In the early 20th century, asthma was thought of as a psychosomatic disease, which means that the illness was caused by psychological problems that lead to development of physical symptoms. At that time, it was thought that a child’s development of anxiety related to separation from his or her mother led to the development of asthma. Research did not confirm this belief. By the middle of the century, it was recognized that asthma can be affected by different kinds of emotions. By the late 20th century, the medical establishment focused on the fact that asthma resulted from development of narrowed airways (bronchospasm) and inflammation in the airways. These symptoms can lead to coughing, wheezing, and shortness of breath, which are characteristic of asthma. Since then, treatment for this disease has focused on prescription of drugs to counteract its physical problems, which was driven to a large degree by pharmaceutical companies that prompted new and better drugs to treat this condition.
However, lost in the mix was that it remains clear that asthma episodes can be triggered or prolonged because of psychological stressors. For example, a patient can develop severe shortness of breath because of an asthma attack. The shortness of breath may lead the patient to end up in an emergency department and may even necessitate use of adrenaline shots or hospitalization as treatment. In such a scenario it is predictable that when the patient next develops an asthma episode, they also will become anxious for fear of ending up dealing with a severe attack again. Such anxiety can lead to worsening shortness of breath, which can be even worse than the effects of the underlying asthma. For such patients, treatment of their shortness of breath with asthma medications alone often is insufficient. As many physicians do not consider treatment of the emotional impact on asthma (sometimes because they have no idea how to treat emotions) they end up overtreating the patient with asthma medicines that do not work well.
I have met patients who were so overtreated for asthma that they developed bad complications such as stunting of their growth, and obesity. Other patients whose emotions were not addressed ended up missing months of school because of lingering asthma symptoms.
Fortunately, hypnosis can be easily used to help patients with asthma, simply by teaching them how to calm themselves during an asthma episode. Such instruction can take place in only one or two sessions. The calming can be achieved when patients learn how to shift their focus from anxiety about their breathing to a pleasant thought. Once calm, oftentimes their asthma symptoms improve greatly, which often allows their medication treatment to be reduced, and in some instances even discontinued!
Some patients with asthma have even been helped through use of hypnosis to revisit their first memory in which they struggled to breathe. I teach the patients to deal better with their memory in hypnosis so that they would not end up being scared for their lives at that time. Through this method, patients end up feeling much calmer about their asthma, and some of them no longer develop asthma symptoms thereafter, even once all their medications have been discontinued.
Hypnosis can help treat asthma by teaching patients how to calm themselves in the face of an asthma episode. Use of hypnosis in this setting can help asthma symptoms improve or even resolve.
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