Gwen Henkel, our Master Medical Hypnotherapist wrote an article on Fibromyalgia and Hypnosis in The California Woman Magazine for the March/April 2008Issue. Decrease pain with hypnotherapy. It worked for Gwen. Read her story below if you or someone you know has pain.
Check out the article below:
Fibromyalgia and Hypnosis, Gwenn Henkel’s Personal Story
By: Gwenn Henkel, CMH, MH
Certified Medical and Master Hypnotherapist
The day was June 21, 1995 at 4:45 PM, when my life changed from a very physically active 43- year -old, 112- pound runner and weight trainer. That was the moment when I fell victim to a prank played in the Coronary Care Unit where I worked at Stanford University Medical Center in Palo Alto, California. I fell on my tailbone and sustained injuries to my spine and neck. To make things worse, I fell again 6 months later in the bathtub, on my tailbone, compounding all the injuries I had spent 6 months trying to heal.
More medications were tried to help the daily pain and migraines than I can even recall. I am a very drug sensitive person, which made it difficult for the doctors who treated me. After a year of failed procedures and therapies, the symptoms became far more intense than just back and neck pain. I hurt from head to toe. It felt like having a really bad flu, and exhaustion that came over me as if I were a narcoleptic. Doctors were baffled, and my story was becoming less believable. One QME (Qualified Medical Examiner) assigned to examine me for Worker’s Comp, accused me of just not wanting to go back to work! It seemed impossible for me to be experiencing all that I was describing when all I had done was fall on my bottom! And besides that, I LOOKED fine.
Fortunately, my chiropractor believed that my pain was real, and referred me to the Sequoia Pain Clinic. It was a good thing I was finally in the care of a group of doctors who treated me mind and body, because by this time the constant flaring pain had made me feel suicidal. I would stand in the shower crying and pounding the walls and begging to die. I had changed from that 112 pound athletic woman who’s goal was to be fit, fabulous and fifty, to a 190+ pound professional patient. I was dead weight with depression, and my new marriage in serious trouble because of all that I was going through. I was not myself anymore.
I was shortly thereafter diagnosed with FIBROMYALGIA, MYOFASCIAL PAIN SYNDROME and CHRONIC FATIGUE SYNDROME. Big words that meant that I had three conditions that there was no cure for. Strange as it may seem, I was relieved to just have names for what I was feeling, because I was beginning to think I was crazy.
My doctors at the pain clinic suggested that since drug and physical therapy were not helping me, I should try hypnosis. I laughed. But my doctor, who I trusted and respected, talked to me about how the mind/body connection worked, and I decided to look into it.
Because of how the Fibromyalgia affected my cognitive abilities, I didn’t trust just anyone doing hypnosis with me, so I began hypnosis classes, hoping that I could help myself with the pain levels. Even massage didn’t help because it hurt to even touch me.
It became my goal to now find out all that I could about Fibro and what was causing the pain. After much research, I discovered a case study done on 100 Fibro patients by a doctor who had Fibro herself. This study gave me the answers that I needed to change what was happening in my brain, where the false pain messages were being sent to my nerve endings, telling me I was in pain for no good reason. For the first time I could help myself, because I knew where to draw my focus for hypnosis visualization. By this time, I was in Medical Hypnotherapy classes.
After just three months of working with the techniques I had put together, I was 50% better! My doctor weaned me off my medications. After three more months, a total now of six months, I was 85% better and was actually getting my life back on track. I had also lost 25 of the 80+ pounds I had put on.
I may still have all of these conditions, but they do NOT have me! I can control a Fibro flare in just seconds. I literally eat, sleep and breathe what I do and teach others to do the same. I can work out again and have released the weight thanks to hypnosis.
I am one of those people who believe that things happen for a reason, and I admit; that years ago, I couldn’t think of a good reason for what had happened to me at all. Believe me, I tried to find one. Now I know that I had to experience these awful conditions in order to become the person I am today.
Hypnosis can help you:
Change Your Life by Changing Your Mind! TM
Gwenn Henkel, CMH, MH
Optimal Fitness Lifestyle Center
951-A Industrial Road
San Carlos, CA. 94070
650 380-2494
