Using Guided Imagery to Help Relieve Chronic Pain

Stress, chronic pain, and depression are often all related. Anxiety, or stress, plays a significant role on the body, primarily affecting the autonomic nervous system. When the body is stressed, the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system becomes activated and the flight/fight system in the brain is turned on. When the stress is over, the body relaxes again and the parasympathetic nervous system, which helps to bring the body back in balance, takes over. In order to lower your stress or anxiety, try using guided imagery to relieve your chronic pain. 

Interestingly, the imagination is the language of the autonomic nervous system. For instance, imagine yourself sucking on a lemon and notice that almost immediately your mouth will fill with saliva. The connection between the imagination and the physical experience is a powerful one.

For this reason, using the imagination as a healing technique has proven to be effective in many clinical settings. Techniques such as Guided Imagery, Ideal Model Imagery, Evocative Imagery, Time Control, and Space Control are interventions used by psychologists and therapists to help change not only the harmful images we tend to carry around, but also relieve physical pain.

Guided Imagery

This is a treatment technique that uses imagination and focus to direct attention on the nervous system, particularly the part of the body that might hold the tension of pain. It can be used on those who have both psychological and physical illnesses.

Ideal Model Imagery

In this treatment modality, the clinician might ask a patient with chronic pain to imagine what it would be like in an ideal situation. For example, an intervention might be, “Imagine what your life would be like if you were no longer experienced pain?” or “Imagine what circumstances and situations you would find yourself in if you were not in physical pain.”

Evocative Imagery

This technique invites an individual to go back in time when he or she was feeling a certain quality that might be useful in the present, such as hope, happiness, courage, patience, or strength. By reconnecting with that quality and bringing it forward, an individual can get out of an emotional rut and experience relief of a painful state.

Space Control

This is a technique that asks a patient with chronic pain to imagine a place that is utterly serene, peaceful, and joyful, a place where depression, pain, and sadness is absent.

Time Control

This technique is similar to Evocative Imagery, in which individuals are invited to return to a time when they experienced happiness. They are asked to remember how others treated them, what their life circumstances were like, and to bring those feelings and memories forward into the present.

These techniques are way to access the powerful tool of the imagination and to rework those deeply embedded images that might have a factor in the pain experienced in the body. More importantly, the guided imagery is a way to restore the body to its relaxed state and to allow those painful parts – the back, the shoulders and neck, or the legs – to find their natural state again. The use of the imagination is becoming more and more a therapeutic tool for clinicians to use to facilitate relaxation and a sense of ease, and in time, create a pain-free life.

By Dr. James  Lin
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