This is the first time I have written about how the mind affects our perception of pain and how that directly affects your experience of pain. I wanted to share this deep in depth knowledge with you because I know that once you understand how it all works you will have a fighting chance of taking control of your pain, for what may be, the very first time for you.
The mind is an incredibly powerful and beautiful thing. The mind controls our physical actions, our thoughts, feelings, experiences, and emotions. Your mind creates all that you see and all that you understand.
The potential of your mind is limitless. There is nothing that the mind cannot comprehend. You have the ability to experience, comprehend and interpret all of the living and non living in this world. Yet more often than not, the majority of life’s experiences pass us by because we choose not to see them. You control your mind. You decide what you will experience and what you will ignore. This is known as the conscious mind and it is what allows us to make decisions in our lives. The conscious mind sorts, interprets, rationalises and processes all the information it receives and the end result of this processing is the opinion that you form about your life experiences and this includes your perception of pain.
Your pain is unique to you and you alone
Every single human being perceives pain in a different way. There are no 2 experiences of pain that are alike. Your mind’s ideas, understanding and perception of your pain directly affects how you feel pain physically. Other people’s experiences of pain can also influence your perception about pain. By far the biggest influencing factor in your awareness of pain is fear. These are just a few examples of how your mind effects how your body feels and responds to pain, or more importantly the ‘idea’ of pain:
- A person who witnesses a lot of pain in others may well grow to fear it and therefore their fear leads them to feel more pain than others without fear.
- A person at the opposite end of the scale may see pain as a normal event in life, something to become accustomed to and thus has no fear towards pain. This person is most likely to have a high pain threshold.
- Men who have been raised to have a ‘stiff upper lip’ are told from very early in life that pain is a weakness and not something that they should show that they are feeling. This creates a fighting mentality towards the pain where the man must win at all costs. Men who have this type of upbringing have been seen to have higher pain thresholds than those without.
- In some cultures experiencing pain is encouraged. If you feel pain you vocalise the pain loudly. With this vocalisation of pain comes a greater experience of the pain process, it focuses the mind on the pain and as a result the person feels more pain.
Once bitten twice shy, when you feel pain for the 1st time your mind processes that feeling and keeps it ‘on file’ for future reference. Your perception of the severity of the pain recedes over time but the knowledge that it hurt and it was unpleasant remains. So the next time you are faced with a painful situation your mind instantaneously reminds you of how much pain hurts and how unpleasant it is and in that moment you believe that you will feel pain again and as a direct result of your minds suggestion hay presto it is painful.
There will be regular blogs in this series so be sure to check soon for the next installment
