It annoys you, and it's there to annoy you.
So pain, to me, is this horrible, debilitating thing which just prevents you from being able to do, what you want to do and that's how it affected me.
I don't… I don't like it.
I think pain's one of those things that you know, shouldn't exist but does.
It sucks.
It stops you from doing heaps of things, so I really don't like it.
Pain to me is a pain in the butt.
Well, pain's a signal about a threat to your body from usually the external world but sometimes the inside.
But say a fire… say you put your hand close to the fire and a signal comes from the little nerves in the skin all the way up the nerves, through the spinal cord, into the brain and then there are parts of the brain that quickly pay attention to that message.
They want to know where is that message coming from, which part of the body, another part of the brain is working out "Do I recognise that? Is that something that has happened to me before? What could it possibly mean?" So that you know which way to run or what to do next.
So there's a whole bunch of things happening and there's also emotions, lot's of emotions like fear, fright, your body's preparing to run or fight or whatever the instinct is that needs to be called on to manage that threat to your body.
And that's the most simple, vital function of acute pain that we have.
It's really important for our survival, really.
Well, when we get a message from our hand to say that we've touched something hot or a hot surface then it's not just a single volume that reaches the brain.
What happens is it comes up, comes to the brain, then it's interpreted.
There's… all… a whole range of things, besides our biology and our genes, at least as important, probably more important are our emotions, our thoughts, our past experiences, and what's happening in our immediate environment, what's competing with this pain for our attention at that time.
And so every single persons experience of that hot surface will be different.
So my understanding of pain is it's something that is intangible that can't be understood by anybody because it's different for everyone.
It's stopping you from moving your limbs because you've had some sort of injury to that area, so it's a prevention thing, I guess, done by the body.
Which is of course very useful, but it's also something which is of course excruciating and something that does have a lot of affects on you in various ways Um… my understanding of pain is, you know… if… for example you cut yourself like… nerves, brain, you know, it just senses it as pain, that's basically my understanding of it.
So I guess, you know, in my case my nerves aren't working properly.
I have, like, I have chronic pain in my stomach and, like, my bowel.
So… um… just normal stomach movement, nerves are picking it up as pain so that… so that it's hypersensitivity.
I know that if I'm upset, stressed out or in a bad mood that makes my pain worse.
Yeah, when I… when I'm stressed um… I notice that my pain does go up.
