Pain

Humans in pain cry, scream, shout, moan, hold their injured arm close to their body, crouch, fall to the ground, writhe in pain, and plead for help. The injured patient in the emergency room is fearful one moment and angry the next; give me morphine! The emotional display attracts onlookers to rush and help or sometimes to flee.  Pain, fear and anger are closely linked. Humans and other animals are fearful of any situation that might cause pain. We do not want to repeat painful experiences. A painful experience is remembered vividly and, like fear, is strongly aversive. Pain is usually considered to be a sensory experience but also belongs to emotions and feelings.

The emotional part of pain is the visible behavior associated with pain, usually unmistakable.

The feeling states called “pain” are varied and always unpleasant. Pain is a monitor image of a dysfunctional body state. The apparent purpose of pain is to flood consciousness with a pervasive dysphoria that blocks other activities. Animals who stop everything when they are sick and injured survive better than animals who ignore their dysfunctional body.

Pain is one of the main features of consciousness and is widely distributed in the animal world.  All mammals experience pain and there is no reason to believe that other animals experience pain more or less than we do. There is every reason to believe that it is the same pain and that pain has survival value. Most humans experience pain vividly and the relief of pain is one of the most important functions of physicians.

Descriptions of pain are varied and not always clear. The physician will want the patient to qualify their pain experience with descriptions such as "sharp, aching, burning, shooting, crampy…" since different qualities of pain point to different causes. An overweight 60-year-old patient who complains of "crushing pain" in his or her chest, is sweating and is afraid of dying, almost certainly is having a heart attack.

If you have a toothache, the pain develops over several hours in a remarkable manner. A fully developed toothache can completely disable. The most common cause of a toothache is a little infection at the tip of the tooth root. The pain signal is sent along a hair-sized nerve from a tiny area of inflammation.

The pain seems to enlarge as it develops and instead of remaining localized to a small area around the tooth, the pain will spread to involve the whole side of the face, temple, jaw, and will often extend into the neck. The pain may throb since the tiny nerve is adjacent to an arteriole that expands and contracts. This tiny motion is felt as a giant throb. The amplification of a tiny event into a gigantic experience is typical of pain. The spread of pain sensations from a localized source to a generalized area and sometimes a distant area is also typical of pain.

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Emotions and Feelings

A Psychology & Philosophy series of books was developed by Persona Digital. The books are copyright and all rights to reproduction by any means are reserved. We encourage readers to quote and paraphrase topics from Emotions and Feelings 2011, published online, and expect proper citations to accompany all derivative writings. The author is Stephen Gislason and the publisher is Persona Digital Books, Sechelt, B.C. Canada.