It is much easier for someone to cooperate if you first take them in a direction they are used to until you are sure they are following, then intersperse contradictory suggestions as if they were hypothetically possible or happened to someone else they can identify along with lots of truisms to keep up the sense of agreement.

An obvious example is getting an axious person more anxious is relatively easy but if you began with "now i am going to relax you" they would be saying to themselves things like "don't be stupid you know I can't relax, that's why I'm here.." etc.

As far as pain is concerned there is a wealth of other sensations within and aspects to pain that the person has probably never noticed or even considered before due to trying to avoid something unpleasant.. I haven't done pain control for a while but when I was working in a field where I encountered more I had a lot of success by inducing trance through the pain itself by continous differentiation rather than let them view it as some nasty "fog"..

Next time you have a pain, really examine your own experience in great detail. You will be surprised how much more there is to it than at first you thought.. some, surprisingly are even quite pleasant (maybe they can find some buzzy electric sensations etc).. I think erickson had a lot of experience with his own pain and that lead to some very interesting ways of dealing with it.. I found I could get a large degree of subjective pain loss simply by means such as this..

I seem to remember an erickson case that began something like "I am going to hurt you.. and you won't like it one little bit..". This sounds like agreeing with the persons mindset while using the symptom to focus attention to me..

There is no reason why you have to start or expect relaxation.. hypnosis is not relaxation as far as I can see (but obviously more pleasant if you take it there eventually!).. You can use tension or anything to get focus and cooperation..