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Concept of Pain
By peace | July 16, 2007
Pain is not for no reason. It is part of a natural course of events. If you do not understand how to live your life there will be pain if you do it wrongly. Just as the mind and feelings can affect the body. like anxiety, so the sort of body you have got affects the emotions — so it is both!
Emotions represent an important juncture between the mental and the physical, the mind and body, and the individual and society, and are especially relevant to the understanding of pain perception. Most people perceived that women have a superior capacity to men for coping with pain, or that there are no gender differences: a minority said that men were better at coping with pain.
Like emotions, perceptions of pain differ from other senses such as sight or vision because they do not require a particular environmental energy, and the identity of the individual and their personal belief and value systems appear to affect how pain is evaluated and interpreted. These factors also help to shape the expression of pain, which in turn reflects the individual’s social context.
Pain is not always seen as negative, especially if it is acute, easily observable and the cause is established. Childbirth was described by some people as ‘productive’ pain, and many people endorsed the notion of pain as having a signal function as being a sign of both biological and emotional health. There were gender differences in attitudes to the concept of pain. For men especially, physical pain appeared to command more respect, legitimisation and sympathy and most were reluctant to see pain without a pathological cause as ‘real’ pain. In explaining the gender differences, it was found that female hormonal and reproductive functioning and the role of motherhood as equipping girls and women with a ‘natural’ capacity to endure pain, whereas no such biological preparation was identified for boys and men. Conversely, male socialisation was seen actively to discourage males from being allowed to express pain, whether physical or emotional. Expressing pain was thus considered a state of ‘abnormality’ for males, in contrast to the ‘natural’ attribution for females.
Meanings and definitions of pain for women and men are not confined to physical sensations, but do include feelings and emotions and spiritual and existential notions. Men were found to be less inclined to think that the emotional component of pain perception had any importance.
Emotional pain was presented in terms of ‘popular’ concepts from humanistic psychology and psychoanalytic influences. Most of the people articulated the idea in some form that ‘bottling up’ feelings, and not being able to express emotional conflict or hurt, causes damage. However, the abilitly to be able to convey this distress in a ’safe’ manner is seen as problematic, especially for men, as althouth on the one hand expressing emotion is seen to be positive and health-promoting, it is also double-edged. This is both in the sense of the vulnerability incurred by being seen to be ‘weak and the fear that is invoked by displays of emotion to others.
Lack of control, which severe pain of any origin may induce, is for many people a frightening thought and an experience to be avoided at all costs. However, ‘real’ acute pain with an easily demonstrable cause — for instance, injuries sustained through sport or battle — have a respectable status and demand instant attention. Less physically obvious ‘hurts’ especially emotional ones, are kept hidden for years of personal vulnerability. Feeling safe enough to seek help thus depend on the social context.
Topics: All Posts, Health, Psychology | 1 Comment »
February 13th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
[...] will tell you “you will cry if you touch the hot plate or play with fire”. She told you about pain, but you do not know what is pain. She told you what is danger, what is hot, what is cold, you do [...]