2003 Archives: Pain

PATIENT TO DOCTOR: "Doctor, my right arm hurts real bad whenever I twist it back like this."
DOCTOR TO PATIENT: "Then don't do that."

Pain hurts.

While that may be a difficult statement to refute, that is the entire purpose of this article. Countless books have been written about pain. Pain stands out throughout the history of human civilization as our single most difficult concept to handle. Although it affects everyone of us, effectively dealing with it continues to elude us both as a personal subjective experience and as the more elusive objective experience of someone else's discomfort.

We have learned to hate it, to fear it and to be angry at it. We have come to understand that its presence can and will change the course of our lives. It can easily become the central focus of our personal existence.

And in countless cases pain, both physical and emotional, has been the final factor for ending life.

Historically, tricks and potions for controlling pain have dominated our pharmacology with the single objective of making pain go away, analgesia.

And for all our complaining and despite its ubiquitous nature those who would help us are forced to take it on faith that we are really in pain. Of all the symptoms to be faked or imagined pain is the dominant one by far. It demands the most attention, and paradoxically, it is most often ignored.

Pain is the ultimate subjective experience.

And it hurts.

We can share feelings of love and fear, hate and joy, happiness and sorrow. But physical pain is an absolutely solitary experience.

You are alone and isolated with the pain experience as with nothing else.

And worse yet the experience of pain drives us further into isolation.

We can describe what we feel in explicit terms, but even our ability to imagine pain is impaired.

You can see someone who is hurt and react to the violence of that specific situation, but you cannot actually feel the other person's discomfort. Regardless of how much you may want to.

Pain triggers a confusion of responses from people. Helplessness. Fear. Anxiety. Sympathy. But none of those experiences will cause one person to actually feel another person's pain experience.

Even within ourselves the pain experience plays tricks with our memory.

It is possible to recall the extreme unpleasantness of a painful episode. It is possible to feel tremendous anxiety about that same episode being repeated.

But the actual memory of the pain itself is forever blocked from our consciousness.

And, of course, that's good news.

To be able to re-experience the actual neurological signals of pain would create situations in which we would be constantly dealing with a barrage of immensely disturbing and distracting signals from the past. Living in the present would become a colossal task as daily events would remind us of painful experiences that would literally stop us in our tracks.

To be fair pain occurs as an adaptation that, in truth, saves our lives. And our survival as a species is proof that it has apparently done pretty well.

But when pain is felt, it shifts all the systems in your mind and body to high alert. It forces itself to top priority and drives your consciousness into focusing on the pain and the discovery of the source of that pain to the exclusion of all else. Your muscles tighten and spasm around the affected area in an attempt to protect you from additional harm. This produces an increase in apparent discomfort that escalates from there until every ounce of your being is wrapped up in trying to deal with the incredible onslaught of unpleasant stimulation.

Pain has only one interpretation by the brain.

Threat to life.

And as long as that perception remains valid, nothing short of analgesia can resolve it.

And since it is so purely subjective, assistance is hard to come by.

Which is strange since we all have the capacity to be in pain.

Yet the sad truth is that since we forget it once it is gone, and since we cannot share the experience between people, you're just not going to get much understanding from your fellow humans.

If this sounds cold-hearted, think back over experiences you've had when someone has been hurt.