Pain

Pain is an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, often caused by intense or damaging stimuli e.g burning a finger. Acute pain, also known as short-term pain, is pain that has started recently. Pain makes us withdraw from damaging situations, to protect a damaged body while it heals and avoid similar experiences in the future. Most pain resolves once the painful stimulus is removed and the body has healed, but sometimes pain persists despite removal of the stimulus and apparent healing of the body. Chronic, or long-term pain, is pain that has lasted for three months or more.

Sometimes pain arises in the absence of any detectable stimulus, damage or disease. Pain is the most common reason to see a doctor. It is a major symptom in many medical conditions, and can significantly interfere with a person's quality of life & functioning. Interestingly the word pain comes from the Latin poena, which means punishment or penalty, after the Roman goddess of punishment.So, inherent in our relationship with pain, is the idea that in some way it is our fault.

Psychosomatic pain, (mind - psyche and body - soma). The vast majority of people seen in pain clinics have a clear organic cause for pain, either in the present or past. It is rare to have a patient with pain arising purely from emotional causes. There is evidence of environmental and social factors affecting the exhibition of pain too. Yet all too often doctors, who really don't know that much about pain, or how to treat it, tell patients that their pain is "all in their mind". Or even worse, they tell patients that they "just have to learn to live with it". A doctor once told me I was "creating my own pain"!

Descartes said that the mind and body were separate, while the Eastern tradition had the sense to view the mind and body holistically as coming from the same energy or source. This disconnect has directed how Western medicine evolved & has had a negative effect on how chronic pain patients are perceived and treated. I know, first hand, because I have had chronic pain for most of my life since puberty.

Almost 8 million people suffer from chronic pain in the UK. People with chronic conditions should not be defined by their condition or their pain.Their lives should not be blighted & circumscribed by pain. There are ways of coping with pain other than surgery or medication. They do need to "learn how to live with it" - but they need to be taught the skills to do that. For example, relaxation, pacing, distraction technique, exercise, goal setting & action planning........http://www.britishpainsociety.org/index.htm

Sadly most GP's don't know how to cope with chronic pain patients. I was unable to find out how much time trainee doctors spend learning how to manage their patients pain. Unless much has changed it isn't a lot. Doctors training is all about curing & there's the problem - you can't cure most chronic pain.