From Control to Agency

When Pain Is No Longer in Charge

At some point, many people living with chronic pain realize something quietly unsettling:
Their life has become organized around pain.

Decisions are filtered through symptoms. Plans are tentative. Identity narrows. Over time, pain doesn’t just hurt—it decides.
This is where the difference between control and agency becomes clear.

Control says: I have to make this stop before I can live.
Agency says: I can live—even while this is changing.

Pain Takes More Than Comfort

Pain rarely takes only physical comfort. It often takes choice.

People stop trusting their body. They hesitate to commit. They withdraw from what matters—not because they are incapable, but because they fear consequences. Research shows that disability and distress in chronic pain are shaped not only by pain intensity, but by fear, avoidance, and reduced psychological flexibility (McCracken et al., 2022).

Agency begins when someone realizes:
I don’t need to defeat pain in order to reclaim my life.

Agency Is Not Giving Up

Agency is not resignation. It is active engagement without force.

It means learning how attention, language, emotion, memory, and expectation interact with the nervous system—and discovering that these interactions can be influenced. It means responding instead of bracing, participating instead of waiting.

This is where mind–body approaches move beyond “coping” and become tools for authorship.

Hypnotherapy and the Return of Choice

Clinical hypnotherapy is uniquely suited to restoring agency because it works at the level of experience, not instruction.

Through imagery, focused attention, and therapeutic language, hypnotherapy helps soften rigid identity patterns—“I am broken,” “My body can’t be trusted.” Patients often report something subtle but profound: the sense that they have options again.

This return of choice aligns with evidence that effective psychological pain therapies work by increasing psychological flexibility and reducing fear-based avoidance, rather than by controlling pain itself (McCracken et al., 2022).

Living Again—Before Pain Is Gone

Agency changes the goalposts.

Instead of waiting for pain to disappear, people begin to re-engage with life—planning again, experimenting, reconnecting with what matters. As threat diminishes and participation expands, pain often changes as well.

The point is not that pain must vanish for healing to occur. It’s that agency changes the relationship, and relationships change outcomes.

Moving Forward

Understanding how to change your relationship with pain is only the first step. Change happens when insight is paired with experience.

At Calm Collective Care, we’re committed to making evidence-informed, nervous-system–based approaches accessible in ways that fit real lives. Through secure Zoom sessions, you can engage in clinically grounded hypnotherapy from the comfort of your home—without sacrificing depth, safety, or connection.

Our work is rooted in the same principles explored here: restoring agency, reducing fear, and helping the nervous system learn new patterns of response. Whether you’re navigating chronic pain, stress, anxiety, or a desire for greater clarity and resilience, our collective approach blends hypnotherapy with coaching and mindfulness-based practices to support meaningful, sustainable change.

Ways to Get Started

Guided Group Hypnosis
We offer live, guided group hypnosis sessions designed to support stress reduction, confidence, emotional regulation, and nervous system resilience. These sessions provide a structured, supportive environment for experiential learning—whether you join live or explore our growing audio library.

👉 Learn more Group Session in the Change Your Life Circle
👉 Access the ever-expanding Audio Library
 

One-on-One Hypnotherapy
For a more personalized approach, working individually with a certified hypnotherapist allows for tailored support aligned with your specific goals, history, and nervous system patterns. You can explore our team of practitioners and schedule a consultation to find the right fit.

Guest Author Spotlight:

Christy Cowgill CRNA, PMHNP-C, NC-BC, BCH, CI

Christy board-certified hypnotherapist and certified instructor of hypnosis. Her clinical practice integrates her backgrounds in psychiatric mental health and anesthesiology, with a focus on supporting clients experiencing depression, anxiety, and chronic pain. Committed to advancing trauma-informed hypnosis education for nurses, Christy advocates for clinically grounded hypnosis training pathways and is a founding member of Calm Collective Care.

References:

1. Ashar YK, Gordon A, Schubiner H, et al. Effect of Pain Reprocessing Therapy vs Placebo and Usual Care for Patients With Chronic Back Pain: A Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA Psychiatry. 2022;79(1):13–23. doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2021.2669 

2. McCracken, L. M., Yu, L., & Vowles, K. E. (2022). New generation psychological treatments in chronic pain. BMJ (Clinical research ed.), 376, e057212. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj-2021-057212
   Lumley, M. A., & Schubiner, H. (2019). Psychological Therapy for Centralized Pain: An Integrative Assessment and Treatment Model. Psychosomatic medicine, 81(2), 114–124. https://doi.org/10.1097/PSY.0000000000000654

A Different Definition of Healing

Healing does not always mean pain-free.

• Sometimes it means:
• no longer asking pain for permission
• trusting the body enough to move
• feeling like the author of one’s life

Befriending Pain was written from this place—not as a promise to eliminate pain, but as an invitation to step out of a life organized around it.

👉 Purchase Befriending Pain on Lulu https://bit.ly/4aEP8kC