Psychological Factors That Affect Pain Sensitivity - Part 1

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“1. Fear of pain - When in pain, we frequently experience thought intrusions of “what if” possibilities (“what-if” my abdominal pain is a sign of a serious illness?). The anxiety of pain is generated by the unknown and grows worse as the pain persists. Pain can be lessened when we feel safe (e.g. being at home vs. entering the emergency).

2. Attention to pain - An important function of pain is to demand attention. Paying close attention to the pain sensations may increase pain intensity. Attention distraction from pain is one of the most used strategies for managing pain. For example, people who are injured in the heat of sports competitions, or in battle, often don’t notice their injury until the action stops. Injections are less painful when we don’t watch them.

3. Interpretation - Cognitive processes are central in explaining why we sometimes experience mild pain as severe pain, or a serious injury as involving little or no pain. In essence, the person imagines the worst possible result that could happen (pain catastrophizing). Thus, catastrophizing may be an important target for treatment.

4. Pain avoidance - Pain avoidance stems from the fear of pain. The avoidance behavior, in turn, leads to more avoidance, and ultimately more pain. Like classical conditioning, when a person is injured, they begin to associate the injury with the activity that caused it, and they will avoid that activity. For example, if you hurt your back doing a yoga pose, you may start avoiding yoga entirely, or even all sports. Pain avoidance comes at the expense of reduced life enjoyment. Exposure therapy or exposing patients to activities they’ve been avoiding because of pain has been shown to be helpful.”

Read the whole article at Psychology Today.

#Pain #Avoidance #Coping

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