Emotions and Pain

What are our emotions ? 

What purpose do they serve ? 

How do emotions relate to our thoughts, memories, and behaviors 

towards others ? 

So many questions…

In 1872, Darwin published The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, in which he argued that all humans, and even other animals, show emotion through similar behaviors.

There are four kinds of basic emotions: happiness, sadness, fear, and anger, which are differentially associated with three core affects: reward = happiness, punishment = sadness, and stress = fear and anger.

Emotional states and behaviors directly affect the body and can lead to illness. 

Indeed pain can cause a lot of damage. Pain can be a manifestation of difficulties in resolving feelings of loss, anger, and depression.

People who feel chronic pain can turn anger inward. They become unable to grieve effectively. 

Pain can be influenced in important ways by an individual's personality, by family, and by the sociocultural environment in which they live. 

Ivan Pavlov, who conditioned a salivation response to the sound of a bell, will help us understand how cognitive behavioral approaches show promising results for the treatment of chronic pain. 

Pavlov (1927) suggested that as a result of conditioning, the conditioned stimulus becomes able to elicit the same response as the unconditioned stimulus. 

Indeed Pavlov insisted that medicine had to be grounded in science, on data that could be explained, verified, and analyzed, and on studies that could be repeated.

Pavlov showed how the brain can be trained, through repetition, to cause certain reactions in certain circumstances. 

People suffering from pain experience a significant decrease in the actual size of their brain. 

Pain is just a production created by fear and anxiety. Therefore, we can get rid of the pain by taking a deep breath, and most importantly, by believing the non-existence of the pain. 

As Pavlov set forth a concept called Second Signalling System, a qualitatively unique form of higher nervous activity peculiar to humankind; a system of speech signals.  

Can we conclude that he Second Signaling system, together with the theory of Pavlov's conditioning, has contributed to the making of pain?

Pain can be a learned response, rather than a purely physical problem!

To enable a better understanding of pain, we need to view pain as a complex phenomenon that incorporates physical, psychosocial and behavioural factors. 

The three main ways of learning are: classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and social learning. 

The ultimate experience of pain is based on experience, memory, and learning, which are important factors in determining the complex approach to how to deal with learned pain behavior.

Pain is subjective! Everyone experiences pain differently. Each individual's interpretation and expression of pain is based on a interaction of physical, psychological, and emotional factors. And all these factors originate from what...

From the brain, of course!

Therefore, we need and we must utilize the power of the humans' mind to eradicate pain. 

Pain is an emotional response. Indeed most pain behaviors are learned.