A tantalizing new study by Clare Philips and
Debbie Samson shows that some pain-sufferers can get relief by "re-imagining"
their pain away:
After being interviewed about their baseline pain and their psychological
state - including feelings of mental defeat, anxiety and depression
- the participants were asked to select their most powerful and distressing
pain-related mental image. "I see myself on all fours - like a
dog but unable to move," said one. All participants spent time
forming this "index image" in their mind before answering
more questions about how they were feeling. Focusing on the unpleasant
image increased pain and emotional distress. Remember, this is an image
that the participants experienced spontaneously in their everyday lives
(for nearly half of them, it came to mind several times a day).
Next, after a six-minute gap talking about where they grew up (as a
distraction), 26 of the participants were taught to re-picture their
pain. They were asked to think "how would you rather see the image?"
and to describe in detail what this would entail. They then focused
on this new image - for example, the participant above who'd previously
described the dog-image now imagined: "I am at the start of a race….the
gun goes off and the crowd cheers as I take off." The remaining
participants acted as controls and spent the same time focused on their
original, unpleasant index image.
After picturing a "re-scripted" pain image, the participants
in that group experienced a dramatic drop in their pain levels. In fact,
49 per cent of them said they felt no pain at that time, compared with
11 per cent of them feeling no pain after imagining their index image.
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