What is pain?
On the face, it is a silly question. After all, everyone knows what
pain is. But there are many issues involved that complicate what seems
to be a relatively simple issue.
In the first place, all pain is subjective. In other words, I can
only know the intensity of my pain, and I can never know the level of
yours. Medicine has tried to objectify things by creating various pain
measurement ratios, but again, they are still entirely dependent on the
individual’s responses.
All of us have different pain thresholds. Some of us seem to bear
pain better than others, and we all react differently to pain. An
emergency ward recently admitted a workman whose foot had been pierced
by a nail. He was in agony. But when the nurses removed the boot, they
discovered the nail had missed the foot completely. When the workman
saw this, his pain vanished.
Back to How You Beat Pain