For several years, I taught pain management techniques to nurses at two hospitals here in San Antonio.
Many nurses already got the gist of how to talk to the subconscious to calm a patient. In most cases of chronic pain I’ve been involved with, calmer patients experience less pain.
While acute trauma requires different hypnotic treatment, it can still be effective.
One very helpful technique for working with chronic pain is called Objectifying the Pain. Pain is an emotional response. Therefore, if you translate the pain into an object (an analytical response) you can typically shrink or dissolve it.
I have the client describe the pain using size, shape, color, texture, smell, taste and emotion. Then I ask them to take a deep breath and describe it again. Usually they can shrink the pain down to nothing in five or less attempts.