How to cope with pain. How to learn to endure pain: simple and practical tips

O. And when it is not able to pass for a long time, even the most calm person despair and irritability appear. That’s why it’s so important to learn techniques that help get rid of physical pain. You may need analgesics, aroma oils and a little patience.

How to respond to pain

Wherever the pain is located, you should not ignore it. Thus, the body sends signals that not everything is in order. When the attack is tolerable and one-time, you can try to cope with the pain yourself. But when self-medication does not help for several hours, the pain becomes stronger and spreads throughout the body, you should immediately consult a doctor.

Get rid of overvoltage

Muscular and headache often appear from overexertion. Therefore, to improve your well-being, sometimes it’s quite simple to relax. You need to lie down, close your eyes, try to think about something pleasant. In order to enhance the effect, it is worth carrying out breathing exercises. Try to take a deep, long breath, then begin to exhale slowly. It is worth repeating the gymnastics seven to ten times. Occurs out of habit slight dizziness. This condition is not dangerous for the body, but when the sensations are perceived as too unpleasant for you, you can limit yourself to three to five inhalations and exhalations.

Acupressure shown

Can be quite effective acupressure in the fight against pain. If you experience a headache for three minutes, start massaging your neck, in particular, the point that is located near the base of the skull. It is also considered effective to influence a point that is located two centimeters from skin fold between the index and thumb. Massage of the temples helps to quickly cope with headaches. Massage relieves menstrual pain calf muscles, and for back pain, applying pressure to a point located a couple of centimeters above the tailbone helps.

Aromatherapy can help you quickly cope with physical pain. When there is no aroma lamp, you need to drop a little oil on the incandescent lamp. When neurological pain occurs, myrtle oil will help, menstrual pain- oil tea tree. Lavender will help with headaches, and chamomile will help with muscle pain.

How not to feel pain

Master simple exercises that are aimed, first of all, at changing the psychological perception of reality. Most often, a person is able to experience physical pain, because it was his own fault (fell, hit the corner of the table) or he was accidentally touched by a person without meaning to (stepped on his foot in the subway). In this case, you will have to forget about aggression and try to switch your attention. For example, try to mentally repeat the tongue twister as much as possible. a short time or remember a poem, as if during a rehearsal before going on stage. These thought processes will be able to distract attention from the unfavorable incident, the pain will dull sooner.

It's sad, but modern medicine, which has a huge number of painkillers in its arsenal medicines, is not always able to effectively help the sufferer.

The effect of medications usually does not begin immediately, is not effective in all cases and often has adverse consequences.

Where is the way out? Is it possible to learn to manage pain without resorting to taking analgesics? It turns out yes! This is confirmed by the following amazing facts.

In 1928, an Austrian artist with a theatrical pseudonym performed at the Moscow Circus To-Rama. He demonstrated complete insensitivity to pain. The artist learned to muffle it after being wounded by a grenade fragment at the end of the First World War. At the hospital, doctors declared his condition hopeless, and he knew about it.

“Then,” wrote To-Rama, “something rebelled in me... I clenched my teeth, and only one thought arose in me: “You must stay alive, you will not die, you will not feel any pain.” I repeated this to myself an infinite number of times until this thought became so ingrained in my flesh and blood that I finally stopped feeling pain.

I don’t know how it happened, but the incredible happened. The doctors shook their heads. My condition began to improve day by day. So I stayed alive only with the help of my will. Two months later, in one of the Viennese hospitals, I had a minor operation without anesthesia and even without local anesthesia, one self-hypnosis was enough. And when I fully recovered, I developed my own system of conquering myself and went so far in this regard that I don’t experience suffering at all if I don’t want to experience it.”

In March 1927, To-Rama underwent a thorough medical examination at the Medical Society in Berlin. It showed that the artist is completely healthy and normal, he has no signs of hysteria. It was found that it does not suppress pain, as many thought, but simply turns it off.

Another unique person who learned to convince himself that there was no pain was athlete Alexander Potapov.

In February 1972, as part of the Leningrad national team for high-speed underwater sports, Potapov was at a training camp in Novosibirsk. We were preparing for the championship of the USSR Armed Forces. And a misfortune had to happen: during training, Potapov injured his left foot. The wound became infected and began inflammatory process, the leg is swollen. He could not put the fins on his leg due to severe pain. Something had to be done.

If you don’t participate in competitions, it means letting down the team that ends up “at the back.” The coach urgently “discharged” the reserve participant from Northern Palmyra. He was an excellent swimmer, but a rather weak speed submariner and would hardly have saved the situation for the Leningrad team.

Potapov went to the surgeon, who assured that a minor operation was needed, a few stitches and the leg would be as good as new. Cut it. And three days later the seams came apart. The wound became inflamed again. The pain is severe. Swimming is impossible, and there is very little time left before the competition.

Then Potapov began to train only using the ideomotor method. Simply put, I repeatedly replayed in my brain how to overcome the distance. And at night, lying in bed before going to bed, he endlessly repeated that he did not feel any pain. And suddenly the moment came when Potapov completely stopped feeling his leg.

Finally the day of the competition arrived. His teammates unanimously dissuaded Potapov from starting: they say, not Alexey Maresyev, because this is only a sport. But Potapov finally decided: “I’ll swim!” And, I must say, he performed successfully, although the stitches on his leg came apart again. And literally a week later he competed at the USSR Cup in Chelyabinsk and fulfilled the standard of an international master of sports.

By the way, the leg healed only after three months. So for a long time I anesthetized myself with conviction and willpower. Moreover, this ability remained as a skill for the rest of his life.

If necessary, the following self-hypnosis formula is used: “My right (left) hand is “frozen.” I do not feel anything. My hand disappeared. I don’t have a hand...”

It is enough to concentrate for about two minutes (no more) to demonstrate an almost Indian trick: for example, piercing your palm with a sterile needle without even groaning.

In this case, there will be no constriction of the pupils, no increase in heart rate, which is usually observed with volitional suppression of pain, and blood will not come out from the puncture site.

Why is there no blood? It's simple. By reducing pain sensitivity by self-hypnosis of cold, you get the effect of narrowing blood vessels. (By the way, in such cases, the temperature of the skin on the back of the hand may drop by two degrees.) And yet, we cannot completely insure ourselves against bleeding.

When inserting a needle, you can accidentally puncture a large blood vessel, and then “scarlet water” will inevitably appear. So don’t immediately grab the needle and experiment on yourself. This must first be learned (Indian yogis achieve this mastery through many years of training and severe asceticism).

How not to feel physical pain? Is it possible? In this article you will find simple psychological techniques that will help alleviate chronic and psychosomatic pain syndromes.

Physical pain can be acute or chronic. Acute pain requires urgent medical intervention. Chronic - spoils nerves and mood, deprives us of strength and energy for new things.

The techniques discussed in this article are suitable for chronic pain. They work best with pain of a psychosomatic nature - when you have visited many doctors and they tell you that your pain is “from nerves”.

Technique “Smell of Pain”

This technique was invented by psychologist Nikolai Linde. The instructions are this: imagine what your pain smells like. Sometimes an image helps to imagine a smell. For example, the pain is like a dull knife. This knife smells like rust and metal.

Having recognized the smell, begin to inhale and exhale it. The brighter and more realistic you can feel it, the better. Gradually the smell will weaken and finally disappear - along with the pain.

Then try to catch a new smell that has come to the place of pain. For example, the smell of freshly cut grass or the sea. Remember and record it - remember this smell when the pain overtakes you again.

There is no magic or quackery here. The sense of smell engages specific areas of the brain that help you switch gears.

Technique “Look into the pain”

This technique was invented by doctor Viktor Dzekunov. He believes that the cause of pain is suppressed experiences. And to stop feeling physical pain, catch the problematic experience by the tail and sort it out. The pain will subside.

Instructions: look carefully at the pain from the outside and describe it in as much detail as possible. What color is it, what size, what density? Maybe it resembles some object or living creature.

For example, my pain is like a grasshopper jumping back and forth. He is light and fragile, but restless. That's why it worries me.

Now try to understand what feelings and experiences are behind this pain. Fear, anger, sadness, longing?

For example, a grasshopper is worried. That's why he jumps. What am I worried about? Come to think of it, I'm faced with a serious choice.

When you have managed to become aware of the experience that you have suppressed, the pain goes away on its own.

If the techniques don't help

Sometimes it happens that doctors shrug their shoulders, saying that the pain is clearly psychosomatic, but they can’t get rid of it. Articles from the Internet do not work, no techniques help.

If this is your case, try seeking professional help. psychological help. What you can’t do alone, you can do together with a specialist. I have positive experience working with psychosomatics - as a psychologist and as a client. Therefore, I confidently recommend it.

Physical pain is something that a person experiences regularly throughout his life. But does the sensation of pain really depend only on physical factors? After all, in different situations people react to the same stimulus differently. It turns out that psychological attitudes and emotions also play a huge role. How can you deal with them and what can you change to improve pain threshold or feel no pain at all?

Despite the greenhouse living conditions, we still feel pain almost every day - a toothache, we hit our finger on the corner of a closet, a speck of dust got into our eyes. contact lens. And this is not to mention accidental injuries, like “slipped and broke my arm” and all sorts of illnesses.

Painful sensations can be pleasant, except when psychological disorders or in cases where they are associated with pleasant events, but in general, pain is perceived as something sharply negative. Fortunately, there are ways to reduce pain without any pills or injections, but first you need to delve into its nature.

The nature of pain

On skin and surfaces internal organs There is nerve endings, which are needed to assess damage to the body. There are especially many of these endings on the cornea of ​​the eye and the pulp of the tooth, therefore toothache considered one of the most unbearable.

As a rule, pain is not felt in a specific place, but “spreads” over a wide area. This pain is called protopathic; it often occurs with severe injuries and damage to internal organs.

However, protopathic pain is not the only type of pain. There is also epicritic, which is necessary to quickly convey the sensation of pain and convey accurate information about the size of the lesion. This pain is not particularly severe.

These varieties provide the first way to get rid of severe pain.

1. Wedge with wedge

It sounds strange, but it turns out that a little pain can help with severe pain. This feature was used two centuries ago, when, during tooth extraction, dental assistants pinched the patient, distracting him from the main severe pain. The whole point is that epicritic pain can suppress protopathic pain.

Experiments by neurophysiologists have confirmed that epicritic pain inhibits excitation nerve cells from protopathic, severe pain. As a result, protopathic excitation does not reach the brain at all, which means that the person does not feel severe pain.

This may explain the fact that when a person experiences severe pain, for example, through injury, he bites his lips or digs his nails into his hand. By at least, so you can distract yourself until the doctor arrives and gives you a painkiller injection.

2. The meaning of pain

The sensation of pain directly depends on the importance attached to it. For example, in different cultures they give different meaning labor pain: somewhere women can work and do their business until the end, and start them again immediately after the birth of the child.

In Western cultures, the pain of childbirth is given great importance and a woman is initially set up to suffer, which is why she actually experiences it during the birth process.

It has been proven that concentrating on pain and anticipating it several times increases painful sensations, and from this follows the following way to avoid pain - try not to pay attention to it and not attach much importance to it.

In addition, the sensation of pain decreases if a person is confident that everything will pass soon. For example, when patients in the study were given placebo pills, their pain levels decreased. Scientists associate this with the production of endorphins from the expectation of imminent relief.

3. Emotional background

No less important is a person’s mood, emotional background which accompanies pain. This position can be confirmed by the research of the doctor G. Becher, who observed the perception of pain of wounded soldiers during the Second World War.

The doctor noticed that wounded soldiers needed less morphine to relieve pain than people in peacetime after surgery. Becher associated this with emotional state people: the soldiers were happy to be alive, while the people after surgery, as a rule, are pessimistic and easily depressed.

Thus, A positive attitude makes a huge difference in the perception of pain - another reason to become an optimist.

4. Self-hypnosis and attitude

A large number of experiences and experiments prove that psychological attitudes a person greatly influences the sensation of pain. For example, athletes often do not feel pain in competition because all their attention is directed towards achieving highest goal- victories.

One study by scientists from Oxford University further demonstrates the importance mental factors. The experiment involved 12 students, including Catholics, atheists and agnostics. During the experiment, participants were shown two paintings: “Lady with an Ermine” and “Madonna,” painted by Sassoferrato, a 17th-century painter. After showing the picture, the scientists released an electric discharge.

After the experiment, it turned out that religious students, after watching Madonna, felt less pain from the electric discharge than agnostics and atheists. Moreover, after watching “The Lady with an Ermine,” all participants felt approximately the same level of pain.

Thus, mental condition Believers who saw the image of their faith changed, which allowed them to feel less pain. The author of the experiment emphasized that the same state can be achieved through meditation.

From this we can deduce the following: any mental attitude aimed at suppressing pain actually suppresses it. Such an effort could be prayer, meditation, the mindset that there is no pain or it subsides, or even something like this children's method how to repeat to yourself “It doesn’t hurt.”