COUNSELING FIRST-AID ON INJURIES
Physical tensions and pains (as distinct from emotional) will become available for discharge only after most of the painful emotion surrounding them have been released.
There is a kind of exception to this, however, in the case of the new physical injury which has just occurred. Where a person has just been hurt physically, (anything from a bumped knee to a serious operation), there appears to be a time lag, before the pain and the physical tension of the injury becomes so stored away and surrounded by painful emotion as to be unavailable. In this interval, roughly the interval when the injury is still "hurting," it is possible to discharge and release the physical pain and tension immediately by approaching it directly.
This is done by experiencing the hurt, the pain, the physical tension as thoroughly as possible over and over again while reviewing the actual occurrence of the injury. The person can even do this quite well by her or himself, but of course a second person, a counselor, makes it easier to be thorough.
By repetitively going over the injury and "making the hurt hurt" and by experiencing the pain or tension intensely over and over again, the pain and the physical distress will disappear or seem to become erased. Usually, some emotional tensions will come off in the familiar laughter, tears, trembling, etc., as the pain is gone over. But the pain will also dissipate, usually with stretching and yawns coming in the last stages. A very few minutes counseling will suffice for a small injury (or a very few hours for even a grievous injury) to undo the stored up physical pain and shock.
The effects of this kind of counseling first-aid appear almost magical. Pain is relieved permanently. The person does not suffer from the injury so long as it is protected from fresh assaults, bumps, bruises, etc. Healing is very rapid, appearing to match the healing rate which we observe in very young children.
Burns and Folklore
Often people have acquired patterns of pain suppression which make it hard for them to actually experience and counsel out their recent injuries. Sometimes incidental measures can be taken to assist them.
A sunburn, for example, can be worked on with a very warm tub of water. It becomes very easy to experience the pain of the sunburn in full measure for a few minutes. The pain will then soon lift and the distress of the sunburn will be gone - for good.
The old wives' remedy of "flame draws fire" procedure for burn injuries is also workable. Placing a new burn injury near a hot object or near a flame makes it hurt more intensely. If a person finds it difficult to actually experience the pain of a burn, placing it near a heater or hot object will cause the pain to be experienced very vividly for a short period and then be gone, gone for good. The burn will then heal rapidly if protected from fresh injury.