The Interior Castle : Gruesome Detail With Physical Pain

1. It is important that we take into consideration, areas other than physical pain and have an holistic approach. Pain is whatever the person who is suffering it feels it to be. Physical pain can be experienced as a result of disease or injury, or some other form of bodily distress. For example childbirth. Although not associated with injury or disease, but can be an extremely painful experience. Pain can also be social, emotional and spiritual as well as just physical.

Pain is not only defined as a sensation or a physical awareness, but also entails perception. Moreover, pain is an unpleasant and an uncomfortable emotion that is transferred to the brain by sensory neurons. There are various kinds of pain and how one perceives them is varied as well. Certain parts of the brain also play a key role in how one feels pain such as the parietal lobe, which is involved in interpreting pain while the hypothalamus is responsible for the response to pain one has. Although some believe pain is just a physical awareness and is in the body, pain is all in one’s mind because the perception of pain and the emotion that controls its intensity differs in individuals and when pain itself is administered to the body, the brain determines the emotions one attaches to each painful experience.

Gertler clarifies that pain refers to the sensation and not the common cause, which is C-fibers firing in a specific area with tissue damage. (109) She asserts that pain is not essentially connected to tissue damage of a particular location, indicating to me inadequate understanding of the concept. If one pinches one's arm, though the sensation of pain may not be necessarily located in the arm, I contend that the pain felt is relevantly connected to the location pinched. Gertler provides the alleviating effect of painkillers as an example of a non-essential feature of pain. (117) Location is unlike this property, however, and is essential in conceptualizing pain. For instance, even an amputee, who had a leg removed and experiences a phantom leg-pain, is unable to describe the sensation they feel without making reference to a specific body part. Whether or not the pain is actually “located” anywhere is irrelevant, it matters only that the pain is conceptualized as having a location. Our understanding of pain relies fundamentally on where the pain is thought to be “located.” The fact that it is impossible to conceive of pain without reference to the “location” of the sensation proves that location is an essential feature of

II. Thesis: There are constantly people who find themselves in pain, they are literally on their deathbed and they are unable to do anything.

In Diane Ackerman’s essay “Pain,” she ponders about the subjectivity in experiencing pain, how to define pain, and its role in human life. She begins by emphasizing that an individual’s ability to endure pain may depend more on culture and atmosphere than on the actual magnitude of the pain. Given that at times humans can forego pain for a spell because of their atmosphere, Ackerman elucidates the importance of surroundings in how one experiences pain by exemplifying her claim through a phenomenon in football players. Ackerman continues her discussion on the disparities in the reception of pain by asserting expectations delineate the painfulness of events. Strengthening her claim that tradition affects pain, Ackerman considers how cultures

I support this idea of achieving absolute pleasure from the removal of all pain due to a series of corresponding reasons. The first factor addressed in support of this claim is the tendency of human nature to focus on the negative. This observation will lead to the second supporting idea that these distresses which culminate towards the feeling of pain often block out the feeling of the pleasure desired. This secondary notion results in a comparison between the subsequent uplifting experiences from the removal of pain as opposed to the effect of a simple everyday pleasure on the mind. I

First pain is an everyday experiences that is expressed through the use of language and is then legitimized (Waddie, 1996). If a patient as a history of depression or chronic pain they have pain every day and the concept is used to help explain their pain. As nurse we use the concept of pain to find a base line of the pain and to assess new pain. In surgical patients they may have multiple types of pain from the incision, emotional, and history. The concept educates the nurse of the different form that pain can present itself. Pain can also guide how we treat the patient. Emotional pain would not be treated with the “so know pain pills”, but with talking or listening to patient. Concept of pain also address the different form of patient and how the nurse and patient response to it. If a patient is having somatic pain from an incision the nurse could react by applying heat or ice. Pain is what the patient says it is.

To most people, pain is a nuisance, but to others pain controls their life. The feeling discomforts us in ways that can sometimes seem almost imaginable. These feelings can lead to many different side effects if not dealt with or diagnosed. These effects can include depression, anxiety, and incredible amount of stress. The truth about pain is that it is vital to our existence. Without the nervous system responding to pain, we would have no idea if we were touching a hot stove, being stuck by a porcupine’s needles, or something else that could leave a lasting effect upon our bodies without us even knowing anything about it.

A challenge Wiesel and Beah face is dealing with pain in all forms of it. In A Long Way Gone, Beah took some bullet wounds during war. In A Long Way Gone Beah states,“How did you get these scars? Bullet wounds” (Beah 248). Beah experiences physical pain in this instance, which relates

To most people, pain is a nuisance. But to others, pain controls their life. The feeling discomforts us in ways that can sometimes seem almost imaginable. These feelings can lead to many different side effects if not dealt with or diagnosed. These effects can include depression, anxiety, and incredible amounts of stress. The truth about pain is that it is vital to our existence. Without the nervous system responding to pain, we would have no idea if we were touching a hot stove, being stuck by a porcupine's needles, or something else that could leave a lasting effect upon our bodies without us even knowing anything about it. This warning system helps to alert us when there is

Each individual have experience pain differently. This is usually due to the factors of ethnicity, genetics and sex. This is known as pain perception. Different pain experiences are usually based on the location and severity of pain of an injury. However, evidence has shown that pain perception is not entirely dependent on physical injury; when pain perception is less/greater than expected from the extent of a physical injury, cases where the site of injury and site of pain differs.

‘Pain is an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage’ (International association for the study of pain 2014). Pain can be made up of complex and subjective experiences. The experience of pain is highly personal and private, and can not be directly observed or measured from one person to the next (Mac Lellan 2006). According to the agency for health care policy and research 1992, an individuals self-report of pain is the most reliable indicator of its presence. This is also supported by Mc Caffery’s definition in 1972, when he said ‘Pain is whatever the experiencing patient says it is, existing whenever he says it does’.

Pain is something that connects all of us. From birth to death we can identify with each other the idea and arguably the perception of it. We all know we experience it, but what is more important is how we all perceive it. It is known that there are people out there with a ‘high’ pain tolerance and there are also ones out there with a ‘low’ pain tolerance, but what is different between them? We also know that pain is an objective response to certain stimuli, there are neurons that sense and feel pain and there are nerve impulses that send these “painful” messages to the brain. What we don’t know is where the pain

Identify antecedents, and consequences. The “antecedents are those events or incidents that must occur prior to the manifestation of the concepts” (Green, & Polk, 2009). This is where all risk factors or incidences that occurred prior to the pain giving

The International Association for the Study of Pain defines pain as “an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage” (1979). Pain is actually the culprit behind warranting a visit to a physician office for many people (Besson, 1999). Notoriously unpleasant, pain could also pose a threat as both a psychological and economic burden (Phillips, 2006). Sometimes pain does happen without any damage of tissue or any likely diseased state. The reasons for such pain are poorly understood and the term used to describe such type of pain is “psychogenic pain”. Also, the loss of productivity and daily activity due to pain is also significant. Pain engulfs a trillion dollars of GDP for lost work time and disability payments (Melnikova, 2010). Untreated pain not only impacts a person suffering from pain but also impacts their whole family. A person’s quality of life is negatively impacted by pain and it diminishes their ability to concentrate, work, exercise, socialize, perform daily routines, and sleep. All of these negative impacts ultimately lead to much more severe behavioral effects such as depression, aggression, mood alterations, isolation, and loss of self-esteem, which pose a great threat to human society.