Today we’re continuing our conversation about pain, and in particular we’re asking the question - why do we feel pain? What is the point of this unpleasant sensation and why, if it’s so important, does it seem that we all experience it differently?
Pain is, at its core, our body’s way of signaling a real or perceived threat. That threat is most commonly one that could cause damage to the physical structure of the body. We experience pain as a way of breaking the pattern and creating a sensation so acutely unpleasant that our attention is drawn almost immediately away from whatever else we may be doing to address whatever the source of the pain is. Remember, at the end of the day our brain’s only job is to keep the body alive at all costs.
It might be useful to think of pain as the smoke detectors in your house. They go off when there is smoke in the air, and then it is your job to determine the source of that smoke and what to do about it. The smoke detector doesn’t tell you if your house is on fire or if you simply had a steak cooking on a stove that was too hot. It’s simply - sense smoke, trigger alarm. Obviously, our bodies are more complex but it can be helpful to think about this in those same terms - perceive threat, trigger pain.
I liken it to fear - we’re not born afraid, we learn to be fearful based on our experiences and from the experiences of those around us. You don’t have to get bit to be afraid of dogs. Maybe your grandma got bit when she was a little girl, and every time you were out she saw a dog, she grabbed you tight and told you to “watch out for dogs, they’ll bite.”
Tune in next week for a conversation about how we can start to re-train the brain when the alarm system has gotten way to sensitive.
Catch ya’ll next week!
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