What do you think of CBT for pain management?
This past Friday, I visited a graduate program that I am interested in attending in Atlanta. For those of you not in the know, I am hoping to study the neuropsychology of hypnosis at a doctoral level. Of course a bonus that the coursework would lead to a license which would allow me to provide even better care to my clients. Of course being a medical hypnotist, lots of questions seem to occur.
However, I was asked what my opinion was of CBT for pain management. Without opening a can of worms, I have to admit that I do not find CBT to be particularly effective for pain management, especially given the significantly higher success rate of hypnotherapy and SFT. The difference tends to be significant. 40-50% for CBT while hypnotherapy is approaching 90 to 100% in most cases. In addition, CBT has not allowed patients to undergo childbirth or surgery without pain management. Hypnosis, on the other hand, has been highly successful in those areas.
The student mentioned that guided imagery that she did in CBT seemed similar to hypnosis. Indeed, it is. That is because they are related areas. It is not, as some believe, that CBT invented it… far from it. Like hypnosis, it goes back millennia and some form of which has been found in most ancient cultures, from Greeks to the Native Americans and has been frequently combined. CBT adopted a very watered down version of what the average trained hypnotherapist learns in hypnotherapy school and tends to miss the trance part which is what makes guided imagery so much more effective.
To become a trained hypnotherapist requires hundreds of hours training and mastering the techniques, including several classes on imagery and still this does not include hours spent on specialty certifications in imagery. I am not so sure someone who is exclusively focused on CBT gets the same level of specialized training as a properly trained hypnotherapist can get. But they are two separate techniques. In an upcoming post, I will be discussing using clinical hypnosis and CBT together.
I do believe CBT is very good for weight loss and my weight loss program does include a few “proper” CBT techniques and one could argue that in that program the CBT aspect is likely more important than the hypnosis.
Melvin S. Marsh is a certified hypnotherapist in Augusta, Georgia with additional certifications in Pain Management and Childbirth. He performs hypnotherapy appointments both in person and worldwide virtually. He can be reached at www.afterhyourshypnotherapy.com .
