pain and hypnosis

[cryoldman]

I read a lot about hypnosis and have tried to read Milton H. Erickson's books for more than 30 years. Not to hypnotize anyone, just myself (self/auto-hypnosis) for dealing with my chronic pain.
Here's the gist of Ericson's hypnosis:

Someone once asked, "Dr. Erickson. why do you use hypnosis, and what is hypnosis?" Erickson replied (paraphrasing here), "The hypnotic state is a state in which the client pays attention to what is really, immediately important, and disregards information that isn't immediately important. In an hypnotic state, you may not be aware of your right foot, you may not be aware of your right arm, or that you're wearing a watch. You can just forget about that. You can forget about your left arm, You can forget about what you had for breakfast. You can forget about anything that is up here on the board while you're listening to what I'm saying. What's important about the hypnotic trance is that you're capable of paying attention to what is immediately important so that you can access memories and resources that you have long since forgotten."
"All hypnosis is, is a loss of the multiplicity of the foci of attention."
"Trance is a focusing on one thing...dropping all the peripheral foci and narrowing it down to one focus."
"As one subject aptly declared, “It is not a question of being unaware of stimuli but, rather, a giving of all attention to certain stimuli or to certain aspects of a stimulus complex without other stimuli entering into the situation.”
...................

Somehow that sounds like meditation? Spiritual persons have used meditation for dealing with pain for a very long time. By the way, mindfulness is not meditation. They are different. Really.

Felix Mann, a German acupuncturist, wrote:
"Traditionally the places which are needled in acupuncture are called acupuncture points: places of small size and fixed position. In my experience, the places which can be needled are usually much larger areas, of variable size and position."
In other word, a needle anywhere may be sufficient.
So, if only you can shift your attention from the pain you are feeling, whatever techniques you use, then you will fell better.
And it's just the placebo effect or not is not important.
I had suffered from severe migraine for 30 years, and I've practiced mindfulness for 40 years. So, mindfulness won't help. Really. I had to take any medicine (ergot) on the market. Then one day I decided to go cold turkey. I took only some paracetamol. And acupressure was very helpful. I haven't suffered from migraine for more than 5 years now.
I've learned that when pain attacks, I have to try my best to dissociate with it. But trying to dissociate with pain seems very hard (if not possible). I can only try to shift my attention to something else via auto-hypnosis, meditation, acupressure etc., then my pain will go away by itself.
Don't get me wrong. Pain is also useful. It warns us that something is wrong and need to be fixed. Yes, the right fix only ad the wrong fix means nothing.