Fear of pain

[seriously disabled]

I have an incredible fear of pain and of getting cut by something sharp, like a very sharp knife.

So how can I treat my fear of being cut by a sharp knife? Is there something that can help me with it?

Edited February 4, 2013 by seriously disabled

[iNow]

I suggest cognitive behavioral therapy, and some sort of gently escalating exposure therapy with a trained professional. You need to extinguish the fear by being exposed to it successively more intense increments... Beginning with something that causes no fear at all like rubbing yourself with the backside of a spoon.

 

On a deeper level, I wonder if your fear relates to being attacked or if you are haunted by anxiety of a bully or something similar. Again, though... I suggest working through it with a trained professional who has the time, knowledge, and experience to explore the fears with you and create a plan to ameliorate them that is specific to your personal situation and circumstance.

[seriously disabled]

I suggest cognitive behavioral therapy, and some sort of gently escalating exposure therapy with a trained professional. You need to extinguish the fear by being exposed to it successively more intense increments... Beginning with something that causes no fear at all like rubbing yourself with the backside of a spoon.

 

On a deeper level, I wonder if your fear relates to being attacked or if you are haunted by anxiety of a bully or something similar. Again, though... I suggest working through it with a trained professional who has the time, knowledge, and experience to explore the fears with you and create a plan to ameliorate them that is specific to your personal situation and circumstance.

But I don't think that my pain is psychological. It's definitely chemical. I don't think pain has anything to do with psychology but has everything to do with physics and chemistry.

 

And after a long Internet search trying to find the physical causes of my sharp pain the only reliable source I could find is this:

 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2852643/

 

From what I was taught is that when cells are injured ATP leaks out of the cell and readily binds to nerve endings causing the intense pain. This may also explain why the sharper the implement the less pain you feel because a sharper implement causes less trauma to the surrounding tissue therefore causing less ATP leakage and therefore less pain. Other chemicals can also bind to the nerve endings such NADH.

 

The problem is that our lack of understanding of pain is delusional. We simply do not understand the causes of pain at all from the physics point of view.

 

We have absolutely no understanding at all about what causes the horrible pain after being cut with a very sharp kitchen knife from the point of view of physics and why the experience of pain is so subjective.

 

Pain is possibly the most unpleasant sensations our senses can detect. And because it is very unpleasant sensation, this would explain why we try to avoid pain whenever we can and as much as we can.

 

Even though we typically fail to remember what pain feels like when we are not experiencing it, we certainly do not wish to experience pain. Despite pain's intense unpleasantness, it has to be appreciated for what it is. Namely, it is a mechanism that allows us to avoid dangerous situations, to prevent further damage, and to promote the healing process. Pain allows us to remove ourselves form dangerous situations, as we attempt to move away from noxious stimuli that cause pain. As we attempt to escape stimuli that cause pain after an initial insult on our body, pain can prevent further damage form occurring. Finally, pain promotes the healing process as we take great care to protect an injured body part form further damage as to minimize the experience of more pain.

Edited February 9, 2013 by seriously disabled

[iNow]

We simply do not understand the causes of pain at all from the physics point of view.

 

We have absolutely no understanding at all about what causes the horrible pain after being cut with a very sharp kitchen knife from the point of view of physics and why the experience of pain is so subjective.

Actually, yes. We do. Perhaps you do not, but please do not include me in that group you describe as "we."

 

I also agree with you that pain is important and that it helps us learn, and that without pain our lives would be powerfully difficult and we'd likely die of seriously stupid things, but your OP was not about pain. It was about fear. My initial reply stands.

[sysD]

But I don't think that my pain is psychological. It's definitely chemical. I don't think pain has anything to do with psychology but has everything to do with physics and chemistry.

 

First of all, why are you asking us these questions, instead of a GP?

 

Secondly, its ignorant to say that psychology has nothing to do with physics and chemistry. Psychology, at its core, is nothing but the product of a series of electrical impulses and chemical interactions. Mind-body duality does not exist. Its all one system.

 

That being said, I agree with the second post suggesting cognitive behavioural therapy. CBT (as well as pretty much every other type of therapy, and learning for that matter), would not be able to function without the plastic nature of the brain. You need to be able to see your fear as a response to conditioning (even if you are the one conditioning yourself by reiterating thoughts about your fear in your mind or elsewhere, thereby ingraining those neural pathways). Picture your mind as a set of streams, flowing down a hill. As you think certain thoughts, water flows through a certain stream. As you repeat those thoughts, the streambed becomes deeper and therefore a more viable channel for water flowing down the hill (in this scenario, plasticity=erosion). Eventually, if you keep obsessing over that particular thought (streambed), you'll have a single riverbed deeper than all others, providing the easiest path of flow for water downhill.

You need to consciously stop yourself from deepening that riverbed. Set that water to other purposes.

 

 

 

 

Go to a doctor. I don't think anyone here is a qualified physician. Including myself.

 

 

 

Take it all with a grain of salt, stop diagnosing yourself on the internet. Go to a doctor.

 

[LowWattBulb]

Sorry, you can't just chalk this up to simple electrons and organic molecule interactions. Well, I guess everything we experience comes down to chemical interactions, but when it comes to human body and our perceptions, the whole is definitely greater than the sum of its parts. Your fear comes down to two possibilities. The first is that you have been cut with a sharp object before, and it was a traumatizing experience. While we do not remember pain, the experience of being in pain heightens our senses and creates very detailed memories, so much so that the emotional aspect easily overrides logical reason when faced with similar circumstances.

The other possibility is that you have never suffered a serious injury before, and you're simply afraid of the unknown, which is a perfectly reasonable fear. Biochemically speaking, either a fear of the unknown or a fear associated with a previous injury causes a catecholamine release via the fight or flight response mechanism leading to anxiety, increased breathing, and increased heart rate.

[seriously disabled]

Sorry, you can't just chalk this up to simple electrons and organic molecule interactions. Well, I guess everything we experience comes down to chemical interactions, but when it comes to human body and our perceptions, the whole is definitely greater than the sum of its parts. Your fear comes down to two possibilities. The first is that you have been cut with a sharp object before, and it was a traumatizing experience. While we do not remember pain, the experience of being in pain heightens our senses and creates very detailed memories, so much so that the emotional aspect easily overrides logical reason when faced with similar circumstances.

The other possibility is that you have never suffered a serious injury before, and you're simply afraid of the unknown, which is a perfectly reasonable fear. Biochemically speaking, either a fear of the unknown or a fear associated with a previous injury causes a catecholamine release via the fight or flight response mechanism leading to anxiety, increased breathing, and increased heart rate.

 

Or maybe I am just a biochemical blob. This is why I am so sensitive to small injuries.

 

It could be that I am just a biochemical blob and that my physiology is just different somehow (or maybe even inferior physiology) than other people who are not "biochemical blobs" like me.

 

I don't like this idea but it could be true.

Edited April 21, 2013 by seriously disabled

[iNow]

Or, you're depressed, you feel isolated, and you're experiencing similar things that millions of other humans experience.

 

"You need to remember, fear is not real. It is a product of the thoughts you create. Now do not misunderstand me; danger is very real. But fear is a choice."