Post Date December, 03 2023
Sometimes, psychotherapists need to face patients with chronic pain referred by physicians, some of which cannot be explained by current medicine or effective treatment cannot be found. At this point, patients need to learn long-term coping skills with pain with the help of psychotherapy. The core of the technique is to distinguish pain from suffering.
In most people's understanding, pain and buffering are basically the same concepts. But it's not. Pain is just a sensation transmitted through the nerves, and pain is the recognition of this sensation by the cerebral cortex. If we use an analogy, it is similar to the relationship between "bitter taste" and "unpleasant taste.". Although human instincts tend to judge bitter food as unpleasant, through later training and training, many people can become accustomed to, or even enjoy, bitterness. In other words, only bitter taste is regarded as a unique stimulus on the taste, but it is not so exclusive. Psychotherapists generally follow this line of thinking in their work on pain.
In clinical practice, the difficulty of such changes varies from person to person. Some patients have special difficulties. "We have observed that these patients, who are particularly difficult to change, often exhibit severe reactions, including tossing and turning, shouting, complaining, or groaning, while receiving sensory stimuli of 'pain'.". And they firmly believe that these are pain and legitimate reactions that cannot and will not be changed.
So I think the question of the subject is particularly good. Because "pain" and "moaning" are not confused, but are clearly divided into two parts. This provides the possibility for us to explore the correlation, including changing the automated response mode.
"All behavioral reactions that accompany pain, especially when habits are formed, have a term called 'painful behavior'.". Everyone has their own pattern: someone yells, someone pushes, someone panics, someone diverts their attention to something else. This has something to do with our personality, experience, and environment at the time. Therefore, pain behavior has a high personalized component.
In general, there is another rule for various pain behaviors: the more you focus on "pain", the more unbearable it becomes. In Morita therapy, this mechanism is called "mental interaction.". From a biological perspective, it can probably be explained as activation of the sympathetic nervous system and inhibition of the parasympathetic nervous system. But it's actually a truth that common people understand. When parents accompany their children with injections, they will say, "Don't be afraid, the more afraid, the more painful it will be!"! The more you care about a certain bodily sensation, the more it becomes a maggot of the tarsal bone.
——And moaning is undoubtedly a "painful behavior" that maintains attention in pain.
This behavior further confuses pain with buffering, resulting in greater intolerance to pain.
Clinically, it is often observed that people who moan are more sensitive, and a little pain can interfere with their lives.
So back to the topic: If moaning can make "pain" more "painful"? Why do you still moan?
This is a classic psychological question: What factors reinforce a behavior (and what benefits)?
In this regard, many of the answers upstairs have their own reasons. As a typical painful behavior, moaning can often be beneficial. Sometimes this is a form of self comfort, sometimes it is a form of interpersonal call. Even in interpersonal relationships, there are also people who seek attention, some who complain, and some who punish others (see me in such pain, don't you feel bad?)... In psychotherapy, there can't be a unified answer to this question, and it must be analyzed in combination with the characteristics of this person and his environment.
So the final conclusion may be a bit off topic. What problem can moaning solve—— In the short term, it may solve many problems, but in the long term, it will bring a problem: making the pain more painful. From this perspective, those who love to moan may have a better experience if they can consciously adjust and choose other ways to face certain pain, even less caring about it.
(Intern Editor: Lin Yanjuan)
