Making sense of pain

It’s been said many times, so many times I can’t locate the originator of the saying “humans are meaning-making machines” – no more so than when a person experiences pain. Whether it’s a stubbed toe, sprained ankle, thundering headache – or, in my case, weird and ongoing widespread body pain AKA fibromyalgia – we would like to make sense of what’s going on. And mostly we tell simple stories about what we were doing, what happened to the body and that’s that. In the case of weird or persistent pains the challenge becomes harder. The original story might not fit any more, or because of that story, we limit what we do in case we do damage. Now philosophers and other commentators have taken up the matter of what this experience really is: sensation or perception? Frankly, I don’t think this matters a jot to the people I see who are trying hard to make sense of what their pain means to them. One person I’ve seen recently said “I feel adrift, like a pingpong ball bobbing on the sea” – life is what isn’t making sense any more. And life, dear readers, is not as simple as sensation or perception. One of the concepts used to understand what constitutes health is the construct “meaning in life.” Meaning in life is associated with resilience, better health outcomes, and very importantly, recovery from Covid and dealing with the stress of how Covid and other world events ha...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - Category: Anesthesiology Authors: Tags: Chronic pain Coping strategies Research Resilience/Health pain management Therapeutic approaches Source Type: blogs