Agliophobia is fear of pain and often develops after either suffering a great deal of pain themselves, such as an accident, or that they have witnessed a great deal of pain in another.
Often these individuals may have a hightened sense of pain, with a low tolerence threshold. A test can be carried out with a bucket of ice to see how long the pain can be tolerated. Men often tolerate pain for longer than women in these tests. Physical size can be a factor too.
Hypnotherapy and the other tools used can be very useful in distracting the person away from the pain signals as part of the pain management programme.
We can also use the Swish and Rewind techniques to help overcome any previous trauma.
Case Study 1 – Fear of pain brought on by school videos
Jenny was watching a sex-education film at school and in the scenes where a woman was giving birth to a baby, became so traumatised she ran out of the room screaming, vowing never to have children because of the fear of pain which might make her scream.
Throughout her life Jenny avoided doing anything dangerous because she didn’t want to end up in hospital. She was terrified of medical proceedures and avoided sports. She also had a very low threshold of pain, telling me that her husband could hold a cup of tea withought any problems, but she had to take the handles as cups were too painful for her. Same with baths and showers, they weren’t hot, and swimming in cold water pools and the sea proved too painful.
When she came to see me, she was on a waiting list for major surgery. In her 50s, she finally couldn’t avoid the inevitable. We worked over a period of 6 weeks helping her overcome the trauma of the video. Helping her distract when faced with a medical procedure such as an injection, biopsy or canula inserted. The tools helped her gain more control of the fear – expecially the breathing exercises. I taught her how to numb her arm and how relaxing can help with pain management.
The hospital stay
Jenny came back to me about a month after surgery to report how things had gone. She had been warned by her sister that despite being given morphine, she’d still feel the pain but wouldn’t care. This did discombolulate her slightly, but she said with her tools she was able to stop her anxiety running away with her. She was rather pleased when the head anaethatist started to ask her about her “Happy place”. As she recognised that it was one of the exercises we had done.
She had felt that the pain had been too much to bear at one point after the operation. She wasn’t allowed any more morphine, so she listened to my MP3 continuosly for hours until she was able to tollerate it more.
It wasn’t an experience Jenny wanted to repeat, but at least she felt happy having the tools for future use.