ABSTRACT
The heartbreaking suffering of people we love, respect, admire, and perhaps would even self-sacrificingly trade places with if only they could get some relief motivates an earnest desire to help reduce that suffering. The spouse whose body aches in ways that defy medical diagnosis, the young son or daughter who needs to undergo a lengthy and painful diagnostic procedure, the parent who suffers a chronic, debilitating disease, the close friend who was seriously injured in an accident, the coworker who is fighting the ravages of cancer, the brave soldier from down the block who returns from war with limbs missing and battlefield injuries so horrific that even their doctors involuntarily wince when seeing them represent only a small fraction of the (too) many ways that people can suffer pain that tears their lives apart. It is difficult to imagine there being any more compassionate and rewarding experience of applying clinical hypnosis than in the relief of pain and suffering.
