Does anger and other emotions actually affect your pain experience?
- Lori Verton
- 3 days ago
- 2 min read
The author of this opinion piece has made a good caveat to be considered by physicians who might add "anger" to their assessments. Much like they did with childhood trauma, these assessments are often not to help more quickly identify those who may struggle with pain management and provide targeted assistance, but as a way of evidence for a diagnosis of a mental diagnosis, like functional somatic disorder, a popular pseudo diagnosis many #Arachwarriors are dealing with today!
This is dangerous to those of us struggling with an undiagnosed #raredisease or one like #Arachnoiditis that causes high level intractable pain but often goes #undiagnosed.
I think most of us with #Arachnoiditis went through a long line of misdiagnosis throughout the typical 5 to 7 year #diagnosticodyssey before the real diagnosis was confirmed.
Most have had a few #mentalhealth and drug seeking labels applied to them unfairly, along the way. I had one doctor sit at the end of my ER bed, arms crossed defiantly, just watching me for 15 minutes. I guess he figured that I couldn't fake my distress that long. Despite my full hospital files including MRIs and other tests, plus an official dx of Arachnoiditis, he seemed to think that the pain couldn't be real.
(I was sent home, BP 227/104) and told to see my GP for better hypertension control 🤯)
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The trauma I've personally experienced over the past 2 decades has mostly been at the hands of disbelieving or uneducated health practitioners. I've been hurt more often by those paid to care for me than from having to live with the disease itself.
However▶️ it's important to look at the conclusion from the findings here too.
There is a real takeaway from it: emotions affect the amount of pain you experience in any moment.
Think about it; if you are caught up with friends in laughter while watching a good new movie, does your mind layer pain over the top of the laughter? No. Because all of your focus and brain processing is being taken up in the moment by the fun.
But when you are stressed, you can begin to feel the pain increase, moment by moment. The same hour with friends and little pain can be experienced instead as overwhelming pain, ratcheting up, moment by moment, if you are stuck in a bank line waiting to fix an error.
WE HAVE TOOLS to "hack" that process and distract your brain by processing the stress, anger and pain through overwhelming the real time senses with nicer sensations.
Scott Groves and his guest presenter, Dr David Hughes and others teach real time tools for moments like this!
Every Friday at 7pm EST.
Sign up at www.acmcrn.org/event-list, join the open and friendly (and FREE!) Hack your Brain, Hack your Pain meetings and join discussions in the associated Event group forums!
Don't miss out! You can outsmart your pain for long enough to enjoy an outing or event.
Why not try? It's free!
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