Alternative Information

Neuropathic" means nerve damage and refers to nerve pain. So far there's very little that science can do about it. But it's possible that your subconscious may be able to help you find some relief.

The two forms of neuropathic pain--peripheral and central--both occur when a nerve is damaged from injury or some other source. If the damage is in the periphery of your body, you feel pain from touch immediately. If it's in the central nervous system, you only feel it after a delay of 20-30 seconds-and potentially the pain is more intense.

Peripheral Nerve Pain

Some major types of peripheral nerve pain include the following:

• Postherpetic Neuralgia occurs after an outbreak of shingles has healed. Shingles damages the nerves, which then send unclear and overblown pain messages to the brain. The result can be aching, burning, or jabbing pain in the area of the former shingles infection.

• Trigeminal Neuralgia affects the trigeminal nerve, which sends impulses from the face and head to the brain. The pain can be severe and is usually felt on one side of the jaw as being knife-like or electric in nature.

Central Nerve Pain

Central nerve pain is unique among the types of pain in that it is the only one that is caused by the central nervous system itself. All other types occur in the periphery and are transmitted to the central nervous system. This makes central pain unusually bizarre and severe--perhaps the worst pain known to humanity.

Some major types of central pain include the following:

• Dysesthetic Burning is a blunt, metallic burning feeling that has a strangely cold quality to it. It goes on at a constant level over large areas of the body. Any light touch, particularly from clothing, triggers flares of unbearable pain.

• Hyperpathia is a sharp, overwhelming reaction to pain that people who don't have central nerve pain would find only somewhat painful. It tends to occur on parts of the body where the dysesthetic burning is the least. Ordinary bumps and abrasions can become excruciating.

• Allodynia is pain that occurs from stimuli that are not normally painful. It appears near but not on the area stimulated. The slightest of movements can trigger the pain.

• Other forms of central pain include permanent cramping in given muscles, shooting pains, pins and needles, and agonizing bladder and bowel pain.

Neuropathic Pain and the Subconscious

Through visualization statements it may be possible to focus your subconscious on the brain chemistry involved in central nerve pain.

Visualization statements represent the specific language that your subconscious wants you to read back to it to help ease your pain. They're simple and are targeted directly at the main factors that could bring you relief.

You can obtain these statements by learning how to communicate directly with your own subconscious mind. The process is straightforward and can be done at home by working with a facilitator over the telephone. You you need no special skills and no previous experience in working with the subconscious.

We have not yet worked with neuropathic pain. However, the signals for this pain are transmitted by the same neurotransmitters that we normally deal with when focusing the subconscious on other kinds of pain:

• We have experience using visualization statements to address glutamate, substance P, norepinephrine, and acetylcholine, the four major pain transmitters.

• We've used visualizations to address endorphins/enkephalins, GABA, serotonin, and dopamine, the four major pain inhibiters.

Reducing the Pain Signal

The above eight neurotransmitters play a major role in increasing and inhibiting nerve pain. Putting these factors back in balance is thus a preventive measure, one that helps to keep the pain signal from being generated in the first place.

But an important part of your pain relief strategy also needs also to be to attempt to reduce the pain signal once it has been generated. This can be approached by focusing the subconscious on numerous chemical weak points (we call them leverage points) where it may be possible to use visualizations to reduce the pain signal.

If you can learn to engage your subconscious, you most likely will be able to identify which leverage points apply to you. You can then use visualization statements to give your subconscious the daily reinforcement it needs to possibly take the edge off your pain at those points.

Ben Plumb is CEO and President of The Visualization Group, Inc. The company's service is delivered by people like himself who personally suffered from years of chronic pain, and used the visualization method described in this article to obtain relief when nothing else worked.