To find out more about Polarity therapy or alternative medicine, visit the web site located at http://pages.ivillage.com/pp/divorcecoach/index.html .
What works best for one individual wont necessarily work best for another. Working with your psychologist, coach, medical doctor, chiropractor and acupuncturist, a team approach is more likely to pay off with better adaptation, and a more personally relevant solution.